Missing pieces to cultural puzzles appear in UAE-Israel library ties

Nearly 120 years ago, Hermann Burchardt, a German Jewish explorer, was traveling in the Middle East, talking to Arab leaders and taking photographs. 

Among the iconic pictures was what is thought to be the first image of the founding father of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Zayed bin Khalifa Al Nahyan, known as Zayed the First. He was the great-great-grandfather of the current president of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

Although the pictures Burchardt took in Abu Dhabi became famous in the region and reproduced many times, his personal impressions of the people and places he photographed remained a mystery. He and his fellow travelers were murdered in Yemen in 1909 and his journals were assumed to have been lost. 

Eventually, via the estate of Eugen Mittwoch, a German scholar of Islamic and Judaic studies, Burchardt’s missing diary — and hundreds of pages of correspondence, notes and official documents, together with numerous photos — all found their way to the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem. 

It was this material that delighted Hamad Al-Mutairi, director of the Archives Department of the Emirates National Library and Archives (NLA), based in Abu Dhabi, when he and other colleagues visited Israel last summer. For Al-Mutairi, seeing the Burchardt collection in Jerusalem was thrilling, and filled in the blanks for his researchers. “We were able to see details about the kind of food he ate, and the type of traditional hospitality given to him at that time as a traveler in the region.”

The Emirati visit — and a memorandum of understanding between the two libraries — is a direct and tangible result of the Abraham Accords, signed initially between Israel and three partners — the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco — in 2020. 

Libraries and their scholars have an open-handed approach to their research. In general, the libraries are inclined to share as has been the case with Burchardt’s collection, in the early stages of collaboration between Jerusalem and Abu Dhabi. The Burchardt material is essential to drawing a fuller picture of the first years of the individual emirates that now make up the UAE. The Israelis have provided Abu Dhabi with digital copies of Burchardt’s diary and the accompanying papers, which will become part of the NLA collection.

“We didn’t stop there,” said Al-Mutairi. “We’re now trying to find the right time to put together some sort of exhibition about Burchardt, charting his journeys across the region. It might be online or it might be physical.” The formal agreement between the two libraries will ensure that the material will marry the holdings that each has; and in the meantime, experts from the two institutions will work together to enrich and expand background information and metadata related to the archive’s contents, including translations, greatly increasing its value to scholars across the globe as a rare reflection of Gulf history.

It’s difficult to know what expectations each library had of the other, before the Abraham Accords enabled them to work together. But today, what they are both keenest on is developing cooperation, based on their separate expertise.

The UAE has built up an enviable body of material based on oral history, while the Israeli library has tended to focus more on physical collections — its Islam and Middle East collection, for example, includes priceless documents and manuscripts not even found in much of the Arab world.

Samuel Thrope, curator of the Islam and Middle East collection in Jerusalem, said he has been talking with colleagues at the NLA about oral history connected to a project on Clinton Bailey, an American-Israeli researcher who spent 50 years documenting Bedouin culture and society.

The Bailey recordings — all 350 hours of them — are “super-interesting,” said Thrope, and chronicle Bedouin life in the Negev and Sinai between the late 1960s and 2009. They have all been cataloged and digitized — and now we are in the process of transcribing them.”

Bailey was in the desert region in 1967 to conduct a series of now legendary interviews with Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion. Ben-Gurion’s kibbutz, Sde Boker, was surrounded by Bedouin tribes and the curious Bailey, when not talking to the retired politician, began talking to the local Bedouin.

“He talked to them about their daily lives,” said Thrope, “about literature, poetry — there were reciters of poetry, people who had memorized different poems. But the conversations also touched on different topics, of society, law, the oral culture that Bedouin had been expanding and observing for many generations. It’s an amazing primary resource.”

But the team learned that a history heavily reliant on oral traditions had its downsides. “Because Bedouin life has changed so much in the past 50 years, even recordings from 20 or 30 years ago — and certainly recordings from 50 years ago — are almost unintelligible. I’m just learning this now as we work with the transcribers, who are themselves young Bedouin living in the south, often in places where the recordings were made. They tell me that almost every sentence has a word that they just don’t know — because the [present-day] Bedouin don’t use it any more.”

The challenge, said Thrope, “of dealing with a language that even native speakers can’t understand” led his team to ask for help from UAE colleagues. “They have produced a series of books in Arabic, called Their Memory, Our History, based on their work. The written history of the UAE is fairly limited, but the oral history is a hugely important part of the national memory. It’s great to have been able to turn to them, they have been incredibly helpful.”

For Al-Mutairi, the opportunity to work with the Jerusalem team on this oral history project allowed the Abu Dhabi library to demonstrate what it had learned about oral history. The Emiratis realized, he said, that the Jerusalem transcribers were dealing “with Arabic, but in a different dialect than we use in this region.” They sat with their Jerusalem counterparts and told them how they dealt with oral history: “There are some requirements to be identified. For example, the speaker or the storyteller, the location of the interview, some keywords which might be useful later on for the retrieval of the information. And the last part is how to publish the material.”

Al-Mutairi said that various Bedouin tribes had very specific terminology “when dealing with camels, or food, or tools for day-to-day activities.” Some of these words have gone into a glossary in the NLA for use with their oral history material — and now it’s hoped that such a glossary will be made available to Jerusalem.

If the NLA is the senior partner in the oral history project, it’s the other way around when it comes to written material, manuscripts and artworks. As Al-Mutairi explains: “We used to be the National Archives only and recently we became the National Library and Archives. Now, we are concentrating on manuscripts and other such material and it’s something new to us. We are sure we will have so much collaboration in that area.”

The Emiratis are expanding what they do, figuring out their acquisition strategy and putting new buildings up for the library work. In that regard they’ve been holding small online workshops with the NLI — itself moving into a grand new building later this year — about how to make the buildings user-friendly.

Separate from the NLA in the capital city of Abu Dhabi, one of the most distinctive new buildings in the UAE is the new Mohammed bin Rashid Library in Dubai, which opened in June and was designed to look like an open book.

The Abraham Accords, said Al-Mutairi, “have opened the door for collaboration and exchange of knowledge between two very experienced teams.” But the Emiratis did not confine their outreach just to the NLI in Jerusalem. They also signed a memorandum of understanding with Haifa University and to date have held two physical and three online workshops with the Haifa academics. They are discussing the possibility of joint research projects between the two institutions, about the topography and geography of the region.

Al-Mutairi was particularly impressed, during his visit to Haifa, to see that the university students “were working in our platform, Arabian Gulf Digital Archives, or AGDA, and they had created a tool and enhanced it. I was really surprised and really happy; I told them that we need to present this to any international event relating to archives.” In fact, an opportunity is coming up soon, when in October 2023 Abu Dhabi hosts the International Archives Congress, which is expected to attract around 5,000 delegates.

Meanwhile there continues to be a flow of visitors between the two countries. Last month, said Al-Mutairi, a delegation of Israelis taking part in a technology conference in Abu Dhabi made a side visit to the NLA. “It’s said that the new oil is data — and we have the data,” he said with a laugh. “The Israelis wanted to know what technology we were using” — specifically, what steps the Emiratis were taking to make the data they are presently collecting, future-proof.

The NLA is exploring new ways of data preservation, updating continuously, conscious that they may run out of physical storage room. One such system is called “PIQL film,” which could allow material to be kept for 2,000 years. The possibilities are being shared with the Israelis.

Both Al-Mutairi and Thrope are clearly excited by the opportunities presented in sharing ideas. “To have the wall break down between our collection and the Arab world through the auspices of the UAE — that’s just great. I would love people from all over the region to benefit from the collections we have, to use them, to study them,” Thrope said. “Having this relationship with Abu Dhabi and Dubai just makes that possible.”

UAE-Israel cyber intelligence firm grows with its perch in the Gulf

Years before the Abraham Accords enabled Emiratis and Israelis to openly run businesses together, Abdulla Baqer operated a back-channel in Dubai that brought Israel’s cybersecurity expertise to the Arab world. Working with intelligence veterans in the Middle East, Asia and elsewhere, the charismatic entrepreneur helped facilitate the growing commercial ties that were poking through the longtime Arab-Israeli divide.

Those were days when Israel’s computer startups were becoming competitive with Silicon Valley for government contracts around the world. Check Point Software Technologies and CyberArk were sensations on Wall Street and virtually every country in the world sought access to the smartphone-penetrating software made by Israel’s NSO Group. Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who made a groundbreaking public visit to the Sultanate of Oman in 2018, often described cyber know-how as the linchpin of Israeli diplomacy. Today, Israel is using a similar formula to strengthen ties with Saudi Arabia, the region’s biggest economy.

After the Accords were signed at the White House two years ago, Baqer and his partners unveiled Black Wall Global, a firm that finds little need these days to obscure its mission of marketing Israeli technology to nations that have been reluctant to deal directly with the Jewish state. Baqer, 45, is also co-president of the UAE-Israel Business Council, through which he coaches Israelis on using the United Arab Emirates as a platform for dealing with Arab markets.

“There are a lot of countries that don’t allow Israeli companies to set up shop,” Baqer told The Circuit. “They can always come to the UAE, partner with a UAE company and basically go out and be sold as an Emirati company.”

With Baqer in Dubai, Black Wall is led by a collection of Israeli intelligence veterans and computer scientists. Chairman Asher Ben Artzi worked for 34 years in Israel’s Shin Bet internal security agency and its National Police force, becoming director of the Israeli branch of Interpol, the International Criminal Police Organization. Khoo Boon Hui, who was president of Interpol after retiring as Singapore’s police commissioner, is Black Wall’s honorary president. Others include CEO Anri Amir David, a consultant to Israeli defense contractors and fellow at Russia’s International Academy of Technological Sciences; and Arik Barbing, former director of the Shin Bet’s cyber division.

“We cover it all, from intelligence to cyber defense, border control and protection of critical infrastructure facilities and big data,” Black Wall says on its website. “We provide governments, law enforcement, security forces, and global enterprises with the highest level of safety and security.”

Black Wall is one of the smaller Israeli-led companies that have prospered in the new atmosphere of normalized relations with the Gulf states. Israel and the UAE signed a free-trade agreement in May that eliminates most tariffs and is projected to bring annual trade between the two countries over the next five years to more than $10 billion.

The biggest deal between the Emirates and Israel has been Delek Drilling’s $1 billion sale last year of its stake in an offshore Mediterranean gas field to the UAE’s Mubadala Petroleum. State-owned Israel Aerospace Industries has signed drone-development deals with Edge Group, a government-owned defense company in the UAE. And OurCrowd, a Jerusalem-based venture capital investment platform, set up a subsidiary in the UAE and last November became the first Israeli VC registered by the Abu Dhabi Global Market to operate in the emirate

Baqer points out that the path to Gulf-Israel joint ventures was paved by the Israeli companies that he said operated for decades “under the radar.” The practice, he explained, was to register affiliated corporate entities in third countries and operate through Israeli dual citizens with separate passports who could travel to Arab countries that didn’t have diplomatic relations with Israel.

In the lore of secret dealmaking, the experience of AGT International stands out. The company, led by Israeli entrepreneur Moti Kochavi, won a contract from the Abu Dhabi government in 2008 to create a “smart city” network of surveillance cameras, electronic fences and sensors that paid about $6 billion over seven years. During that period, AGT’s Israeli affiliate, Logic Industries, ferried dozens of engineers each week on an unmarked charter plane between its headquarters in Israel and the UAE capital, according to some of the employees involved who lived in a secure compound under made-up names.

Another example is Israeli defense contractor Elbit Industries, whose American subsidiary had a contract with the Saudi government to sell and service TOW anti-tank missile systems. The relationship came under strain when an employee of Elbit’s American unit died under mysterious circumstances while working in the northwestern Saudi city of Tabuk and the company required Israeli and U.S. diplomatic intervention to retrieve the body.

Now, as president of the new business council, Baqer helps Israelis develop their frontal approach, explaining the nuances of Emirati business culture and guiding them not to expect quick results.

“So many companies came to the UAE at the beginning of [the Abraham Accords] and then they disappeared,” Baqer said. “We decided that we need to help educate Israelis about how Emiratis think and Emiratis about how Israelis think so that they can avoid making mistakes.”

Baqer’s knack for navigating the sensitive realm of Arab-Israeli relations impressed the Israeli founders of the UAE-Israel Business Council. He’s become instrumental in the council’s efforts to promote building further contacts in the Gulf.

“The most interesting thing about trade with the UAE [and Israeli companies] is not so much what trade they’re going to do with the UAE but what trade they’re going to do through the UAE,” Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, a co-founder of the business council and a deputy mayor of Jerusalem, told The Circuit. “For any Israeli companies that see themselves trading with the East, Dubai and Abu Dhabi are very interesting hubs for them to do it through.”

Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid has sought to expand Israel’s relations with Arab countries and enlisted U.S. help during President Joe Biden’s Middle East trip in July. Biden wrote in The Washington Post that he flew directly from Israel to Saudi Arabia for a summit meeting with Gulf Cooperation Council leaders in Jeddah as a “small symbol of the budding relations and steps toward normalization between Israel and the Arab world, which my administration is working to deepen and expand.”

Affinity Partners, a private equity firm founded by Jared Kushner, the former White House adviser and son-in-law of former President Donald Trump, plans to invest millions of dollars in Israeli startups from the $2 billion it raised from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Israelis with experience in trade with Saudi Arabia said much has changed in recent years. “It used to be, OK, pretend to be American, pretend to be British, pretend to be this or that,” Shmuel Bar, chief executive of Herzliya, Israel-based IntuView, told The Circuit before Biden’s trip. “That’s no longer the case. When you talk to them, it’s not, ‘let’s play make-believe.’”

Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir said during Biden’s visit that normalization with Israel was a “strategic option,” but only if Israel agrees first to a two-state solution with the Palestinians.

Hassan-Nahoum, 48, who grew up in Gibraltar, where her father was mayor and chief minister of the British territory, said Israel’s commercial relations with Saudi Arabia are following a “similar pathway” to the business links with the UAE before the Abraham Accords, when an estimated 200 companies were engaged with the tiny Gulf state. She said many Israeli companies in fields ranging from food-tech to renewable energy are now operating discreetly in the Saudi kingdom.

“We may not get a big shiny ceremony on the White House lawn, but I think Saudi Arabia is in the process of normalizing quietly with Israel,” Hassan-Nahoum said.

In a first, Israel participates in Global Aerospace Summit in Abu Dhabi

In another debut for Israel stemming from the Abraham Accords, the country’s leading aviation manufacturer — Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) — participated in a major industry conference last week in the United Arab Emirates.

The three-day Global Aerospace Summit, held at the Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi and hosted by the Mubadala Investment Company, covered topics ranging from aviation and space to cybersecurity and innovation. It brought together more than 1,000 senior executives from the aerospace and defense sectors in countries around the world that are eager to foster global collaboration and partnerships.

The presence of IAI, which produces aerial and aeronautic systems for both military and civilian use, broke new ground for Israel nearly two years after it signed normalization agreements with the UAE and several other Arab nations.

“What is important is that we are in the UAE and this summit is a semi-historical event for us because we are attending it for the first time ever,” Sharon Biton, IAI’s vice president of marketing for the Middle East and North Africa, told The Circuit.

Global Aerospace Summit in Abu Dhabi (Courtesy)

The summit, now in its sixth edition, also welcomed 120 expert speakers that engaged the audience with more than 30 hours of panel discussions and workshops aiming to help shape the future of the industry. 

IAI was one of the sponsors for the Global Aerospace Summit. With 15,000 employees, including 6,000 engineers, the company, according to Biton, is the largest high-tech firm in the Middle East. A leader in both the defense and commercial markets delivering state-of-the-art technologies in air, space, naval, cyber and homeland defense, IAI is fully owned by the Israeli government. It designs, produces, develops and maintains civil aircraft, drones, fighter aircraft, missile, avionics and space-based systems. 

In 2021, IAI reported annual sales of approximately $4.5 billion with an order backlog of $13.4 billion. 

“The UAE is a hub for the Arab world in general, and the Abraham Accords gave us a big boost so that we as Israelis are now able to come to all kinds of places [in the UAE] and we get licenses to market in all kinds of places,” Biton said. “The UAE as a business hub symbolizes success for the region.”

Since Israel signed the Abraham Accords at the White House in September 2020 with the UAE and Bahrain, it has rewritten the rules of Middle East business after being shunned by most of the Arab world following its establishment in 1948. Among other significant developments in the past two years have been the first direct flights to the Gulf states from Israel and invitations for Israel to participate in the Dubai Expo and the World Cup soccer championship matches in Qatar later this year.

While IAI was the only Israeli company with a physical booth at the summit, several other Israeli individuals from the industry were present and participated in various panels, including one on “Cybersecurity in the Aerospace Sector,” which examined the most significant cyber security challenges facing the aerospace sector. It was led by Mohamed Al Kuwaiti, the head of cyber security for the UAE government, with speakers including Yigal Unna, former director general of the Israel National Cyber Directorate, and IAI’s Esti Peshin, the company’s vice president and general manager of its cyber division. 

In the talk, Peshin highlighted the need for cyber security solutions for commercial aviation.

In a panel on R&D investments, Eytan Eshel, IAI’s chief technology officer, stressed the company’s work as a bridge.  “IAI’s Innovation Center is a prime example of bringing together startups and the defense ecosystem to develop new, unique solutions,” he said. “We invest in the future by investing in innovation.”

Jacob Rozmann, vice president and general manager of Lahav Aerostructures in IAI’s Aviation Group, emphasized the importance of forging regional ties between Israel and the region., “Regional cooperation for transforming supply chains will result in quicker shipment, lower costs and a stronger industry network,” Rozmann said.

Global Aerospace Summit in Abu Dhabi (Courtesy)

Irit Fried, who is in charge of education programming in IAI’s Space Division, said teaching young people about opportunities beyond earth’s orbit is critical. “Our mentorship programs share knowledge and passion with students and inspire future commitment to space.” 

Over the last few years, IAI has expanded its business activities in the UAE. In November 2021, Abu Dhabi-based EDGE, the region’s leading technology company for defense, signed a memorandum of understanding with IAI during a ceremony at the 2021 Dubai Airshow to establish a maintenance center for a selection of IAI’s systems in the UAE. 

“This summit is about meeting people,” Biton said, “and it is about bringing into action our slogan, which states ‘Together we have a Brighter Future.’ We are aiming for a mutual future that must be brighter and that must talk about not only providing Israel with solutions but also cooperation.”

The summit, added Biton, was “a tremendous success with lots of traffic of very important people that led to very important meetings, which led to interesting opportunities. We felt a warm welcome from the Emiratis as individuals representing IAI and as ambassadors of the State of Israel — emotionally and business-wise.”