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Michal Avram
Foreign.
Neta Barak Koren
You are listening to an art media podcast.
Michal Avram
Jonathan, what's your number this week?
Yonatan Adiri
60. That's $60 million Series B for Israeli tech AI company that's focused on tax collection. That is IVIX, one of my favorite companies in the landscape. We spoke about the genius act last week and how things are going to crypto. Lots of tax evasion strategies. Well, these guys are coming after you.
Michal Avram
My number is 26, much smaller. But this is the number of foreign students who are enrolled in a new program at the Technion. This is specifically for students who are basically fleeing anti Semitism on campuses in the U.S. europe and elsewhere. Who's number wins?
Yonatan Adiri
I love the fact that people are coming to Israel. I have a personal bias. My wife runs a big chunk of the international school at Tel Aviv University. It's been her kind of like life focus for the last 15 years. So I think your number wins.
Michal Avram
I'm going with mine too. And please thank your wife for me because I think she's what tipped you over the edge.
Yonatan Adiri
That's true.
Michal Avram
Jonathan. It is about 12pm here in Palo Alto. Time for lunch.
Yonatan Adiri
9Pm here in Puglia, Italy, which is where I'm spending the week with my kids and my wife, trying to finish the last couple episodes of my book. Wish me luck.
Michal Avram
Let's dive into the episode. We've got a really fascinating guest with us today, Neta Barak Koren, a legal scholar and cognitive scientist, law professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. And in addition to her day job, Neta has devoted a lot of her time more recently to helping Hebrew University fight back against some of the boycotts or threats of boycott against Israeli academia.
Yonatan Adiri
Yeah, we were chatting on my way to the airport here. My youngest, so David was asking, we were kind of passing through Ben Gurion Airport on our way to Ben Gurion Airport. There was like this old Subaru and he was like, what is this car? It's so cool. And I said, you know, this is a car that I remember as a kid in the late 80s, early 90s, everybody was buying because for about 15 years we had no Japanese cars because Israel was boycotted by Japan. So I think this is a reincarnation of an old significant piece of Israeli macroeconomics. So we think, you know, this is a very important angle to kind of shed light on. So I think it's going to be very interesting.
Michal Avram
Well, more on that in just a bit. But first take a quick look at some of the week's pressing news, AKA our big shorts and of course the latest update on the Windex, the what's your number Index that tracks the performance of publicly traded Israeli based or founded companies.
Yonatan Adiri
All right, so you know, last week was a difficult one. We were deep in the red. Windex is in the green, 3.3% up, outpacing both Nasdaq and S and P. There's a correction that happened over the last couple of weeks. So I would say between Palo Alto Networks and Cyber that we discussed sort of the negative sentiment from Wall street and their heavy weight within the index. We're seeing Palo Alto and Cyberark rising at 6%. So I think that sort of gives the index the capacity to come up in rise. Lemonade switching hands and starting what seems to be a new episode of growth in the stock given its great quarterly reports and projections for 2026, 2027. That being said, I think it's a very interesting dynamic around Monday.com one of Israel's top digital DTC giants that were born last decade, that is Wix, that is Monday, that is fiverr.com, pressure from AI, but in a less expected way when it comes to the decline 29% of the share price lost in one week.
Michal Avram
We're seeing a lot of talk in the US as well on these AI first companies. Ton of high valuations, crazy excitement and hype there, as well as the publicly traded companies that are, you know, kind of buoyed by AI right now. Microsoft, Meta, Google, the like. And then you've got all these other companies that used to be high flying, including a lot of, you know, enterprise SaaS companies. So talk a little bit more about what's going on here with the Israeli companies, why this dropped so much.
Yonatan Adiri
So I think two interesting pieces. One, we saw Sam Altman early today declaring war on McKinsey, right? So we've seen the sort of consulting side, we've seen the pressure on jobs. No one expected the angle that seems to be impacting the Monday.com of the world and the Wixes of the world. And that is they all have what's called a cac, a customer acquisition cost that is predominantly driven by Facebook and Google and the price in which they bring a customer on board and it's LTV long term value. These equations have kind of mastered the industry over the last 15 to 20 years. What we're seeing is a lot more referrals happening through AI engines. That's an undercurrent, that's less covered. So if you've mastered your marketing machine and Wall street trusts you to spend a dollar per Customer acquisition to gain three. And that machine sort of rolls. What happens when Google doesn't provide you with your leads? You know, one of the analysts that I like, that's Olivier Molander, argues this is what's going on. And he puts out a couple of statistics that I think are interesting. Ten years ago Google crawled two pages per visitor. That gave you sort of a lot of Data. We're now six months ago, Google is six to one. OpenAI is at 250 to one. Anthropic is 6,000 to one. Right. So are we witnessing a shift of the undercurrent of the entire digital economy? If that is the case, Monday.com is a canary.
Michal Avram
Well, separate but related. Another piece of news from the last few days is on Israeli marketing analytics platform called Apps Flyer, which some listeners might be familiar with it. It is reportedly in talks to be acquired by a PE firm at a valuation at or above 3.5 billion. The key thing here is that they were on track for an ipo. That's what was believed to be happening and now has appeared to be switching gears. So we talk a lot about the reopening of the IPO window after this lengthy drought that we saw. But what seems to be happening, and Yonatan, I want you to help unpack this, is that the IPO window is open, but only for a certain subset of companies. Score goes back to what we were just talking about. Right?
Yonatan Adiri
Right. Crypto, cyber and so on. And I think, Michal, you have a better instinct here. Why does a company kind of drip out the news that it's considering? Right. Will they end up with an ipo? Is this a strategy like Wiz did? Lots of speculation. Is this somebody kind of raising more capital at better terms or is this a genuine forfeit of the IPO window? If it is the latter, I'm a bit worried. It has a lot to do with sort of the way of Israeli companies to generate liquidity over the long term. And we discussed this a lot compared to Saudi in the region, a healthy ecosystem within a 1012 year life cycle allows early stage investors to get liquidity and there's no better way to do that than NASDAQ London or Nice. And if this is indeed a forfeiture, Apps Flyer is a giant. It is probably one of three companies in the world that companies go to for analytics to kind of understand their consumers, their audiences. So I think kind of binary, if this is indeed a forfeiture on the IPO window might be a big deal. If not, then if we're going to wake up, you know, six to nine months from now with a massive investment round that allows for them to get in a more mature way to an IPO window further down the line. Then, you know, then no news. From that perspective.
Michal Avram
Yeah, tbd. I mean, I think there's definitely a possibility that this is kind of putting themselves out there to see who's a better match here, what could happen. And I think there's, you know, in light of everything we're saying here, there's going to be a lot of M and A activity, there's going to be a lot of consolidation. There are a lot of companies out there that are realizing we're not AI first, we're not crypto, we're not cyber, whatever. You know, what's the path forward? And that path is going to look different for different companies.
Yonatan Adiri
Look, Michal, as an entrepreneur, I've been in those moments time and time again when the industry shifts and I have a lot of respect. Whatever the guys at AppFlyer decide to do, they don't have to IPO, if they even have a whiff of this is going to be very complicated for us to raise capital further down the line because of the AI thing. And we can partner with private equity that has already deep pockets and they'll take us, you know, to the next peak. Totally fair. I respect that 100%.
Michal Avram
Let's go ahead and move on. I'm really excited about this conversation with Neta. Lots to get to. So moving along to the interview with Neta Barak Koren, moving on to our long play, our weekly deep dive. Today we're talking with Neta Barak Koren, a legal scholar and cognitive scientist, law professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, about her work from Fighting BDS and More. Neta, welcome to what's yous Number?
Neta Barak Koren
Thank you very much. Very glad to be here.
Michal Avram
I want to start with just getting a little bit of context here. BDS is nothing new and not even BDS as it pertains to academia, I guess. But give us just a little bit of history here. What context do people need to know as we kind of venture into this conversation?
Neta Barak Koren
So the BDS movement is both a vision, an idea. By the way, it has a website. You can easily Google it and go online and get all of the materials. It has its own social media, but it's also an actionable movement. This is a movement that draws its inspiration from various previous movement of boycotts dating back to even before the founding of the State of Israel and then after the 1973, Yom Kippur War, there was another huge major economic boycott. And then early 2000, the sort of boycott idea begins to grow new skin in the format of an academic Boyco. And the gist behind this, that the academia and particularly everything related to innovation and knowledge is one of the major strengths of Israel as a country. And so hitting that and going against it could be a major way to sort of bring Israel down. It has organizations on campus in various universities, like a student group or sometimes faculty groups. It's very strong in Europe. It's also strong in the United States, in Canada, in Australia. It even has presence in South America and in Asia. We've been seeing boycott cases coming from all of those. When you're looking at the BDS chief website, it's clear that there is an organization that has created, amassed all of this information, materials and is spreading them to the various local chapters that are spread around the different campuses. Who's running it? What's the money for it? What's the exact relationship between the umbrella organization and the local chapters? We don't actually know, but we see the same materials floating in different parts of the world and know that they have the same common source. Trace it to that umbrella organization. Now, with respect to why now. So other than the obvious sort of, you know, this movement has grown over the years and has become more sophisticated and penetrated deeper into the campus F we have seen attempts at sort of leveraging the unrest on campuses around the world increasingly after October 7th. And I can tell you as somebody who's been working on this, I'm heading the anti boycott task force at Hebrew University and also legal strategy on behalf of all Israeli universities. The energy with respect to the campus encampment was immediately translated to major pressures on universities to succumb to the sort of demands of the boycot. And we've started to see this as a major, major problem transforming from individual acts of boycotts, institutional acts of boycotts, entire universities, or pressure to cut all of their ties with Israel universities. That's a watershed moment.
Yonatan Adiri
Neta, you also returned to Israel after a period, I think it was in Princeton, right? I mean, you've experienced some of these dynamics. The dynamics on American campuses is not foreign to you also as a person, how does that sort of. You have now a bird's eye view of this and you also have kind of a grassroots view of this, like who do they follow? Like, how does this unravel bottom up and top down? Because I think there are two dynamics that are happening at the Same time.
Neta Barak Koren
Right now, it starts with student protest, student organization calling for the boycott. Then typically or in tandem, they're aided by faculty. So there are also faculty for Palestine. The faculty support them. Often the students got their ideas from faculty who taught them their views on the Israeli conflict, Israel as an apartheid state, a settler colonialism state, et cetera. Typically when students are supported and aided by faculty, that is really a moment where the administration of the university becomes more prone to consider seriously and further down the road, accept some of the requirements of the boycott. And interestingly enough, and I think there is some kind of bigger insight there, the real sort of flood and landslide I think, that we have experienced since the beginning of the war has actually been when the ceasefire of 2024 began. It's sort of counterintuitive because those student movements have been calling for ceasefire all along. And they've been saying, if you boycott, that's a pressure on Israel to stop the war. But actually, once the ceasefire was January, that's when you really saw a wave of universities in Europe in particular announcing cutting ties with their Israeli counterparts. It was super interesting. And we sort of saw that on the boycott movement, social media and organization. They were saying explicitly, like, we have invested so much, let's not let it slip. We have to capitalize and consolidate our gains now. So now is the time to pressure. So even though there was a ceasefire, they were announcing cutting ties with Israeli universities.
Michal Avram
So, Neta, I'm curious, you know, in light of what you just said, what does that tell you about the nature, the end goal of the BDS movement?
Neta Barak Koren
The end goal of the BDS movement has been clear from the start. Like, you go back to the BDS website, you see it all over. You know, their project is to dismantle Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people. So their goal has been set from the start, since the early 2000s, with varying levels of success. But the fact that university leadership that bodies funding science like the ERC are feeling seriously threatened by the BDS movement, that's a new thing that's been going on here. And that's of course directly tied to the war and to the growth in perception of the illegitimacy in terms of Israel and what it's been doing in Gaza and to the public opinion, specifically in Europe.
Yonatan Adiri
So from your perspective, like, where does it go from here? So let's say there is a day after in Gaza, there is a sense of resolution that's somewhat blessed by the international community. There's a path for normalization with Saudi Arabia, does this go away? Or do countries that open to Israeli normalization now become targets of BDS as well? So how do you. What's like the best and worst case scenario that you see in the next few years?
Neta Barak Koren
So first, I think my assessment, as well as I think the assessment of almost everybody who works on this, is that, unfortunately, this is going to stay with us for a very long time. And I'll tell you why. It's not just the sort of signal that we got to the political ambition of the movement, which is not to reach a ceasefire, it is to dismantle Israel. It's a supply and demand side, right? So the supply side will not go away. But I think also in terms of the university administration and the sort of communities on campus, sort of the demand side, that would also not go away because one of the really grave things that happened, and the BDS movement, even though it has been trying to promulgate the same materials over and over again over more than 20 years, this time it succeeded to sort of create a narrative of Israeli universities as directly complicit or even directly responsible in human rights violations. And the sort of. The metaphor that you know, that I think would maybe help our listeners understand how grave the situation is or how problematic the situation is, is imagine somebody who is wrongfully accused of sexual harassment. So, you know, maybe they go to trial, they clear their names, the stain stays like, it's very hard to wash it off. Your name in Google will remain linked to this trial, to these allegations. Your reputation has been tarnished. And so those lies that are currently spinning on Israeli universities are sticking, I'm afraid. And they've been having success channeling their campaigns to official university resolutions. Let me give you an example. So the University of Amsterdam, one of the most respected universities in the Netherlands, the Hebrew University, my home institution, has been having relationships with the University of Amsterdam for dozens of years. From either the end of the 80s or the 90s. We've been having consistent agreements, student exchanges, collaborations between faculty and so on. The University of Amsterdam earlier this year, has made a decision that essentially accepted some of the allegations of the BDS movement and use that officially as a reason to cut its ties with the Hebrew University. Now, the fact that these lies now get the sort of official stamp of approval makes them stickier. It will be harder to shake them off. And that's one of the main reasons why me and many others, we are worried that we're in this situation for a while and we will need extensive informational campaign and other things in order to show the real face of the universities to the world.
Michal Avram
Neta, can you help us understand what's at stake here? I mean, some of it is obvious, but you touched on this at the top of the conversation, just how important, how critical, you know, this kind of lifeblood of Israeli innovation is. But there's also the fact that Israel is so small. Right. So give us a better understanding of what is at stake if universities like what you just described, who have been longtime partners, are cutting off relationships.
Neta Barak Koren
So academia, by its nature, is global and universal. Knowledge has no borders. Good science needs the best minds working on the problem. And, you know, we know it from the history of science in many ways, both in terms of competition between teams of scientists and collaboration between teams of scientists. And academia has growingly become international and global over the course of the past century. Most Israeli universities have ties with dozens, sometimes hundreds of other institutions around the world. Most Israeli scientists have those ties, and they rely on these ties to create good science in terms of collaboration, to get their science to the world in terms of presentation and publication, and on acquiring talent and getting news ideas in terms of student and faculty exchanges. And all of these require the ties with institutions and faculty in other countries. Many of the ties that Israeli universities have been having and fostering, developing and nurturing since the founding of Israel have been with the United States, with Canada, with Australia, with Europe. Exactly. With institutions in the same countries where the boycott movement is currently successfully percolating. Now. Now, let's talk about concrete examples. Right? So imagine a chemist who has been invited, selected, based on competitive criteria, to present her work in a conference. And now the university hosting the conference says, no Israeli scholars, so that scientist will not be able to present her research, and so the academic community will not learn about it. A publication like a journal refusing to accept a paper of Israeli scientists because we're not accepting papers of Israeli scientists now, or because we're not willing to, for example, even review, let alone accept, a paper describing the trauma of October 7th victims because there is no parallel discussion of whatever has been going on in Gaza. So the sort of ability to let what's going on in Israel become public knowledge is conditioned on changing the science and sort of adapting it to the narrative that the journal would like to create and portray. That's like a real twisting of research and science. And maybe one of the most problematic and worrisome developments is in science. Lots of sort of the big projects today are done in international consortiums, where sometimes 50 different teams from various universities come together, anything between three to five and 50 teams could come together to work on very big questions. Quantum physics, developing cures for cancer. Now, Israeli universities over the past year, especially some universities in Europe, have been repeatedly trying to kick the Israeli partners from these consortiums. And having an Israeli partner have become such a risk factor that many new consortium applications are not willing to accept Israeli colleagues. Even when the Israeli colleagues are the experts can contribute lots of important materials, resources, wisdom. And they are saying that explicitly. Look, I have nothing against you and I think you're amazing, but some of my partners are afraid that if you're on board, then we will not get the funding because the funding agency would not want to give it to us. So these discrimination patterns penetrate and directly circumvent, unfortunately, on a very frequent basis, important science from either being developed at all or from including Israelis as part of the development. Now, all of the examples I'm giving are real cases me and my colleagues have been combating over the past two years or so.
Yonatan Adiri
Is it fair to say before we adjourn? Neta, also from your personal experience? We had Professor Schloss from Weizmann a few episodes ago discussing his experience where he said, look at Weizmann. It's been yet to have been experienced at that level. He made a comment that I think we sort of aligned with. Curious to hear your thoughts. It's not so much whether or not Horizon gets through or not. It's not a money issue. It's not so much whether or not there will be funding to conduct the research, it's whether or not we'll be able to join hands with global partners. Is that a fair kind of comment when it comes to the bds, I.
Neta Barak Koren
Think it's both, right? I mean, funding rests on all kinds of foundations. Israel has made a strategic choice to secure a lot of funding for science through Europe through the Horizon program. Now Israel can make a decision to have its own kind of Horizon infrastructure and to begin to fund science directly. Israel, by the way, pays for it its share in Horizon, but it chose to funnel this sort of mega funding operation through Europe. It can choose otherwise. I don't know if it will do that and I don't want to risk it. But it can do that theoretically. But you will never get is sort of stamp of both approval, legitimacy. The Horizon and the erc, these are the most competitive and lucrative grants in the world. And by going through this process, Israeli science gets better, it gets feedback, it competes on the international stage. You won't be able to replace that. Now, I do want to say, you know, I think there is lots of resourcefulness in Israel, and I think the Israeli scientific community will find its creative ways and is already doing that. And there could be all kinds of solutions that we'll be able to invent, but there will be a few hard years. We're already in such years until we find the exact path forward or until this goes away.
Michal Avram
On that note, Neta, an obvious question to me and a big curiosity is, you're fighting, trying to combat bds, so what does that actually mean? Are these legal solutions? Are they public relations camp? You know, what are they? And then related to that, what does victory ultimately look like? Absolute victory, if such a thing exists.
Neta Barak Koren
Okay. We have developed a toolkit, like a set of strategies to fight the boycott movement that consists broadly of three main operations. The first is knowledge. I mentioned that before. So the BDS has sort of worked very meticulously on creating a portfolio of accusations that are either complete falsehoods to sort of very twisted narratives on each university on Israel. So each university has like a file portfolio of allegations. And one of the main things that we have been doing is to sort of set the record straight. So to create information on Israeli universities, what does it look like? For example, Israeli universities are often accused of being like these segregationist, discriminatory institutions. So we show them what reality looks like on campus. Where else in the Middle east will you find Arabs and Jews, Palestinians and Israelis actually working in the same lab developing cures for cancer or working on finding solutions to the conflict in the Middle East? For example, in the Truman Institute for Peace or in the Minerva center at the Hebrew University. So that's sort of tool number one information, just the evidence. Unfortunately, I discovered that this is a really limited tool because when universities are under a lot of pressure, they. They throw evidence outside the window and just succumb to the pressure. So our second tool, and I think that has been the most effective tool when we have been able to use it, but we're not always able to use it, is friends. So if the BDS is using pressure, social pressure on university administrations, if you are able to exert counter pressure of the same or similar to that degree in force, then you can really resist it, because you have to understand from the point of view of these European universities, that's the easy way out. To agree means they will have no encampments, they will not break into their offices. Students will be happy, and it's a small cost to pay if they realize that this decision is not actually okay on behalf of their own professors, their own students. If conference organizers hear that it's not cool from other conference participants to shun or to cancel the Israeli participant, then they take it back. So social pressure is our second tool. The third tool is legal strategies. And by legal, I don't mean necessarily taking universities to court. It's also using the legal vocabulary, the sort of toolbox of legal argumentation, working with regulators of, of science, such as the European Commission or the European Research Council or funding agencies in Canada or the United States or Europe to make sure that universities are actually complying with laws that are typically in place in all of these regimes. Anti discrimination laws, academic freedom laws. By curbing academic freedom, by succumbing to the pressures of the boycott movement, typically those universities are both discriminating against Israelis and Israeli institutions solely because they are Israeli. Hence by committing national origin and discrimination and also infringing on the academic freedom oftentimes of their own researchers who want to collaborate with Israeli colleagues and are prohibited from doing so. We have had major successes in each of those, but I have to say this gets harder and harder, especially as the legitimacy problem of Israel persists and become deeper. And as governments join universities and sort of openly deliberate economic sanctions and other sanctions on Israel, that gets harder and harder.
Michal Avram
Well, Neta, I would like to say that you left us with some optimism. I don't think we quite got there, but I will say that it's. It's just amazing to see people like yourself out there doing this very, very hard work. Thank you for taking time to kind of unpack for us what's actually happening here.
Neta Barak Koren
Thank you very much. Let's hope for a better future for Israeli academia and for Israel in general.
Michal Avram
Thank you, Neta.
Yonatan Adiri
Thanks.
Michal Avram
Yonatan. I feel like we just scratched the surface the of there. There are so many issues that were brought up. I have so many questions. Any big takeaways from the conversation or lingering questions for you?
Yonatan Adiri
Look, you can't escape the fact that modern warfare has so many fronts that you really don't expect. And this is indeed a front of the war, you know, but when you read back, dated to Herzl Ben Gurion, dated to the 50s and dated to the American embargo of weaponry on Israel in the early days. It's something we have to contend with. We have the best brains out there. And Professor Netabako, and he's definitely, as I think those who listened will recognize, is among the top brains that Israel has to dedicate to this topic. And so I'm encouraged by that. Having said that, this is indeed quite a front that we're going to have to win as well.
Michal Avram
Well, we'll definitely have her back on because I think this is not something that's going away anytime soon, sadly. So let's end there. Of course, as usual, we want to just real quick bring up our words of the week. We always begin with the numbers and we end with the words. And this week, in keeping with the kind of dismal theme of the interview I'm actually just going to read. I wouldn't usually do this, but this is just the title of the statement put out by Norway's sovereign wealth fund attempting to explain their decision to divest of stakes in certain Israeli companies, which is related to the conversation we just had, of course. And the statement here, the title of the statement was Simplifying the Management of Our Investments in Israel. What a cop out. First of all, like, say it like it is. You know, I think we kind of alluded to this with what we heard from the German Chancellor of, you know, trying to have your cake and eat it at the same time. I'm really kind of struck by the increasing number of these statements that we're seeing, these activities and I just don't know where it's going.
Yonatan Adiri
The Norwegian sovereign wealth fund, I think, is the biggest in the world. Over one plus trillion dollars in management. This is oil. This is basically oil revenues from the deep sea. The people don't realize that Norway is a very rich country because it has deep sea oil. And they've been kind of trying to be. I think they have a bit of, I don't know, an inferiority complex. I don't know how to call that the moral complex, because they are actually drawing all of that revenue from fossil fuels. And so they've been always very vocal, trying to kind of lead ESG and so on. I'm not that, you know, struck by that. This has been sort of out there for quite some time, but I think you're right. And again, it's always fun to, you know, run these with you because your nose is like a journalist's nose. The words they choose are really.
Michal Avram
Words matter. Yeah, words matter. Again, if you're going to do it, just come out and say what you're doing. That's my opinion.
Yonatan Adiri
No, they are just simplifying the management of the investment.
Michal Avram
Yes, just simplifying. All right, well, we are going to simplify. That's it for today's show. Thank you for tuning into arc Media's what's your number? We hope you found this episode interesting. And if you did, be sure to like, subscribe, rate, review. You know the drill. Most importantly, please share it with others who you think will find it interesting. And if you want to make suggestions, share your feedback. You know, even send us what words of the week we should be using, please reach out to us at what's your number? @arc media.org.
Yonatan Adiri
What'S yous Number is produced by Adam James Levin. Hardy sound and video editing is by Martin Juergo. Our theme music is by Midnight Generation. I'm Yonatanadiri.
Michal Avram
And I'm Michal Avram. See you back here next week.
Yonatan Adiri
See you next week.
Michal Avram
This podcast offers general business and economic information and is not a comprehensive summary for investment decisions. It does not recommend or solicit any investment strategy or security.
Episode: Is BDS a Threat to Israeli Academia?
Date: August 20, 2025
Hosts: Yonatan Adiri & Michal Avram
Guest: Neta Barak Koren (Law Professor, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; legal scholar and cognitive scientist; head of anti-boycott task forces)
This episode dives deep into the impact of the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement on Israeli academia, its evolving strategies post-October 7th, and the specific threat now posed to Israeli universities’ global partnerships and reputation. The main segment features a comprehensive interview with Prof. Neta Barak Koren, a leading legal and academic figure currently spearheading anti-boycott efforts in Israel.
Notable moment: Yonatan shares his personal connection to international programs through his wife’s work at Tel Aviv University (00:46).
Origins: The BDS movement draws from historic boycotts of Israel, with academic boycotts gaining traction since the early 2000s.
Structure: Operates both as a centralized movement (coordinated content, strategy) and through local university chapters worldwide—including the US, Europe, Canada, Australia, South America, and Asia.
Recent Shift: Escalation post-October 7th, surging demands on university administrations to cut ties with Israeli institutions amid student encampments and faculty activism.
“The gist behind this is that academia and particularly everything related to innovation and knowledge is one of the major strengths of Israel... and so hitting that and going against it could be a major way to sort of bring Israel down.”
— Neta Barak Koren (09:04)
Process: Student-led protests, often supported by faculty, create institutional pressure.
Ceasefire Paradox: A notable uptick in boycotts occurred after the 2024 Gaza ceasefire, as BDS groups pressed universities to “consolidate gains” amid perceived vulnerability.
“The real sort of flood and landslide... has actually been when the ceasefire of 2024 began... They were saying explicitly, like, we have invested so much, let's not let it slip. We have to capitalize and consolidate our gains now.”
— Neta Barak Koren (13:24)
Strategic Objective: Not mere ceasefire—BDS aims to “dismantle Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people.”
New “Stickiness”: Official boycotts by major institutions (e.g., University of Amsterdam) confer legitimacy to BDS’s accusations, making them harder to undo even after facts are presented.
“Those lies that are currently spinning on Israeli universities are sticking, I'm afraid. And they've been having success channeling their campaigns to official university resolutions…”
— Neta Barak Koren (16:46)
Global Integration: Israeli academia, a global enterprise, relies on collaborations, exchanges, and joint research with hundreds of institutions worldwide.
Direct Consequences:
Real-World Examples: Consortium participants and conference organizers pulling Israeli participation to avoid controversy or BDS pressure.
“Academia, by its nature, is global and universal. Knowledge has no borders... Most Israeli scientists have those ties, and they rely on these ties to create good science.”
— Neta Barak Koren (18:57)“Now, all of the examples I'm giving are real cases me and my colleagues have been combating over the past two years or so.”
— Neta Barak Koren (22:47)
Funding: Israel could theoretically substitute lost European research funding, but cannot replace the legitimacy, international feedback, and competition that come from global partnerships.
“You will never get... stamp of both approval, legitimacy. The Horizon and the ERC, these are the most competitive and lucrative grants in the world... You won't be able to replace that.”
— Neta Barak Koren (24:13)
Three-Pronged “Toolkit”:
“One of the main things that we have been doing is to sort of set the record straight... Unfortunately, I discovered that this is a really limited tool because when universities are under a lot of pressure... they just succumb to the pressure.”
— Neta Barak Koren (25:48)“The third tool is legal strategies... working with regulators of science... to make sure that universities are actually complying with laws...”
— Neta Barak Koren (28:16)
Outlook: Successes have been achieved, but as political and social legitimacy for Israel declines in Europe and beyond, the BDS threat—and the fight against it—will likely intensify and become even more challenging.