Over the next decade, Israel’s army will move a large portion of its offices—including those of many of its key technology commands—out of the greater Tel Aviv area and relocating them some 60 miles south, to Be’er Sheva in Israel’s rock-strewn Negev desert. Many of the world’s biggest tech companies are following, eager to stay close to the Israel Defense Forces’ tech-savvy workforce. EMC, the U.S.-based data storage and cloud computing giant, Lockheed Martin, Oracle Corporation, IBM, Pay-Pal’s CyActive Ltd, and Deutsche Telekom AG, have agreed to set up operations in the 115 degrees Fahrenheit summer temperatures.
The Israeli government will launch by year’s end a new National Cyber Event Readiness Team, which also will be based at the office park. Its aim is to research possible cyberattacks on Israeli organizations and companies and coordinate response. Currently, around 1,100 people work at the desert corporate campus site.
Dr. Zunes assistant professor in the Department of Politics at the University of San Francisco, wrote that “Since 1992, the U.S. has offered Israel an additional $2 billion annually in loan guarantees. Congressional researchers have disclosed that between 1974 and 1989, $16.4 billion in U.S. military loans were converted to grants and that this was the understanding from the beginning.” The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs by Tom Malthaner stated that “For the fiscal year ending in September 30, 1997, the U.S. has given Israel $6.72 billion: $6.194 billion falls under Israel's foreign aid allotment and $526 million comes from agencies such as the Department of Commerce, the U.S. Information Agency and the Pentagon. The $6.72 billion figure does not include loan guarantees and annual compound interest totaling $3.122 billion the U.S. pays on money borrowed to give to Israel. It does not include the cost to U.S. taxpayers of IRS tax exemptions that donors can claim when they donate money to Israeli charities. (Donors claim approximately $1 billion in Federal tax deductions annually. This ultimately costs other U.S. tax payers $280 million to $390 million.) Since 1949 the U.S. has given Israel a total of $83.205 billion. The interest costs borne by U.S. tax payers on behalf of Israel are $49.937 billion, thus making the total amount of aid given to Israel since 1949 $133.132 billion. This may mean that U.S. government has given more federal aid to the average Israeli citizen in a given year than it has given to the average American citizen.” The cost for this new “high tech hub” will be $5.9 billion dollars with half of the $5.9 billion budget allotted by the Israeli government for the ISDF army’s move will go to building technology and communications infrastructure, including plans for some of the army’s biggest data centers. The military plans to move some 20,000 soldiers into several bases, one of which will be a campus of low-slung office buildings and new barracks by 2021. Most of those first arrivals will be serving in Israel’s elite technology, intelligence and communications units, including Unit 8200, the Israeli equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency. Speculation is that Stuxnet, a computer worm that was discovered in June 2010 and used against the Iranian Nuclear facility, was developed by Unit 8200. Shouldn’t the founders of Check Point Software Technologies Ltd, Palo Alto Networks Inc., and NICE Systems Ltd who are acknowledge veterans of such U.S. funded elite technology units, not repay the US taxpayers?
