“This deal between an economic partner and a mortal enemy should be an alarming wake-up call,” Nagel and Dubowitz said.
Nagel is a retired brigadier general and a professor at The Technion—Israel Institute of Technology. He served before as an acting national security advisor to the Israeli prime minister, and acting head of the National Security Council. Dubowitz is a former venture capitalist and high-tech executive.
Although the details of the China-Iran deal have not been publicized, there is speculation that China will allegedly invest $400 billion over 25 years in the Iranian banking, telecommunications, energy, and infrastructure sectors in exchange for heavily discounted Iranian oil, wrote Nagel and Dubowitz.
China will obtain access to strategic infrastructure such as railways and ports in Iran which are located at the crossroads of the Middle East and Central Asia, through its Belt and Road initiative, according to ECFR.
Iran “seeks to lean on China for its high-tech, authoritarian surveillance state model,” which will allow the Iranian regime to tighten oppression on its people and increase the regime’s chances to remain in power, Nagel and Dubowitz wrote.
Considering that Iranian leaders have repeatedly threatened to destroy the state of Israel, Iran’s development of nuclear weapons makes this threat more real; Nagel and Dubowitz see a need for Israel to decouple from China.
Chinese investments in Israel pose a risk to it and its allies because they will give the Chinese regime access to strategic technologies such as “artificial intelligence, edge computing, autonomous vehicles, robotics, and big data,” that can be used by the Chinese military. In addition, “the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is also the most dangerous adversary of the United States—Israel’s most valuable ally,” Nagel and Dubowitz wrote.
Chinese investments in Israeli infrastructure of strategic importance such as the new port of Haifa, “the port of Ashdod, underground tunnels, and control systems in the northern Carmel mountains, and Tel Aviv’s subway system,” are being constructed by the Chinese as a part of the Belt and Road initiative.
Nagel told The Epoch Times that he started to advocate more than a year ago that Israel should reassess its decisions about some of China’s investments. Disruptions in the material supply to factories due to the outbreak of the coronavirus in China, national security issues related to Israeli technological ties with China, and the Israeli strategic relationship with the United States were the reasons for this reassessment, Nagel said.
Chinese investments account for roughly 10–15 percent of Israel’s economy, Nagel said. It can be lowered but no Chinese investment should go to highly sophisticated technologies, he added.
I do not know of Chinese who would buy any Israeli food chain, or invest in our Coca-Cola system, Nagel told The Epoch Times. We do not want them however to invest in infrastructure, banks, insurance, or in the tunnel under Tel-Aviv, transportation system, trains, dissemination of water, energy, or electricity, he added.
Also “Chinese companies are not allowed to compete in Israeli 5G” networks, Nagel said. This rule also applies to all Israeli high technology.
These technologies are however critical to modernizing the U.S. defense and often are civilian and military dual-use, Nagel said, adding that decoupling from China will stop a flow of capital to the Israeli high-tech sector which will stifle its development.
Nagel believes that decoupling from China cannot be achieved by enacting more laws that would “suffocate the private sector.” Israel wants to play by free-market rules and attract capital from its allies such as India, Japan, Australia, Canada, and other Indo-Pacific allies, as well as Gulf countries, to replace Chinese investments so it can continue the development of its high-tech sector, Nagel wrote.
Decoupling from China will also be an opportunity for the United States to allocate some investment funds to replace Chinese capital in Israeli high-tech start-ups and it will expand “technology, military, intelligence, and political cooperation,” with the United States, Nagel wrote.
Potential Misuse of Israeli Forensic Devices Sold to Hong Kong
Hong Kong democracy activist Joshua Wong, who led the pro-democracy party in Hong Kong, posted on his Facebook page a letter from Israeli human rights activists to the Israeli government a request to halt the export of Cellebrite forensic devices and software that have allegedly enabled Hong Kong police to break into the cell phones of 4,000 pro-democracy activists and arrest them.Cellebrite provides forensic tools to be used by police or law enforcement around the world to fight crime and terrorism and should not serve tyrannical regimes, the letter says.
The Cellebrite products have been used by the Hong Kong police for years but with the advent of the new national security law in Hong Kong and the demise of the “one-country, two-systems” rule, the technology can potentially be misused.
Wong revealed that his cell phone and the cell phones of other pro-democracy protesters were hacked by the police using the Cellebrite system, according to legal documents.
Wong urged the Israeli Defense Ministry to immediately “stop the export of the Cellebrite system, which is used for infringement on privacy, deprivation of liberty and freedom of expression, and political incrimination of Hong Kong citizens under the new National Security Law, which does not meet standards of international law.”
The new national security law was imposed on Hong Kong by the Chinese regime’s rubber-stamp legislature and took effect on June 30.