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The Arab High Tech Exchange, Part 2: ‘Sadly, segregation feels natural to many Jewish Israelis’

[additional-authors]
May 27, 2015

Roni Floman is an Israeli writer. Her first book, Sojourners and Settlers, is a non-fiction book about the Israeli community in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her second non-fiction book, Good Intentions – Arab high-tech in Israel, came out in Hebrew in 2013. Its English translation is available here. She works as a marketing consultant for Israeli high-tech companies, and holds an MBA from INSEAD, in Fontainebleau, France and an LLB from the Tel Aviv University. She lives in the Sharon area and has three boys.

(You can find part 1 of this exchange right here.)

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Dear Ms. Floman,

Your book seems critical of Israel’s high-tech elite when it comes its willingness to integrate more members of the country’s Arab population into its ranks. There are, as you mention in great detail, several government initiatives, NGO’s, and individuals who are striving toward integration. But the vast majority of Israeli companies seem to stick to people of their own milieu, and often prefer to find their recruits among graduates of elite IDF intelligence units (where there are, incidentally, no Arabs).    

At some point, lamenting the institutional discrimination facing Arab Israelis, you that write “it is no coincidence that the companies that have pioneered integration in Israel are international companies, not ones that are Israeli owned” and you mention that it’s mostly companies like HP, Cisco and Intel that are employing Arab Israeli engineers and programmers.

But one might argue that most Israeli-owned tech companies are not huge corporations like HP or Intel, but smaller start-ups that are too busy surviving to find the time and the means to promote minority integration, be it the integration of Arabs, Ethiopians, Mizrachim, or Haredis. The sector you chose to write about is the most high-paced, entrepreneurial, and competitive one out there (and Israel has a lot of vested interest in keeping it that way). Is promoting Arab integration not a task beyond the ability and responsibility of most Israeli high-tech companies?

Yours,

Shmuel.

***

Dear Shmuel,

The book doesn’t criticize Israel’s high-tech elite for not integrating the country’s Arab population into its ranks, although it reflects this reality and the attempts, by government, NGOs and the industry itself to rectify the situation. The book is critical of the policy and discrimination that result in the de-facto segregation of Israel’s workforce; I do not believe, however, that it is the role of Israel’s high-tech to fix this. What I find fascinating, though, are the attempts and good intentions of people and companies to integrate Arabs into high-tech, as a way of eliminating the internal barriers in Israel’s society, taking action where government is only reluctantly attempting to make a change.

The sad truth is that this segregation feels natural to many Jewish Israelis (myself included, at least before I began writing the book). This de-facto segregation is not questioned, even though the industry is hungry for engineers to fill its ranks. On the contrary, it is often justified by arguing, in essence, that the hiring process is meritocratic, that they may not be “good enough”. In 2007 Arabs, according to many estimates, counted for one half a percent of Israel’s high-tech workforce. Today observers place the ratio of Arab participation in high-tech at about 2%, reflecting an influx of Arab high-tech workers into the workforce. People that had little chances of finding a job in the mid-2000s can now, albeit with difficulty, hope that an engineering degree can land them one of Israel’s coveted high-tech jobs. 

It is true that high-tech companies and their founders stick to their own milieu and that the army is a breeding ground for many of Israel’s high-tech elite. This is natural, yet, just like in the US the Silicon Valley is questioning itself with respect to the inclusion of women or some minorities. Raising the question isn’t about giving equal opportunities (i.e. “affirmative action”) to unequal people. It is about giving equal opportunities to equal people, that in the case of Israel consist of highly-trained engineers that used to only be able to find work as high-school teachers and not much more.

What is interesting about Intel, in particular, is that in the eighties and nineties it employed Arab employees in its leading edge products. The decision to do that is described by Dadi Perlmutter, formerly ‎Executive VP and General Manager of Intel Architecture Group and chief product officer at Intel Corporation at Intel thus: “the arrival of the first Arab wasn’t the result of a conscious decision to hire Arabs. An Arab man sent in a resume, and management decided to give him a fair chance to get the job.” This is the thing: the conscious decision to give someone a fair chance, not more or less. He continues: “Global Intel had always mentioned ‘fair employment’ as one of the company’s values”. This too, is fascinating, as many supporters of Arab high-tech look back at their years working with the US, and then think of Israel and how they never interviewed even one Arab for a job opening, let alone accepted one.

Even today, startups that employ Arabs are not choosing them for the sake of policy or affirmative action. They just want to have access to high-quality people. Arabs’ only “sin” is perhaps that they are inexperienced, just like any Jewish student coming straight from university. After that, as recruiters told me, they are equal in productivity and value to Jewish employees. Inexperience for new hires is one of the simplest things to rectify. It can happen in a large company or new one.

What companies do need to do is to make an effort to let Arabs in the door, and overcome cultural differences and the deep seated fear of the other. One of my favourite stories in the book is an HR managers who was told by her boss he wants to try and make 5% of the company’s employees come from the Arab sector. She said the Arabs they ended up hiring are all great employees, but that she had to re-consider some of her cultural expectations. Her boss made her explain hiring decisions not to hire Arabs, forcing a closer consideration of the HR team’s assumptions.  For instance, a Jewish candidate would never show up to a job interview with any of their family members in tow. That would be considered as a sign of amazing immaturity, even a more serious mental issue. However, she noticed that many Arabs told her a family member was waiting downstairs. Someone came into the office hand in hand with his twin. I asked her what happened then. She said she separated the twins, interviewed the candidate and ended up hiring him. He became an exceptional employee and they were very pleased with him. She doesn’t think he’ll come in with family when he goes job hunting again; and if someone comes with their family she’ll just attribute that to a cultural difference and leave it at that.

I do agree that promoting Arabs is not the role of Israel’s startup sector. Yet integration in the workforce is good for everyone, employers (who are in dire need of skilled people) and employees alike. It is not a burden; some see it as a good driver of change and social action on the part of the private sector. The belief in the change coming from the private sector epitomizes that fact that in a country where the public sector and policy setters (and even the Prime Minister, warning his supporters that Arabs will come to vote in droves in the 2015 election) seem to be actively opposing integration, normalization and equality.

Yours,

Roni.

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