By us, for us. And then for the rest of the world.
“In a place where there are no men, try to be a man” (Pirkei Avot)
The past year or so, since Netanyahu’s coalition kicked off the anti-democratic juridical overhaul in Israel, has been full of community organizing and social activity to save Israel from falling into “the place from which no democracy ever came back alive”, as senior journalist Ilana Dayan phrased it. We saw new grassroots initiatives like “Brothers in Arms”, “Kaplan Force” and “Building an Alternative”, alongside sector-defined groups like “The High-Tech Protest” (profession-based) or “The Mothers Protest” (wide-identity-based), standing up with older organizations such as “Standing Together” or “Kumi Israel”. This mosaic of organizations and groups was able to unite around certain core messages despite the differences between all the tesserae, making it possible for millions of Israelis to affiliate with the protest and actively participate in it actively.
No one was surprised to see the same organizations taking on the mission to provide all sorts of aid after the massacre of October 7th, 2023, and during the war that broke thereafter. Volunteers stood up again to help farmers bordering Gaza strip with milking their cows or picking their tomatoes and eggplants, after their workers were killed, kidnapped or displaced; they also worked to locate unaccounted people, find temporary housing for those who couldn’t go back to their houses, and help those who suffered from racist discrimination or violence as a result of the war. But not only the protest organizations did so: some individuals or small groups decided to build solutions for public diplomacy, military supplies, clothes, toys, books, cars, mental aid, food and more; and many corporations and businesses contributed their operative assets to such initiatives, or created new ones and hosted them.
While all this is heartwarming and admirable, those initiatives would have not been necessary if the Israeli government had functioned. Israel has gone through a violent degradation of any public service one could imagine, to the point that nearly nothing works properly. The government doesn’t take responsibility on building and operating, only providing budget; its priorities and attention were drawn to weaken the juridical system and disseminate human rights’ checks-and-balances, or expanding the settlement in Judea and Samaria. The army, the hospitals, the schools and the rest of the social services were neglected and left to starve. The misalignment between the Israeli society and its government has never been more extreme.
But there could be an happier ending to it.
A history of problem-solving
Being a young, narrow state in a quite arid region, and with constant friction and unrest with its neighbors, Israel needed, and still needs, innovation to survive. While the Israeli high-tech is blooming and expanding, I claim that Israel has gained dramatically more success and benefit by investing and innovating in areas that solved a problem to Israel and its society, than by building technologies and products that solve problems that either aren’t directly ours or don’t really exist.
Let’s dive into it:
Agriculture, irrigation, breeding, desalination
- Local roots of the problem: relatively dry weather, a major part of the land isn’t fertile, scarcity of irrigation water, growing population to feed
- Examples of innovation: drip irrigation, irrigation controls, biological pesticides, Ettinger avocado, “Alabama” peppers (pest resilient, 40% higher yields), HaMovil HaArtzi (national water pipeline)
- Drivers: agricultural collectives (kibbutzim, moshavim), “island state” — no import from neighboring countries, agricultural R&D (the newly built Netter Hub in Mikve Israel has 150 years deep roots)
- Impact: enhanced food security, prosperous economy of kibbutzim & moshavim, foreign currency flow due to export, positive branding, attraction of AgTech investments
Cyber security
- Local roots of the problem: Israel is a narrow state with no strategic depth, a situation that encourages IDF to keep the battles outside the border; cyber warfare is another dimension of the battlefield where one can reach much farther with less risk and regardless of size and location
- Examples of innovation: Check Point’s firewall, NSO’s Pegasus, commercial security products (WIZ, Orca, SentinelOne, Cybereason, …); algorithmic knowledge gained through military experience led to the development of Mobileye, OrCam and more
- Drivers: investment in academic innovation and research
- Impact: billions of $ in exits and IPOs, generating massive tax revenue to the state
Weapon
- Local roots of the problem: as early as the times of the Ottoman Empire, the Zionist movement and the state-to-be Israel struggled to procure weapon and ammunition, leading it to try to rely on itself as much as it could; in later years, there was a need to keep up with the missile force of neighboring countries
- Examples of innovation: Merkava tank, Lavi & Kfir aircrafts, Iron Dome, Arrow 2 & 3, unmanned vehicles, Uzi submachine gun, Tavor, Desert Eagle gun, and many more
- Drivers: nationalized sector
- Impact: over 50,000 jobs in IAI, Elbit, Elta, Rafael; foreign currency revenues to the state; attraction of academic population to less-developed regions closer to the R&D sites, additional thousands of jobs in electronics, packaging and materials industry
Even if the last example isn’t the one we feel the proudest of, we cannot ignore the impact. What is difficult to describe in words is the extent of creativity, skill and determination that were invested in those fields, in a way that requires the society to work together very closely to achieve goals that seem impossible even for countries 5 times bigger and richer.
Turning our 2023 experience into a new category of technological innovation: SocietyTech
The challenging, tragic experiences of 2023 taught Israelis an important lesson about the importance of a mission-driven, orchestrated and organized society, and its ability to change the course of history and the lives of many.
There isn’t a single answer to the question, what a society needs in order to prosper and thrive. My personal observation is that in the times we live in, there are a few elements that have a great impact: truth, communication, organizing and participation.
- Truth: in the post-truth times we’re living in, where the mere existence of a massacre is questioned and trolled, it is important the we have channels to consume truth through, and reliable technologies to help us identify fake and false messages, psychological manipulations and misinformation. The work of ActiveFence, journalists like Daniel Amram, and nonprofits like Bodkim and Fake Reporter, proved useful to fight fake content and check facts.
- Communication: as truth becomes the road less taken, and with media outlets being manipulated by a tiny class of extremely rich people who only want to become richer, there’s a real need for reliable, transparent, consistent communication channels, to share with the society the truth and also a certain narrative that helps it work together. I enjoy seeing new operations like Relevant, Tikva, DemocraTV, and also more mature institutions like The 7th Eye.
- Organizing: the ability to build, manage and scale communities and forces around missions is critical for a mission-driven society. Israel uses Whatsapp (technologists like Slack…), which has many benefits but many limitations, one of which is that it’s controlled by a technological superpower, Facebook. Platforms for community organizing would be useful in places with bigger populations and a more diversified market of mobile messaging.
- Participation: almost everyone I know found a way to participate and contribute. Some have been called to the army, others are volunteering in different levels of time dedication and commitment. The volunteering network created by “Brothers to Arms”, for example, is outstanding not only in its width, diversity and ability to allocate force to tasks so everyone finds their way to do something they can. Participating in decisions and missions is a perfect way to exercise democracy in day-to-day life, but also to reduce stress and anxiety, and have a stronger sense of belonging and responsibility.
While it is very clear who is the core customer in fintech (banks), insuretech (insurers), adtech (advertisers) — who buys societytech? This question deserves a much deeper discussion, but the most probable candidates are either governments or corporates. Governments can benefit from better access to citizens, more engagement, higher participation and perhaps a lower rate of complaints or even violence, poverty and demand for welfare interventions. Corporates may also benefit from developing, or investing in societytech, either by enhancing their ESG position (yes, ESG is still a thing) or engaging better with their audiences and taking a more active role in their relationships with governments. Corporates that choose to do so may be eligible for tax discounts or other incentives.
SocietyTech is just a raw idea, but it could be Israel’s next big thing — imagine how awesome it would be if Israel wouldn’t only export technologies that feed people or secure organizations, but also improve the resilience and sanity of societies, which are so threatened in this shaky, violent time. Nothing can convince me that a war is a good idea, but if we recover from it and scale up what we’ve learned and practiced, that would be our consolation.
