Why Israelis don’t care about the NSO scandal

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In October 2012, I published an investigative report in the Israeli financial daily Calcalist about a then-unknown company. Its headline was, “We Have Someone on the Line.” The article exposed for the first time the activity of NSO Group and the disturbing abilities of its flagship product: invisible-espionage software called Pegasus, which is capable of penetrating and taking control of cell phones remotely. The report also warned that if Israeli regulation failed to supervise properly the export of this technological ghost, it could find its way into the hands of governments that would use it not only to fight crime but also to spy on anyone who might put their rule in danger – activists and investigative journalists, for example.

The expose stirred interest in Israel for a few days, but that interest quickly dissipated. Human nature leads us to take to heart stories that we believe might affect our lives, for good or for ill, but when local readers encountered a story about an offensive cyber company from Herzliya that sells surveillance software to distant countries, they didn’t get the feeling that it was something that touches on the root of their existence. Nor did the local media evince much long-lasting interest in the revelation. NSO went back to taking cover under the auspices of its anonymity.

Four years later, in the summer of 2016, that anonymity came to an abrupt and loud end. The Citizen Lab, a Canadian research institute that issued several reports that introduced Pegasus to the world, describing cases in which NSO clients made use of the spyware to surveil human rights activists and journalists from the United Arab Emirates and Mexico. Because the revelations had all the makings of a good story – money, espionage and an Israeli angle – the international media pounced on them with glee. Overnight, NSO became one of the most talked-about and maligned companies on the planet.

In the years that followed, the findings of additional, mammoth investigations were published both in Israel and worldwide, including in Haaretz, centering around the Israeli software – the latest series of them just last month. They revealed that certain governments had used the Herzliya-made digital Trojan horse to spy on journalists, human rights activists and government officials. Some of the revelations involved particularly high-profile cases, such as the murder of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi – it was alleged that Pegasus had been implanted in phones of his confidants shortly before his assassination by his own government (NSO denies any connection to the case) – and the suit filed by Facebook against NSO alleging that Pegasus had exploited a weakness in WhatsApp to breach the phones of at least a hundred journalists. These cases were covered in Hebrew, but the impression is that for the majority of the Israeli public, their interest value is akin to that in yesterday’s news.

To get to the root of the local indifference to these revelations, we need to understand three phenomena that are connected to the relationship Israelis have with their high-tech companies: language laundering, nationalism and elitism.

It’s complicated

Israeli culture, like many others around the globe, has always had an admiration for money. But in the country’s first decades, under the ethos of state-building, that admiration was concealed, and flaunting one’s wealth was considered almost contemptible. Not until the 1990s, when American culture seeped into the Israeli DNA, did money officially become the golden calf of the nation that dwells in Zion. It was side by side with the shift of consciousness undergone by the Israeli psyche in the wake of the exciting encounter with made-in-America-style capitalism that the local tech industry developed. By the second half of that decade – the era of the dot-com bubble – the public had already heard about “high-tech,” even if it lacked any deep grasp of its meaning.

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Even though the bubble subsequently burst, it soon reinflated. High-tech quickly became a code name whose meaning few understood, but which nonetheless exuded the aura of a sophisticated, global industry that attracts the best of our sons and daughters and looks favorably upon them. Many parents began to hope that their children would become not doctors or lawyers, but rather recruits to the world of high-tech. What does that mean, exactly? Never mind. It’s “high-tech.”

Already then an almost impenetrable barrier was formed between the core activity of the tech companies and the trimmings – the salaries, the work environment, the “exits” that attested once more to the potency of the “Jewish brain.” The media reported all this admiringly, and Israelis applauded ecstatically. But when it came to the thing itself, to the technological product that the companies develop and sell, the public remained ignorant.

Imagine that you’ve just met someone for the first time and you ask them what they do. If they answer that they are employed in the health-care industry, you will likely attempt to understand what that means: Physician? Nurse? Physiotherapist, perhaps? And if they say, “doctor,” you will immediately want to know which branch of medicine they specialize in and won’t hesitate to sneak in a few more questions. However, if you’re told that the person works in the high-tech industry, you will most likely nod and say nothing, other than, maybe, “Lucky you.” After all, it’s complicated. High-tech.

A protest outside NSO’s offices in Herzliya. Nir Elias/Reuters

Thus, gradually, a mechanism of linguistic laundering was created, which serves the interests of the technology firms. The fact is that many of them prefer the public to focus on the aesthetic exterior and not stick its nose into the depths of their activity. Why? Because their goal is to earn a profit. It’s true that there are products bearing profit potential that are beneficial to humanity, but generally big, quick profits go together better with controversial activities or products – whether because they are based on the exploitation of human weaknesses, or because they are sold to clients who make dubious use of them. It has nothing to do with high-tech, it’s a matter of human nature.

The technology companies know something else, too: If the public doesn’t take an interest, it’s easy to lure outstanding employees with only a small wage increment over the standard, even if the employer is operating in fields where silence is golden. But the moment the public understands and turns up its nose at questionable activity, many of a firm’s talented employees will leave, even if they have to give up a few pennies on their salary. The story a person tells himself about himself derives from what he believes his surroundings think about him, and there are few things that scare people more than being an object of others’ contempt.

The state above all

For more than half a century, defense exports have been one of the sacred cows of Israeli society. Every year they bring in enormous sums ($8.3 billion in 2020), and they provide a livelihood for tens of thousands of families. Over the years, Israel developed a strategy of weapons exports to governments that can pay well, but can also be useful to Israel in the diplomatic and strategic realms. We used to call this “another hand raised in the UN.” The list of clients of the state of both the Jews and the Uzi included a few dictatorships that made use of blue-and-white arms against their citizens in a way that would make your hair would stand on end if you gave it any thought. In Jerusalem, the preference was to turn the gaze in a different direction, based on the argument that this was the right thing to do for the greater interest of the State of Israel, which during the 1970s became an isolated country needing money and friends. The media and the public fell into line.

Today, too, when Israeli companies (even if they are private, like NSO, which is controlled by an international private-equity fund) sell defense technologies abroad, the public continues to believe that if the Defense Ministry grants an export license, it must be good for the State of Israel. Similarly, the courts, which occasionally have to deal with suits involving defense exports, nearly always send a message containing their conservative judgment that some issues are better left uninvestigated. Trust in public servants is an important element of a functioning democracy, but so are skepticism and criticism. It’s possible to acknowledge the importance of Israel’s interests but at the same time to wonder whether selling advanced and elusive technologies to governments with dubious records – even if they are Israel’s friends – doesn’t cause us more harm than benefit.

However, that’s a question most of us have a hard time asking. Not because we haven’t thought about it, but because we live in an era of schism and incitement. An era in which it’s easy to paint the NSO affair in political colors and turn every case of international criticism of every Israeli company into a struggle between right and left, and to argue that the forces behind the investigations are out to vilify Israel. Accordingly, a large part of the public, which deep down objects to the activity attributed in the media to NSO clients, will not dare to even whisper criticism, for fear of being tagged unpatriotic.

The best to cyber

The liberal elites find it difficult to critique the folks in high-tech – not for fear of being attacked for stigmatizing Israel (they’re already used to that), but for the simple reason that they are flesh of their flesh. It’s not hard to find people in high-tech who tweet at night against the occupation or who protest social inequality, while holding day jobs in NSO-type companies or in “gaming companies,” in the latter of which they will upgrade to the level of an art the ability to get naive online surfers to part with their money.

One of the leading high-tech backers in Israel told me once that Meretz is too right-wing a party for him, but a glance at the list of startups he’s invested in over the years shows that in business he’s less selective. The notion that the people who constitute the high-tech industry are “our finest sons and daughters” trickles into the tissues of the public dialogue even in the camp that ostensibly should be critical of activities of a certain type. Because, if the Israeli elite, including the media, identifies the high-tech entrepreneurs and employees as moral people, how can they be criticized on issues of values?

Shay Aspril is the author of three books. His most recent novel, “The Judge” (Am Oved, 2019), won the Prime Minister’s Prize for Hebrew Literary Works. As an investigative journalist, he has written about many of the secretive realms of Israel’s high-tech and defense industries.