When It Comes to Cybersecurity, Israel Is Powerful, but Not Impregnable

Last month, a coordinated cyberattack—widely attributed to the Jewish state—struck Iran, causing significant disruption. Such incidents support the general perception that Israel has robust cyberwarfare capabilities. While this perception is not unfounded, writes Lev Topor, it glosses over Israel’s vulnerabilities:

A critical review of the actual structure of cyberspace in Israel reveals flaws and vulnerabilities often exploited by adversaries or criminals, [which] downgrade national security and especially civilian security, since the whole civilian domain is less-well protected. . . . The simple logic behind this argument was summed up in the Rocky films when the title character said of boxing matches: “It’s not about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.” . . . Israel can indeed attack, but can it get hit and keep moving forward? This question has now become very pertinent as the global pandemic shifted much of human life to the cyber domain.

Without sufficient regulations on businesses or a proper response from governmental bodies like the National Cyber Directorate, Israeli citizens are bound to suffer from more cyberattacks in the future. In recent attacks on the Shirbit insurance company and Bar-Ilan University, the entire Israeli security community was exposed—as the hackers knew beforehand that military and intelligence personnel were customers of Shirbit and studied at Bar-Ilan University, which offers special programs to the abovementioned personnel.

Thus, while Israel’s adversaries were not able to penetrate internal military or intelligence intranets, they managed to spy on high-ranking officials indirectly by attacking their service providers. This is only the tip of the iceberg as the personal data of more than 6 million Israeli citizens was exposed in previous election-related data leaks.

Read more at Jerusalem Strategic Tribune

More about: Cyberwarfare, Israeli Security

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