Israel and the U.S. Break New Ground in Cybersecurity Collaboration

On November 14, Israeli and American officials announced a new joint initiative to combat ransomware—a kind of computer virus that renders the victim’s data inaccessible until a ransom is paid. Such attacks have become more common in recent years, and although most of the perpetrators are likely technologically savvy criminals, there is serious reason to believe that some have been working for hostile governments. Annie Fixler and Enia Krivine explain the project:

Despite its small size, Israel is a recognized leader in technology and cybersecurity. For example, in the first half of 2021, Israeli companies commanded 41 percent of the total funds raised by cybersecurity firms worldwide. The success of Israeli cyber companies stems in part from a 2010 Israeli government task force that devised a five-year plan to make Israel a global cyber power. The strategy involved a private-public partnership leveraging Israeli academic, military, private-sector, and government resources.

Israel can provide a useful case study as the Biden administration, Congress, and the U.S. private sector seek to address cyber workforce shortages. Jerusalem’s experience fending off attacks by Iranian hackers against the Israeli water sector can also help inform Washington’s critical-infrastructure defense initiatives.

Congress is currently considering the U.S.-Israel Cybersecurity Cooperation Act, which would authorize $30 million over five years to fund cybersecurity research and development. The Israeli government would match the contributions through government funding and private-sector investment.

Read more at FDD

More about: Cyberwarfare, Israeli Security, Israeli technology, US-Israel relations

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society