Start-Up Nation, Apartheid State

The myth of “peaceful” R&D in Israel

- Lital Khaikin

In 1969, when Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges conducted a 10-day pilgrimage to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, he wrote in his book, In Praise of Darkness,

“You shall be an Israeli, a soldier, you shall build a country on wasteland.

... One thing only we promise you –your place in the battle.”

Where Israeli venture capitalism pursues new frontiers over the wasteland of razed Palestinian towns, a place in the battle is guaranteed even for the wide-eyed, utopian tech entrepreneur. Technological innovation is often seen as a neutral force striving for progress and social good outside of any partisan political agenda. But this erases the politics and power involved in sourcing, producing, investing, and exchanging resources between international collaborators. Israel’s high tech market helps to normalize international relations with its apartheid settler state, rewriting territorial lines and narratives over the very ground in which the fiber-optic cables of private networks are buried.

APOLITICAL R&D

Fringed by a macaron boutique, a non-profit fair trade organization, and a designer baby clothing store, the office of the Canada– Israel Industrial Research and Development Foundation (CIIRDF) sits in an innocuous building in Ottawa’s gentrified neighbourhood of Westboro Village. Its headquarters in Israel are located near the border with the West Bank, 10 kilometres west of the Palestinian city of Qibya, across the Rantis checkpoint at the separation wall.

Established by the Government of Canada and the State of Israel in 1994 as a bilateral partnership, the CIIRDF brokers partnerships between private-sector high-tech companies in both countries, primarily in research and development (R&D) in fields including biotechnology, cyber security and surveillance, oil and gas, agriculture, and medical technology.