THE ARRIVAL OF THE INTERNET IN ISRAEL: THE LOCAL DIFFUSION OF A GLOBAL

329 Pages·2009·1.9 MB·English

THE ARRIVAL OF THE INTERNET IN ISRAEL:
THE LOCAL DIFFUSION OF A GLOBAL
TECHNOLOGY

Thesis submitted for the degree of
―Doctor of Philosophy‖

By Nicholas John

Submitted to the Senate of the Hebrew University

May 2008
THE ARRIVAL OF THE INTERNET IN ISRAEL:
THE LOCAL DIFFUSION OF A GLOBAL
TECHNOLOGY

Thesis submitted for the degree of
―Doctor of Philosophy‖

By Nicholas John

Submitted to the Senate of the Hebrew University

May 2008
This work was carried out under the supervision of

Prof. Eva Illouz
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank The Shaine Center for Research in the Social Sciences, The
Eshkol Institute, the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem and the Israel Internet Association for their generous
financial support for this project.

Many people have been involved at various stages of my work on this dissertation. It
was frequently the subject of conversation in many of the car journeys up to the
Hebrew University, both with the car pool regulars and a large number of casual
riders. An early formulation of some of my ideas was discussed by a reading group of
Prof. Illouz‘s graduate students. Yael Hashiloni-Dolev read a draft of Chapter 3. I am
grateful for these contributions to my work—both formal and informal alike.

Michal Frenkel and Michael Shalev were particularly supportive and helpful
throughout, offering advice and friendly encouragement and always taking an interest
in how things were coming along.

I am very lucky to have had Eva Illouz as my supervisor for this work. Her
incisiveness and vision helped me formulate the ideas behind this study. As it evolved
beyond its original premises, taking me to fields I had not expected to venture into,
Eva let me explore and develop my work as I saw fit. When I needed her input,
though, her direction was invaluable. By inviting me to collaborate with her on a
number of projects in parallel with my PhD research, Eva broadened my academic
education and helped me expand my intellectual repertoire. I am extremely grateful
for her clarity, her wisdom, her support and her patience throughout what has been a
lengthy process.

My good friend Shuki Mairovich has been a true companion and partner in PhD-
related suffering. I am very glad that his presence has accompanied this project from
its very inception right through to its completion.

It has taken a long time to complete this dissertation, not because it itself is so large,
but because of two quite long breaks I took while working on it. The first followed the
discovery of quite a serious illness, and coping with cancer did not leave much time
for activities such as researching and writing. I have long been looking forward to
telling my oncologist, the incomparable Dr. Avivit Neumann, that I have finally
submitted my PhD. She has been a remarkably important person in my life over the
last six years.

The second break followed the birth of my twin daughters, Maya and Yasmin, when I
put everything aside and, together with my partner, Etty, devoted myself to caring for
these tiny beings. Even though my extended paternity leave from my PhD no doubt
delayed its submission somewhat, I do not regret a moment that I have spent with my
beautiful children at the expense of studying.
I would like to thank my parents and siblings for their support throughout these years.
Without my parents‘ help I would not have finished this project, and for that I am
extremely grateful.

Most of all, though, I have to thank Etty. She has always shown more belief in this
project and in me than I have often been able to muster. She paid a heavy price for the
completion of this study—a distracted and agitated husband, precarious finances, and
much more—without complaint. When progress slowed to a crawl she was
understanding and encouraging. When things picked up again and I was spending
longer hours at the library, she carried the extra burden at home without a murmur. I
thank her so very much.
ABSTRACT
This subject matter of this study is the first decade of Internet connectivity in Israel.
This study looks into the infrastructure, the physicality, the bureaucracy, and
institutional aspects of the Internet. It is about the struggles between the various actors
involved in bringing the Internet to Israel and other relevant actors, and decisions that
were made by the state and non-governmental organizations, such as the Inter-
University Computing Center, as part of that process. It is not about the things that
people were doing with the Internet, or the meanings that the general public attributed
to it. Rather, it focuses on the nitty-gritty of the arrival of the Internet to Israel and its
diffusion around the country: which connections were made? When? What problems
were involved? It also investigates the social, political, and cultural background
against which the Internet can be seen to be spreading throughout the country: what
kind of regime did Israel have in the mid-80s? And in the mid-90s? How might these
changes be related to the introduction of the Internet—not in the sense that one caused
the other, but in terms of the broader processes of change that characterized Israel
during those years, such as globalization and liberalization?

This study focuses on the technology of the Internet: on the cables and wires that
carry the Internet around the world; on the legal and administrative processes that are
called into play as the Internet reaches a new country. Thus, while not driven by a
new social phenomenon such as Internet dating or the uses of social networking sites,
this study nonetheless sheds light on the social contexts in which the processes
described in the course of this dissertation are embedded. By not taking the
technology for granted, this study shows that the infrastructure behind the Internet is
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also a social phenomenon with a political economy, no less than the social and
cultural forms that are based on that infrastructure.

Based on interviews with over twenty key players and analyses of a large number of
press articles and other documents, this dissertation is underpinned by two major
theoretical bodies of literature: Science and Technology Studies (STS) and
globalization. For adherents to the STS approach, a ―technological enterprise is
simultaneously a social, an economic, and a political enterprise‖ (MacKenzie, 1987,
p. 198). STS scholars believe that ―although technologies clearly have impacts, the
nature of these is not built in to the technology but depends on a broad range of social,
political and economic factors‖ (Mackay & Gillespie, 1992, p. 686). It is these
insights that inform the current study, with different emphases adopted in the different
chapters.

The current study also makes prominent usage of Saskia Sassen‘s approach to
globalization, and in particular her conception of it as ―multiscalar‖. In particular,
given that ―most global processes materialize in national territories and do so to a
large extent through national institutional arrangements‖ (Sassen, 1999b, p. 410), I
study the national institutional arrangements surrounding the Internet in Israel and
explore the struggles over their establishment. Sassen also stresses that globalization
is something that must be produced. Similarly, this study seeks to demystify the
arrival of the Internet in Israel, a central aspect of the country‘s globalization over the
last 20 years. In order to do so I look into the specific actions and decisions that
accompanied the arrival of the Internet as a commercial enterprise in Israel.

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The findings of this study are presented in four chapters. This first of these examines
the diffusion of the Internet to Israel and its subsequent commercialization. It focuses
on two critical moments. First, the initial connections made between Israeli computers
and networks in Europe and the United States, and second, the commercialization of
the Internet, that is, the opening up of the Internet to use by private customers from
their homes or businesses. Given that Israel is clearly not the kind of totalitarian
regime that has strongly resisted the Internet, or at least placed stringent restrictions
on its use, such as North Korea or China, it would seem churlish to say that its arrival
in Israel was not in some way ―inevitable‖, despite the technologically determinist
undertones of such a description. However, this is not to say that the process of its
arrival should be taken for granted. For instance, closer examination of the Internet‘s
diffusion to Israel reveals the importance of physical movement in space by certain
identifiable individuals between Israel and the United States. It also suggests that
Jewish ethnic ties played some part in Israel‘s early connection to certain academic
networks. While the literature on the diffusion of the Internet outside the US discusses
the variables that determine the speed of its spread in a given country, my approach is
to closely observe the process by which the Internet arrives at a new country in the
first place.

The second major focus of the chapter is on the commercialization of the Internet. I
describe how the network went from being a closed academic network to its gradually
being opened up to the public at large. In this, Israel would seem to have advanced
relatively slowly. By asking why that was, and by comparing the process of the
commercialization of the Internet in Israel with its diffusion to that country, and the
different speeds at which those processes took place, I am able to throw light on
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broader processes at play in Israeli society. I ask how it is that as Israel became more
institutionally similar to the United States, the diffusion of the Internet to and within
Israel seemed to be taking place at a slower pace. I suggest that the answer to this
problem lies in the different levels of activity involved: in the first instance—bringing
the Internet to Israel; receiving the .il suffix—the state was not involved. Instead,
there were local initiatives by individual actors and small groups. However, the latter
process—the commercialization of the Internet—enacted the bureaucratic
mechanisms of the Israeli state as the Ministry of Communications was required to
draw up licenses, issue them, and so on.

The analysis in this chapter is conducted at a micro level, identifying specific actors
and pinpointing their role in the processes discussed. However, their contributions are
also placed in broader context. This context is very specific to Israel of the 1980s and
1990s. In particular, my analysis reveals the importance of informal Jewish networks
and migratory movement through space in understanding the timing and mechanics of
the diffusion of the Internet to Israel as a process of globalization, and highlights the
institutional and bureaucratic contexts of two major moments in that process.

The second chapter focuses on the emerging Internet Service Provision (ISP) industry
in Israel in the early 1990s. Developing ideas presented in the previous chapter, it
deals with the process of its formation, which we could also call the
commercialization of the Internet in Israel, referring to the fact that the Internet ceased
to be a service provided for free by academic institutions for its members, becoming
instead a commodity purchased from private enterprises. Although the entrepreneurs
and owners of ISP companies are at the heart of the analysis, the chapter also refers to
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the Ministry of Communications (MoC), Bezeq, and experts with no financial interest
in the Internet, such as representatives of MACHBA (the Inter-University Computing
Center).

The chapter opens with a discussion of how to theoretically conceptualize the set of
owners of Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Concluding that they cannot be said to
form any kind of community, I draw on Bourdieu to analyze the relations between
one another and with the field of power, represented here by the Ministry of
Communications. I report on three distinct sets of attitudes to the MoC and Bezeq—
indifference, indignation, and acceptance—which characterized the founders of small,
medium-sized, and large ISPs respectively. I argue that these sets of attitudes are
explicable in terms of actors‘ location in the field, and their habitus. In particular, I
focus on the attitudes of the medium-sized ISPs, and discuss the changing shape of
the field and the entrance of big business, which I relate to the liberalization and
globalization of the Israeli political economy, and especially the de-monopolization of
Bezeq, both in the market for internal phone calls, and more notably regarding
overseas telephony.

The chapter concludes with a discussion of macro level processes, in particular the
globalization of Israeli society and the liberalization of the country‘s economy. I
argue that these processes are reflected in the ownership of the ISPs that appeared in
Israel in the second half of the 1990s, two aspects of which are immediately clear:
firstly, the involvement of foreign investment; and secondly, the involvement of the
Israeli economic elite, populated by people with what I describe as a global habitus.
Specifically, the chapter shows that one does not need a global habitus to be an
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