Alain Ah-Vee
For LALIT, Member of
SOMALP (Solidarite Morisyin Avek Lepep Palestinn) 
Dear Sir,
We have noticed with concern through an advertisement published in Week End 13 August 2023 that Cyberbit, an Israeli spyware company, that is working with Israel army, is among the exhibitors in an International Conference on Cybersecurity to be held in Mauritius in September. This conference, organised by Premium Business School, is supported by the Mauritian government through the HRDC refund programme.
Cyberbit is an Israeli spyware company, which sells surveillance technologies around the world. It specialises in providing cyberattack simulations technologies. This company is denounced, along with other enterprises, for co-operating with the Israel army by, inter alia, Stephanie Fox, Director of the Jewish Voices for Peace Newsletter of 19 November 2021: “Israeli spyware companies like Archimedes, Black Cube, Candiru, Carbyne, Cellebrite, Cyberbit, Elbit Systems, NSO Group, Psy-Group, Quadream, Toka, Verint, White Knight, Wikistrat, among many others, have been selling surveillance technologies around the world for years. What these companies have in common is that they are trained by the Israeli military and sanctioned by the Israeli state.”
In fact, the founder and CEO of Cyberbit is someone called Adi Dar who was also an ex-General Manager at Elbit Systems, another company on this list. In 2019, LALIT denounced the presence of AXA, an international insurance company, which had a regional branch in Mauritius, and which invests massively in Elbit Systems. So, the CEO of Cyberbit’s past links as head of Elbit makes this Mauritius’ second link with Elbit. So, we need to know what Elbit, in turn, is. As one of Israel’s largest arms and security private companies, Elbit Systems produces 85% of the drones and land-based equipment used by the Israeli military. It is a major arms exporter that has sold its weapons as being ‘field tested’ which refers to the Israeli Defence Force’s cruel and extensive use of Elbit weaponry in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and in Gaza. Elbit drones have also been used on successive attacks on civilians in Gaza in 2009, 2012 and in Israel’s 2014 Operation Protective Edge. Elbit drones are also used for surveillance throughout the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem in support for the arbitrary arrest and imprisonment of Palestinians and the curtailment of freedom of movement of Palestinians throughout Jerusalem and the Occupied Territories. Elbit provides electronics for the ‘separation wall’ which was ruled illegal by the International Court of Justice in July 2004 and which supports Israel’s apartheid policies, which, as you know, have been condemned by the Israeli human rights association B’tselem. In 2018 the Israeli army shot indiscriminately at unarmed protestors at the Gaza fence. They were using weaponry produced by IMI,an Israeli arms manufacturer taken over by Elbit.
We also noted that this conference is under the patronage of Digital Insights Consultancy from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in collaboration with Kalis Technologies Ltd, a Mauritian IT consultancy company. It is no surprise that an UAE entity is supervising this event as it is one of the few Arab states, which have fully recognized Israel. In August 2020, Israel and the UAE signed an agreement mediated, you will recall, by ex-U.S. President Donald Trump, to establish full diplomatic relations.
While the BDS campaign to boycott Israel is growing internationally, Mauritius should refrain from hosting and facilitating business activities with Israeli companies, such as Cyberbit. We should also, as a nation, check on the track record of individual heads of Israeli firms. The government should not encourage the development of commercial links with companies or individuals that work with the military forces of Israel. Israel is a rogue state, which is constantly violating international law, which is still colonising Palestinian territory, which regularly attacks and bombs Palestinians cities, where thousands of Palestinian children are arrested and under ‘administrative detention’ that allows the authorities to detain them indefinitely without charge or trial.
I have seen this for myself on a visit of support to Palestine. In LALIT, another member has been there twice to be witness of what is happening there, and in support. So, in LALIT, we know from the personal experience of members what this military occupation means. We have seen this Apartheid being imposed. But, it is not just us.
UN experts and several UN reports like the former Human Rights Commissioner, Navi Pillay Report in 2022, have exposed Israel’s settler-colonial and racist policy in detail. She wrote in her report that “Actions by Israel constituting de facto annexation include expropriating land and natural resources, establishing settlements and outposts, maintaining a restrictive and discriminatory planning and building regime for Palestinians and extending Israeli law extraterritorially to Israeli settlers in the West Bank,” reads her report. This is also what Michael Lynk, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Occupied Palestinian Territories, said in March 2022, “There is today in the Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967 a deeply discriminatory dual legal and political system that privileges the 700,000 Israeli Jewish settlers living in the 300 illegal Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank”.
The situation in the Occupied Palestinian territory is deteriorating rapidly. Today the new extreme- right regime in Israel is trying to annex the whole of the West Bank, and is backing Israeli settlers, even as they gun down Palestinians and burn their houses. No country should give the slightest support to Apartheid Israel which is literally destroying the Palestinian people. On the contrary we should isolate Israel politically, and economically.
We are at a time when the Palestinian case on Israel occupation of West Bank and East Jerusalem, which has already got a majority vote at the UNGA, is now coming before the ICJ. It is a time when we should give maximum support to the Palestinian struggle for justice, freedom and to end this long-lasting and violent colonisation. It is part of the struggle for de-colonization that Mauritius is involved in over Chagos, including Diego Garcia.
Yours sincerely,
Copy to: Minister of Labour, Director Premium Business School, Director Kalis Technologies Ltd, the Press
This company is denounced, along with other enterprises, for co-operating with the Israel army by, inter alia, Stephanie Fox, Director of the Jewish Voices for Peace Newsletter of 19 November 2021