Sergey Mikhailovich Brin (Russian: Сергей Михайлович Брин; born August 21, 1973) is an American businessman best known for co-founding Google with Larry Page. Brin was the president of Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc., until stepping down from the role on December 3, 2019. He and Page remain at Alphabet as co-founders, controlling shareholders and board members. As of January 2024, Brin is the 9th-richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of $114 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Brin emigrated to the United States from the Soviet Union at the age of six. He earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Maryland, College Park, following in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps by studying mathematics as well as computer science. After graduation, he enrolled in Stanford University to acquire a PhD in computer science. There he met Page, with whom he built a web search engine. The program became popular at Stanford, and they discontinued their PhD studies to start up Google in Susan Wojcicki’s garage in Menlo Park.
Lawrence Edward Page (born March 26, 1973) is an American businessman, computer scientist and internet entrepreneur best known for co-founding Google with Sergey Brin. Page was chief executive officer of Google from 1997 until August 2001 when he stepped down in favor of Eric Schmidt and then again from April 2011 until July 2015 when he became CEO of its newly formed parent organization Alphabet Inc. which was created to deliver “major advancements” as Google’s parent company,[6] a post he held until December 4, 2019 when he along with his co-founder Brin stepped down from all executive positions and day-to-day roles within the company. He remains an Alphabet board member, employee, and controlling shareholder. As of January 2024, Page has an estimated net worth of $129 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, making him the eighth-richest person in the world. He has also invested in flying car startups Kitty Hawk and Opener. Page is the co-creator and namesake of PageRank, a search ranking algorithm for Google for which he received the Marconi Prize in 2004 along with co-writer Brin.
Larry Page – who shares the title of Google President even has an Israeli family connection.
B’nai B’rith Magazine, paper of one of the mightiest Jewish organizations, writes in their article “The Searchmasters”, spring 2006, on “…Larry Page, whose mother Gloria is Jewish”.
The Magazine continues:
Larry’s maternal grandfather, however, followed a much different path.
He was an early settler in Israel, making aliyah in the spartan desert town of Arad.
The Jewish entourage in Google
The Jew Craig Silverstein was the first employee hired by Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
Craig Silverstein (born 1972 or 1973) is a software engineer and was the first person employed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Google, having studied for a PhD alongside them (though he dropped out and never earned his degree) at Stanford University. He graduated from Harvard and was admitted to Phi Beta Kappa. In 1993, he won ACM-ICPC programming contest as a member of Harvard University team. His PhD supervisor was Rajeev Motwani. He served as Google’s director of technology. He resigned from the company in February 2012, to work at the Khan Academy. He and his wife, Mary Obelnicki, are signers of The Giving Pledge.
The Jewish woman Susan Wojcicki was the one who gave Google office space to start the business.
Susan Diane Wojcicki (/wʊˈtʃɪtski/ woo-CHITS-kee born July 5, 1968) is an American business executive who was the chief executive officer (CEO) of YouTube from 2014 to 2023. Her net worth was estimated at $765 million in 2022. Wojcicki has worked in the technology industry for over twenty years. She became involved in the creation of Google in 1998 when she rented out her garage as an office to the company’s founders. She worked as Google’s first marketing manager in 1999, and later led the company’s online advertising business and original video service. After observing the success of YouTube, she suggested that Google should buy it; the deal was approved for $1.65 billion in 2006. She was appointed CEO of YouTube in 2014, serving until resigning in February 2023.
Susan Wojcicki has since become Vice President of Product Management at Google.
This while here likewise Jewish younger sister Anne Wojcicki, a biotechnology specialist, in May 2007 during “a traditional Jewish wedding” ceremony (according to Israeli paper Ha’aretz, May 29, 2008) married the Google President Sergey Brin.
Anne E. Wojcicki (/wuːˈtʃɪtski/ woo-CHITS-kee born July 28, 1973) is an American entrepreneur who co-founded and serves as CEO of the personal genomics company 23andMe. She founded the company in 2006 with Linda Avey and Paul Cusenza to provide the general public access to their genetic information. She is a co-founder and board member of the Breakthrough Prize. Wojcicki married Google co-founder Sergey Brin in 2007 and divorced eight years later.
The world’s wealthiest Jewish bachelor is no more.
Sergey Brin, co-founder of search giant Google and worth over $16bn got hitched to his long-time love Anne Wojcicki earlier this month in the Bahamas, but so secret was the wedding, that it has only recently been confirmed.
According to a report in the San Jose Mercury News, the wedding took place under a chuppah with both Brin and Wojcicki confirming their commitment to the Jewish faith, though no rabbi is said to have officiated at the ceremony.
Wojcicki, is the sister of Susan Wojcicki who gave Google office space to start the business.
In 2001, Brin’s mother Eugenia commented she hoped he would find a Jewish bride.
“I hope he would keep that in mind,”she said.
Wojcicki, who has a background in biotechnology, has been active in Jewish projects and currently sits on the board of Reboot, a venture that engages Jews to explore their culture.
Recently, Wojcicki launched a biotech company 23andMe which has seen Google itself invest several million dollars into it.
Justin Rosenstein was a top engineer at Google serving three years as Google’s Product Manager for Page Creator.
Rosenstein was one of the first employees that Facebook’s Jewish boss Mark Zuckerberg poached from Google as Facebook began its rise in 2007.
In 2008 Rosenstein left Facebook with Facebook’s likewise Jewish co-founder, Dustin Moskovitz, to form a new company.
Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz (left) and Justin Rosenstein
Another Jewish profile who has been important in the shaping of Google is Sheryl Sandberg.
Sheryl Kara Sandberg (born August 28, 1969) is an American technology executive, philanthropist, and writer. Sandberg served as chief operating officer (COO) of Meta Platforms, a position from which she stepped down in August 2022. She is also the founder of LeanIn.Org. In 2008, she was made COO at Facebook, becoming the company’s second-highest ranking official. In June 2012, she was elected to Facebook’s board of directors, becoming the first woman to serve on its board. As head of the company’s advertising business, Sandberg was credited for making the company profitable. Prior to joining Facebook as its COO, Sandberg was vice president of global online sales and operations at Google and was involved in its philanthropic arm Google.org. Before that, Sandberg served as research assistant to Lawrence Summers at the World Bank, and subsequently as his chief of staff when he was Bill Clinton’s United States Secretary of the Treasury. In 2012, she was named in the Time 100, an annual list of the most influential people in the world. On Forbes Magazine’s 2021 billionaires list, Sandberg is reported to have a net worth of US$1.7 billion, due to her stock holdings in Facebook and in other companies. In 2022, she announced she would be stepping down as Meta COO in the fall but that she would remain on its board.
Another Jewish profile who has been important in the shaping of Google is Sheryl Sandberg.
Sheryl Sandberg was Google Vice President of Global Online Sales & Operations, a position from where she built and managed the online sales channels for advertising and publishing and operations for consumer products globally.
Sandberg was behind Google’s AdWords, and sat in the board of Google’s philanthropic arm Google.org.
Before Google, Sandberg worked for the Jew Lawrence Summers, first when he was Chief Economist of the World Bank, then as his Chief of Staff when Summers was Treasury Secretary in the Clinton Administration.
Lawrence Henry Summers (born November 30, 1954) is an American economist who served as the 71st United States Secretary of the Treasury from 1999 to 2001 and as director of the National Economic Council from 2009 to 2010. He also served as president of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006, where he is the Charles W. Eliot University Professor and director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard Kennedy School. In November 2023, Summers joined the board of directors of artificial general intelligence company OpenAI. Summers became a professor of economics at Harvard University in 1983. He left Harvard in 1991, working as the Chief Economist of the World Bank from 1991 to 1993. In 1993, Summers was appointed Under Secretary for International Affairs of the United States Department of the Treasury under President Bill Clinton’s administration. In 1995, he was promoted to Deputy Secretary of the Treasury under his long-time political mentor Robert Rubin. In 1999, he succeeded Rubin as Secretary of the Treasury. While working for the Clinton administration, Summers played a leading role in the American response to the 1994 economic crisis in Mexico, the 1997 Asian financial crisis, and the Russian financial crisis. He was also influential in the Harvard Institute for International Development and American-advised privatization of the economies of the post-Soviet states, and in the deregulation of the U.S financial system, including the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act. Following the end of Clinton’s term, Summers served as the 27th president of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006. Summers resigned as Harvard’s president in the wake of a no-confidence vote by Harvard faculty, which resulted in large part from Summers’s conflict with Cornel West, financial conflict of interest questions regarding his relationship with Andrei Shleifer, and a 2005 speech in which he offered three reasons for the under-representation of women in science and engineering, including the possibility that there exists a “different availability of aptitude at the high end”, in addition to patterns of discrimination and socialization. After his departure from Harvard, Summers worked as a managing partner at the hedge fund D. E. Shaw & Co. Summers rejoined public service during the Obama administration, serving as the Director of the White House United States National Economic Council for President Barack Obama from January 2009 until November 2010, where he emerged as a key economic decision-maker in the Obama administration’s response to the Great Recession.
The Jewish Chronicle (December 4, 2008) ran an article on the book “Jewish Wisdom for Business Success” – a book by Rabbi Levi Brackman and Jewish journalist Sam Jaffe
with examples of success stories such as Andy Klein, who quit corporate law to start a brewery and ended up with an investment bank, or Sheryl Sandberg, who rose to become vice president for global sales for Google.
And while there are role models to emulate, there also ones to avoid: Pharaoh the gas ruach (man of coarse spirit) or Korah, the ba’al ga’avah, the arrogant egotist.
Sheryl Sandberg
As Vice President of Google’s Global Sales Sandberg was behind the AdWords project which links paid advertisements to search results, a gadget that allowed Google to turn their search engine into “extremely profitable business”, as Rabbi Levi Brackman and journalist Sam Jaffe write in their book “Jewish Wisdom for Business Success“, p. 2.
They have the case of Sheryl Sandberg in the first chapter in their book as an example of Jewish business success.
In the same p. 2 of their book:
Early in 2008, she left Google to become the second-in-command of Facebook, the emerging social-networking company.
Sheryl Sandberg – Jewish “second-in-command of Facebook” – is presently Chief Operating Officer at Facebook.
As COO, Sandberg is responsible for helping Facebook scale its operations and expand its presence globally.
Sandberg manages:
sales
marketing
business development
human resources
public policy
privacy and communications
and reports directly to Facebook’s Jewish CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (/ˈzʌkərbɜːrɡ/; born May 14, 1984) is an American businessman and philanthropist. He co-founded the social media service Facebook, along with his Harvard roommates in 2004, and its parent company Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook, Inc.), of which he is executive chairman, chief executive officer and controlling shareholder. Zuckerberg briefly attended Harvard University, where he launched Facebook in February 2004 with his roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. Originally launched in only select college campuses, the site expanded rapidly and eventually beyond colleges, reaching one billion users in 2012. Zuckerberg took the company public in May 2012 with majority shares. In 2007, at age 23, he was the world’s youngest self-made billionaire at the time. He has since used his funds to organize multiple philanthropic endeavors, including the establishment of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Time named Zuckerberg one of the most influential people in the world in 2008, 2011, 2016 and 2019, and nominated him as a finalist several other times. He was named the Time Person of the Year in 2010, the same year when Facebook eclipsed more than half a billion users. In December 2016, Zuckerberg was ranked tenth on the Forbes list of the World’s Most Powerful People. In the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans in 2023, he was ranked eighth with a personal wealth of $106 billion. As of January 2024, Zuckerberg’s net worth was estimated at $130 billion by Forbes, making him the fifth richest person in the world. A film depicting Zuckerberg’s early career, legal troubles and initial success with Facebook, The Social Network, was released in 2010 and won multiple Academy Awards. Zuckerberg’s prominence and fast rise in the technology industry has prompted political and legal attention. The founding of Facebook involved Zuckerberg in multiple lawsuits regarding the creation and ownership of the website as well as issues of user privacy. In 2013, he co-founded the pro-immigration lobbying group FWD.us. On April 10 and 11, 2018, Zuckerberg testified before the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation regarding the usage of personal data by Facebook in relation to the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal.
Sheryl Sandberg is well connected to the Jewish community and the “philantropy” business, a favourite Jewish pastime where they can take a small part of their enormous wealth gained from the “goyim“ and put it in small projects completely after their taste, to show how humane, generous and an openminded they are.
Sandberg was thus with Daniel Sokatch, CEO of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, on a joint venture “addressing global poverty and social justice issues through philanthropy”, December 10, 2008.
Daniel J. Sokatch (born April 15, 1968) is an American activist, serving as the CEO of the New Israel Fund since 2009. Sokatch has been recognized for his leadership and influence, and he has been included multiple times in The Jewish Daily Forward’s “Forward 50,” an annual list of influential Jewish decision-makers, activists, and opinion-shapers.
She also sponsors Jewish activities at for instance the Joshman Family Jewish Community Center, a center that not so surprisingly also has an “Israel connection”, as their website says.
The Joshman Center writes on this “Israel connection”:
Our mission is to strengthen relationships between American Jews and the Israeli émigré community and to build a deeper connection to Israel.
Sandberg was included in Fortune’s 50 Most Powerful Women of 2007.
She is married to former Yahoo! music head David Goldberg with whom she has two children.
David Bruce Goldberg (October 2, 1967 – May 1, 2015) was an American management consultant and businessman. He was the founder of LAUNCH Media and the CEO of SurveyMonkey. He was married to Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook.
More Google Jews – Elliot Schrage and Ethan Beard
Elliot Schrage
The Jew Elliot Schrage was since 2005 Google’s Vice President of Communications and Public Affairs, the man who ran Google’s PR.
Elliot J. Schrage is an American lawyer and business executive. Until June 2018, he was vice president of global communications, marketing, and public policy at Facebook, where he directed the company’s government affairs and public relations efforts. He then served as vice president of special projects at Facebook.
He had this important position until May 2008 when he left for Facebook to work under the same role.
At Google, he broadened the company’s messaging from a focus on only product PR to include all aspects of:
corporate
financial
policy
philanthropic
and internal communications.
Before Google Shrage served as a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, the Zionist infested “public policy think tank”.
Schrage together with the Jewish US Holocaust Museum launched the Darfur tool to Google Earth (see article U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and Google Join in Online Darfur Mapping Initiative):
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum today joined with Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) to unveil an unprecedented online mapping initiative aimed at furthering awareness and action in the Darfur region of Sudan.
Crisis in Darfur, enables more than 200 million Google Earth™ mapping service users worldwide to visualize and better understand the genocide currently unfolding in Darfur.
The Museum has assembled content – photographs, data and eyewitness testimony – from a number of sources that are brought together for the first time in Google Earth.
This information will appear as a Global Awareness layer in Google Earth starting today.
Google Earth’s Elliot Schrage, Vice President, Global Communications and Public Affairs, joined Museum Director Sara J. Bloomfield
Sara J. Bloomfield is the director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. She is originally from Cleveland, Ohio. Bloomfield holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature from Northwestern University and a master’s degree in education from John Carroll University. Bloomfield joined the planning staff of the Museum in 1986 and she singled out Dr. Joan Ringelheim in making “a very critical role in the creation” of the museum’s permanent exhibit before it opened in 1993. Bloomfield became director in 1999. Bloomfield currently serves on the board of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation and is a former member of the board of the International Council of Museums. Bloomfield has contributed to The Times of Israel blog, HuffPost, and The Independent.
Crisis in Darfur is the first project of the Museum’s Genocide Prevention Mapping Initiative that will over time include information on potential genocides allowing citizens, governments and institutions to access information on atrocities in their nascent stages and respond.
“Educating today’s generation about the atrocities of the past and present can be enhanced by technologies such as Google Earth,”
says Bloomfield.
“When it comes to responding to genocide, the world’s record is terrible.
We hope this important initiative with Google will make it that much harder for the world to ignore those who need us the most.”
“At Google, we believe technology can be a catalyst for education and action,”said Elliot Schrage, Google Vice President, Global Communications and Public Affairs.
“Crisis in Darfur will enable Google Earth users to visualize and learn about the destruction in Darfur as never before and join the Museum’s efforts in responding to this continuing international catastrophe.”
Of course, spreading the knowledge of Israel’s genocidal destruction of Palestinian infrastructure in Gaza in the 2009 assault is not part of this education.
He has since left for Facebook to become Director of Facebook’s Business Development and then Facebook’s Director of Platform marketing.
There are indications that he is Jewish.
Manber – Google’s Israeli Vice President of Engineering
Google’s Vice President of Engineering, Udi Manber, is Israeli and a graduate from the Israel’s Technion Institute in Haifa.
He has a long record of top jobs in Internet related positions.
Udi Manber (Hebrew: אודי מנבר) is an Israeli computer scientist. He is one of the authors of agrep and GLIMPSE. After a career in engineering and management, he worked on medical research.
Manber became the chief scientist at Yahoo! in 1998.
In 2002, he joined Amazon.com, where he became “chief algorithms officer” and a Vice President.
He was later appointed CEO of the Amazon subsidiary company A9.com, where he led the company’s A9 search engine work. (Please see an article on Amazon’s support for Israel.)
In 2006, Manber was hired by Google as one of Google’s Vice Presidents of Engineering.
In December 2007, he announced Knol, Google’s new project to create a knowledge repository.
Mandber as a senior Google operative, interacts with the Judeo-Zionist community.
Here is an advertisement which discloses how Google’s Manber will sit with a Rabbi and discuss Talmud and the Web:
Thu Sep 18, 2008
Contemporary Jewish Museum presents
Google’s Talmud: The Web, Jewish Culture, and the Power of Associative Thinking
Location – The Contemporary Jewish Museum 736 Mission Street San Francisco, CA 94103 district: Downtown/Financial District Location Date and Time – Thu Sep 18, 2008 (7:00 PM – 8:30 PM)
One of the hallmarks of Jewish culture and scholarship is an emphasis on commentary and “associative thinking,” a method essential to the creation of the Talmud and thousands of years of Biblical commentary.
Udi Manber, Google’s Israeli Vice President of Engineering
Udi Manber, Google’s Vice President for Engineering and best-selling technology critic Howard Rheingold will join Rabbi Lawrence Kushner in a panel discussion exploring the connections between:
art
technology
Jewish culture
as seen through the new:
social
intellectual
spiritual
implications of the idea of “search.”
This will be followed by a discussion with Dan Schifrin, the Museum’s director of public programs and writer in residence.
Advertisement for the event was also made in the Jewish Weekly.
In the article “Google’s guru of giving“, January 24, 2008, The Financial Express details Larry Brilliant.
Dr. Brilliant led the Internet giant’s philanthropic arm Google.org, where he ruled over a and 40-strong team:
As well as adopting the informal company motto, “Don’t be evil”, the internet search firm’s co-founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, decided to commit Google to engage in serious philanthropy.
Innovative as ever, they created a new sort of philanthropic entity, a division of the company that could pursue its mission through both for-profit investing and making charitable grants.
This, they hoped, would one day:
“Eclipse Google itself in overall world impact by ambitiously applying innovation and significant resources to the largest of the world’s problems.”
It would be funded with 1% of the firm’s equity, annual profits and employees’ time.
In February 2006, after a lengthy search, Dr Brilliant was appointed to run Google.org.
Media reports focused on the old hippy’s colorful past, not least his spell as a doctor with the Grateful Dead, a legendary 1960s rock band.
What attracted his new employers was his unique record of success both in running Silicon Valley tech firms and in implementing large-scale solutions to big social problems.
[…]
Though he has taken nearly two years to produce a strategy for Google.org, Dr Brilliant has not been taking things easy.
He may have added a taste for Hindu meditation to his Detroit Jewish roots (he once shared a guru with Apple’s boss, Steve Jobs), but he is a driven man, travelling widely and seeking advice from hundreds of people, pushing himself harder than friends say is wise for a sexagenarian.
When he arrived at Google.org he found extraordinarily high expectations, a blank sheet of paper to fill with a strategy, and “microscopic attention” from outside on what it was doing.
During his time as Google’s philanthropic boss Brilliant combined his work with his dedication for Jews and Judaism.
For instance, Brilliant, as Executive Director of Google.org, appeared as a speaker at the Jewish Community Federation in San Fransisco’s Business Leadership Council Breakfast meeting.
February 28, 2007.
According to the organization’s homepage
Larry Brilliant, Executive Director of Google.org, will share his vision for “Healing a Broken World” with attendees at the second annual Business Leadership Council Breakfast on Wednesday, February 28, 2007.
[…]
Dr. Larry Brilliant is the Executive Director of Google.org, the umbrella organization which includes the Google Foundation as well as partnerships with and contributions to for-profit and nonprofit entities.
[…]
Sponsored by AT&T and Levisohn Venture Partners, this special BLC event is open to all donors who contribute $1,000 or more to the 2007 San Francisco-based Jewish Community Federation’s Annual Campaign. Donors under the age of 40 who contribute $500 are also welcome.
The Jewish Community Federation is the central organization for fundraising, planning, outreach and leadership development for Jewish communities in San Francisco, the Peninsula, and Marin and Sonoma counties.
In fiscal year 2006, the Federation’s annual campaign allocated $18.3 million to some 60 agencies providing social services, educational and cultural programs in the Bay Area, in the U.S., Israel and elsewhere in the world.
In fiscal year 2006, the Federation’s Endowment Fund, with assets exceeding $1.8 billion, provided more than $203 million for a variety of grants, seed projects and emergency needs.
For more information, call 415.777.0411 or visit www.sfjcf.org.
So here we can see how the Google boss fraternizes with an organization that is interrelated to the Zionist state.
In April 2009 Larry Brilliant, after 3 years at Google, said he was parting ways with the Internet giant, leaving Google.org to join a new organization set up by former eBay President and Jew, Jeff Skoll.
Jeffrey Stuart Skoll, OC (born January 16, 1965) is a Canadian engineer, billionaire internet entrepreneur and film producer. He was the first president of eBay, eventually using the wealth this gave him to become a philanthropist, particularly through the Skoll Foundation, and his media company Participant Media. He founded an investment firm, Capricorn Investment Group, soon after and currently serves as its chairman. Born in Montreal, Quebec, he graduated from University of Toronto in 1987 and left Canada to attend Stanford University’s business school in 1993. Shortly after graduating from business school, he began his career at eBay where he wrote the business plan that the company followed from its emergence as a start-up to a larger company. While at the company, he began the eBay Foundation which was allocated pre-IPO stock now worth $32 million. Once eBay’s second largest stockholder, behind Omidyar, he subsequently cashed out a portion of his company holdings, yielding him around $2 billion. With an estimated net worth of US$4 billion (as of December 2016), Skoll was ranked by Forbes as the 7th wealthiest Canadian and 134th in the United States. Through his film production company, Participant–of which he is founder, owner, and chairman–he has produced numerous critically acclaimed films. His first films Syriana (2005), Good Night, and Good Luck (2005), and North Country (2005), along with the documentary Murderball (2005), accounted for 11 Oscar nominations in 2006. His subsequent films have included An Inconvenient Truth (2006), Fast Food Nation (2006), The World According to Sesame Street (2006), Waiting for “Superman” (2010), Lincoln (2012), and his latest, Spotlight (2015) won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2016.
But Dr Brilliant also said he would remain as an advisor to Google.
Susan Lynne Decker (born November 17, 1962) is an American businesswoman. She was president of Yahoo! Inc in 2007 and 2008, leading the operations of the company while Jerry Yang was chief executive officer. In 2017, Decker co-founded a social networking platform called Raftr.
are invited by the Israeli leadership to Israel, during Israel’s 60th anniversary celebrations:
Facebook, Google founders to attend Jerusalem conference in May by Guy Grimland Ha’aretz Correspondent 01/04/2008
Co-founder of internet giant Google, Sergey Brin, will join Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and Yahoo president Susan Decker at a presidential panel on technology to be held at the Jerusalem International Convention Center May 13-15.
The convention, which was formed at the initiative of President Shimon Peres, will also be attended by a number of Israeli:
political
religious
financial
leaders, as well as academics and cultural figures.
The panel will discuss issues facing technology in today’s age and the future, in particular in regard to how it will affect Israel and the Jewish world.
Former UK prime minister Tony Blair will also take part in the conference.
Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair KG (born 6 May 1953) is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. He served as Leader of the Opposition from 1994 to 1997 and held various shadow cabinet posts from 1987 to 1994. Blair was Member of Parliament (MP) for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007. He is the second-longest-serving prime minister in post-war British history (after Margaret Thatcher) and the longest-serving Labour politician to have held the office. Blair attended the independent school Fettes College, studied law at St John’s College, Oxford, and qualified as a barrister. He became involved in the Labour Party and was elected to the House of Commons in 1983 for the Sedgefield constituency in County Durham. As a backbencher, Blair supported moving the party to the political center of British politics. He was appointed to Neil Kinnock’s shadow cabinet in 1988 and was appointed shadow home secretary by John Smith in 1992. Following Smith’s death in 1994, Blair won a leadership election to succeed him. As leader, Blair began a historic rebranding of the party, which became known as “New Labour”. Blair became the youngest prime minister of the 20th century after winning the 1997 general election, Labour’s largest general election victory in history. During his first term, Blair enacted constitutional reforms and significantly increased public spending on healthcare and education while also introducing controversial market-based reforms in these areas. In addition, Blair saw the introduction of a minimum wage, tuition fees for higher education, constitutional reform such as devolution in Scotland and Wales, an extensive expansion of LGBT rights in the UK, and significant progress in the Northern Ireland peace process with the passing of the landmark Good Friday Agreement. On foreign policy, Blair oversaw British interventions in Kosovo in 1999 and Sierra Leone in 2000, which were generally perceived to be successful. Blair was re-elected in a second landslide in 2001. Three months into his second term, Blair’s premiership was shaped by the 9/11 terrorist attacks, resulting in the start of the war on terror. Blair supported the foreign policy of the George W. Bush administration by ensuring that the British Armed Forces participated in the War in Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban, destroy al-Qaeda, and capture Osama bin Laden. In 2003, Blair supported the invasion of Iraq and had the British Armed Forces participate in the Iraq War, on the erroneous claims that Saddam Hussein’s regime possessed weapons of mass destruction and developed ties with al-Qaeda. Blair was re-elected in 2005, in part thanks to the UK’s strong economic performance, but with a substantially reduced majority, due to the UK’s involvement in the Iraq War. During his third term, Blair pushed for more systemic public sector reform and brokered a settlement to restore power sharing to Northern Ireland. The Afghanistan and Iraq wars continued, and in 2006, Blair announced he would resign within a year. He resigned the party leadership on 24 June 2007 and as prime minister on 27 June, and was succeeded by Gordon Brown, his chancellor. After leaving office, Blair gave up his seat and was appointed special envoy of the Quartet on the Middle East, a diplomatic post he held until 2015. He has been the executive chairman of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change since 2016 and has made occasional political interventions. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II as a Knight Companion of the Garter in 2022. At various points in his premiership, Blair was among both the most popular and most unpopular politicians in British history. As prime minister, he achieved the highest recorded approval ratings during his first few years in office but also one of the lowest ratings during and after the Iraq War.
Bernard Kouchner (born 1 November 1939) is a French politician and doctor. He is the co-founder of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and Médecins du Monde. From 2007 until 2010, he was the French Minister of Foreign and European Affairs in the center-right Fillon government under President Nicolas Sarkozy, although he had been in the past a minister in socialist governments. In 2010, The Jerusalem Post considered Kouchner the 15th most influential Jew in the world. Since 2015 Kouchner is workstream leader for the AMU (Agency for the Modernization of Ukraine), where he contributes his expertise in healthcare.
Henry Alfred Kissinger[a] (May 27, 1923 – November 29, 2023) was an American diplomat, political scientist, geopolitical consultant, and politician who served as the United States secretary of state and national security advisor in the presidential administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford between 1969 and 1977. Born in Germany, Kissinger came to the United States in 1938 as a Jewish refugee fleeing Nazi persecution. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II, and, after the war, was educated at Harvard University, where he excelled academically. He later became a professor of government at the university and earned an international reputation as an expert on nuclear weapons and foreign policy. He frequently acted as a consultant to government agencies, think tanks, and the presidential campaigns of Nelson Rockefeller and Richard Nixon before being appointed national security advisor. Kissinger pioneered the policy of détente with the Soviet Union, orchestrated an opening of relations with China, engaged in “shuttle diplomacy” in the Middle East to end the Yom Kippur War, and negotiated the Paris Peace Accords, which ended American involvement in the Vietnam War. For his role in negotiating the end of the Vietnam War, he was awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize under controversial circumstances. A practitioner of a pragmatic approach to politics called Realpolitik, he has been widely considered by scholars to be an effective secretary of state. Kissinger has also been associated with controversial U.S. policies, including its bombing of Cambodia, involvement in the 1973 Chilean coup d’état, support for Argentina’s military junta in its Dirty War, support for Indonesia in its invasion of East Timor, and support for Pakistan during the Bangladesh Liberation War and Bangladesh genocide. He was accused of war crimes for the civilian death toll of the policies he pursued, his role in facilitating U.S. support for dictatorial regimes, and willful ignorance towards human rights abuses committed by the United States and its allies. After leaving government, Kissinger founded Kissinger Associates, an international geopolitical consulting firm. He authored over a dozen books on diplomatic history and international relations. His advice was sought by American presidents of both political parties.
former prime minister of the Czech Republic Václav Havel
Václav Havel (Czech pronunciation: [ˈvaːtslav ˈɦavɛl] ⓘ; 5 October 1936 – 18 December 2011) was a Czech statesman, author, poet, playwright and dissident. Havel served as the last president of Czechoslovakia from 1989 until 1992, prior to the dissolution of Czechoslovakia on 31 December, before he became the first president of the Czech Republic from 1993 to 2003. He was the first democratically elected president of either country after the fall of communism. As a writer of Czech literature, he is known for his plays, essays and memoirs. His educational opportunities having been limited by his bourgeois background, when freedoms were limited by the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, Havel first rose to prominence as a playwright. In works such as The Garden Party and The Memorandum, Havel used an absurdist style to criticize the Communist system. After participating in the Prague Spring and being blacklisted after the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, he became more politically active and helped found several dissident initiatives, including Charter 77 and the Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Prosecuted. His political activities brought him under the surveillance of the StB secret police, and he spent multiple periods as a political prisoner,[3] the longest of his imprisoned terms being nearly four years, between 1979 and 1983. Havel’s Civic Forum party played a major role in the Velvet Revolution that toppled the Communist system in Czechoslovakia in 1989. He assumed the presidency shortly thereafter and was re-elected in a landslide the following year and after Slovak independence in 1993. Havel was instrumental in dismantling the Warsaw Pact and enlargement of NATO membership eastward. Many of his stances and policies, such as his opposition to Slovak independence, condemnation of the treatment of Sudeten Germans and their mass expulsion from Czechoslovakia after World War II, as well as granting of general amnesty to all those imprisoned under the Communist era, were very controversial domestically. By the end of his presidency, he enjoyed greater popularity abroad than at home. Havel continued his life as a public intellectual after his presidency, launching several initiatives including the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism, the VIZE 97 Foundation, and the Forum 2000 annual conference. Havel’s political philosophy was one of anti-consumerism, humanitarianism, environmentalism, civil activism, and direct democracy. He supported the Czech Green Party from 2004 until his death. He received numerous accolades during his lifetime, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Gandhi Peace Prize, the Philadelphia Liberty Medal, the Order of Canada, the Four Freedoms Award, the Ambassador of Conscience Award, and the Hanno R. Ellenbogen Citizenship Award. The 2012–2013 academic year at the College of Europe was named in his honor. He is considered by some to be one of the most important intellectuals of the 20th century. The international airport in Prague was renamed Václav Havel Airport Prague in 2012.
Eliezer “Elie” Wiesel (/ˈɛli viːˈzɛl/ EL-ee vee-ZEL or /ˈiːlaɪ ˈviːsəl/ EE-ly VEE-səl; Yiddish: אליעזר “אלי” װיזעל, romanized: Eliezer “Eli” Vizel; September 30, 1928 – July 2, 2016) was a Romanian-born American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel laureate, and Holocaust survivor. He authored 57 books, written mostly in French and English, including Night, a work based on his experiences as a Jewish prisoner in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. He was a professor of the humanities at Boston University, which created the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies in his honor. He was involved with Jewish causes and human rights causes and helped establish the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. In his political activities, he also campaigned for victims of oppression in places like South Africa, Nicaragua, Kosovo, and Sudan. He publicly condemned the 1915 Armenian genocide and remained a strong defender of human rights during his lifetime. He was described as “the most important Jew in America” by the Los Angeles Times in 2003. Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. The Norwegian Nobel Committee called him a “messenger to mankind”, stating that through his struggle to come to terms with “his own personal experience of total humiliation and of the utter contempt for humanity shown in Hitler’s death camps”, as well as his “practical work in the cause of peace”, Wiesel delivered a message “of peace, atonement, and human dignity” to humanity. The Nobel Committee also stressed that Wiesel’s commitment originated in the sufferings of the Jewish people but that he expanded it to embrace all repressed peoples and races. He was a founding board member of the New York Human Rights Foundation and remained active in it throughout his life.
Mikheil Saakashvili (Georgian: მიხეილ სააკაშვილი Mikheil Saak’ashvili [ˈmiχeil ˈsaːkʼaʃʷili]; Ukrainian: Міхеіл Саакашвілі [m⁽ʲ⁾ixeˈil sɐːkɐʃˈwil⁽ʲ⁾i], also known as Misha in Georgia; born 21 December 1967) is a Georgian and Ukrainian politician and jurist. He was the third president of Georgia for two consecutive terms from 25 January 2004 to 17 November 2013. From May 2015 until November 2016, Saakashvili was the governor of Ukraine’s Odesa Oblast. He is the founder and former chairman of the United National Movement party. Saakashvili heads the executive committee of Ukraine’s National Reform Council since 7 May 2020.[10] In 2021 he began serving a six-year prison sentence in Georgia on charges of abuse of power and organization of an assault occasioning grievous bodily harm against an opposition lawmaker Valery Gelashvili. Saakashvili entered Georgian politics in 1995. He served as member of parliament and minister of justice under President Eduard Shevardnadze. Saakashvili later moved to opposition, establishing the United National Movement party. In 2003, Saakashvili became a leading opposition figure who accused the government of rigging the 2003 Georgian parliamentary election, spearheading mass protests which saw President Shevardnadze resign from his post in the bloodless Rose Revolution. Saakashvili’s key role in the protests led to him being elected as the President in 2004. He was later reelected as President in 2008. However, his party suffered defeat in the 2012 Georgian parliamentary election, while Saakashvili was barred by the constitution of Georgia from seeking a third term in the 2013 presidential election, which was also won by the opposition candidate. During his tenure as president, Saakashvili oversaw police, military, economic and government reforms. As the new Patrol Police department was established, the entire police force was fired and replaced with new one in an effort to root out corruption. The bureaucratic spendings were decreased as several ministries were abolished to cut the government size. Military budget rose to 9.2% of GDP by 2007 to strengthen the nation’s defense capability. The government pursued a zero-tolerance policy towards crime. Saakashvili appointed Kakha Bendukidze as the Minister of Economy to implement economic liberalization and rapid privatization. Georgia’s economy grew 70% between 2003 and 2013, and per capita income roughly tripled. However, poverty only marginally declined. At the end of Saakashvili’s second term, about a quarter of the population was still living below the absolute poverty rate. Georgia’s ranking in the Corruption Perceptions Index by Transparency International improved dramatically from rank 133 in 2004 to 67 in 2008 and further to 51 in 2012, surpassing several EU countries. The World Bank ranked the country 8th in terms of ease of doing business and named it as the leading economic reformer in the world. The Abkhaz–Georgian and Georgian-Ossetian conflicts continued during Saakashvili’s presidency and saw a major escalation in 2008, which saw Russia officially announcing its support for separatists in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Saakashvili led Georgia through the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, which ended after five days of fighting by a ceasefire agreement negotiated by the French president Nicolas Sarkozy. The war resulted in Georgia losing all of its possessions in the disputed territories. Russia subsequently recognized the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, while Georgia responded with breaking diplomatic relations. During Saakashvili’s tenure, Georgia went through several political crises. In 2007, mass demonstrations erupted demanding resignation of Saakashvili. The protests, which were triggered by detention of Georgian politician Irakli Okruashvili, were violently dispersed by the special forces on 7 November 2007. The largest opposition media Imedi TV was raided by the police and transformed into a pro-government channel. Another wave of protests erupted in 2009. In May 2011, the government again violently responded to the opposition protests staged by Saakashvili’s former ally Nino Burjanadze. Saakashvili was embroiled in a number of scandals, the most important ones relating to the beating of the opposition politician Valery Gelashvili and the murder of Sandro Girgvliani. In September 2012, the leaked video footage of systemic torture and rape in the Georgian prison system came to light during the Gldani prison scandal. Saakashvili was accused of being behind police brutality and the inhuman treatment of inmates. Shortly after the 2013 presidential election, Saakashvili left Georgia. In 2014, the Prosecutor’s Office of Georgia filed criminal charges against Saakashvili. In 2018, the Tbilisi City Court sentenced him in absentia to six years in prison for ordering the beating of Valeri Gelashvili and pardoning in prior agreement the individuals tried for Sandro Girgvliani’s murder Saakashvili continued to manage his party from abroad while accusing the Georgian government of using the legal system as a tool of political retribution. Saakashvili supported Ukraine’s Euromaidan movement and the Revolution of Dignity. On 30 May 2015, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko appointed Saakashvili as Governor of Odesa Oblast. He was also granted Ukrainian citizenship, and due to restrictions on dual nationality under Georgian law, was stripped of his Georgian citizenship. On 7 November 2016, Saakashvili resigned as governor while blaming President Poroshenko personally for enabling corruption in Odesa and in Ukraine overall. Four days later, he announced his goal to create a new political party called Movement of New Forces. On 26 July 2017, Saakashvili (at the time staying in the US) was stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship by Petro Poroshenko and became a stateless person. He reentered Ukraine with a group of supporters through Poland but was arrested in February 2018 and deported. Saakashvili moved to the Netherlands, where he was granted permanent residency. On 29 May 2019, he returned to Ukraine after newly elected President Volodymyr Zelenskyy restored his citizenship. On 1 October 2021, Saakashvili announced via Facebook his return to Georgia after an eight-year absence, on the eve of the local elections. Later on, the same day Prime Minister of Georgia Irakli Garibashvili held a press briefing announcing that Saakashvili was arrested in Tbilisi. According to the investigation, Saakashvili entered the country secretly, hiding in a semi-trailer truck loaded with milk products. He illegally crossed the state border of Georgia, bypassing the customs control. He was placed in the No. 12 penitentiary facility in Rustavi. President of Georgia Salome Zourabichvili stated that she would “never” pardon Saakashvili. He has been transferred to hospital numerous times due to his health condition and since May 2022 he is being treated in a civilian clinic in Tbilisi.
The Israel News Agency also writes:
In attendance, in addition to many national presidents and heads of state will be dignitaries from the worlds of business and academia.
Among them are Sergey Brin, founder of Google and Susan Decker of Yahoo. Dr. Miriam
Miriam Adelson (née Farbstein; born 10 October 1945) is an American and Israeli physician, philanthropist and political donor. She was married to Sheldon Adelson from 1991 until his death in 2021. After his death, she became the owner of the Las Vegas Sands and is estimated to be the fifth richest woman in America, with a net worth of $32.8 billion, as of November 2023. She is the richest Israeli in the world, and the 42nd richest person in the world according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, while Forbes places her as the 44th. She is the current publisher of the newspaper Israel Hayom and the majority owner of the Dallas Mavericks. Miriam and Sheldon Adelson were philanthropists, primarily through the Adelson Foundation, and political megadonors to the Republican Party. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Donald Trump in 2018. Adelson and her husband were significant donors for both Trump campaigns, his presidential inauguration, and his defense fund against the Mueller investigation into Russian interference.
Sheldon Gary Adelson (/ˈædəlsən/ AD-əl-sən; August 4, 1933 – January 11, 2021) was an American businessman, investor, political donor, and philanthropist. He was the founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Las Vegas Sands Corporation, which owns the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, and the parent company of Venetian Macao Limited, which operated The Venetian Las Vegas and the Sands Expo and Convention Center before selling the properties in early 2022.[6] He owned the Israeli daily newspaper Israel Hayom, the Israeli weekly newspaper Makor Rishon, and the American daily newspaper the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Adelson created the Adelson Foundation in 2007, a private charity focusing on healthcare and support of Israel and the Jewish people. He was a major contributor to Republican Party candidates and was often dubbed a “kingmaker” due to the size and frequency of his donations. He and his wife Miriam Adelson were Donald Trump’s largest donors, providing the largest donation to Trump’s 2016 campaign, his presidential inauguration, his defense fund against the Mueller investigation into Russian interference, and the 2020 campaign. He was also a major backer of Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In 2020, Forbes listed his net worth as US$29.8 billion.
will be serving as the honorary chairpersons for the Israel 60th Birthday Presidential Conference which has enthusiastically attracted the attention of Jewish leaders and others worldwide.
And B’nai B rith Magazine are also happy with the representation:
I was particularly impressed with the large numbers of young people in attendance, representing Israeli universities and aliyah organizations like MASA.
At the conclusion of the panel discussion moderated by Israeli entrepreneur Yossi Vardi
Joseph “Yossi” Vardi (Hebrew: יוסי ורדי, born September 2, 1942) is an Israeli entrepreneur and investor. He is one of Israel’s first high-tech entrepreneurs, one of the pioneers of the Israeli internet industry. For over 47 years, he has founded and helped to build over 85 high-tech companies in a variety of fields, among them software, energy, Internet, mobile, electro-optics and water technology.
and featuring, among others, Brin, the co-founder of Google; Susan Decker of Yahoo; and Rupert Murdoch (not Jewish),
Keith Rupert Murdoch AC KCSG (/ˈmɜːrdɒk/ MUR-dok; born 11 March 1931) is an Australian-born American business magnate, investor, and media proprietor. Through his company News Corp, he is the owner of hundreds of local, national, and international publishing outlets around the world, including in the UK (The Sun and The Times), in Australia (The Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun, and The Australian), in the US (The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post), book publisher HarperCollins, and the television broadcasting channels Sky News Australia and Fox News (through the Fox Corporation). He was also the owner of Sky (until 2018), 21st Century Fox (until 2019), and the now-defunct News of the World. With a net worth of US$21.7 billion as of 2 March 2022, Murdoch is the 31st richest person in the United States and the 71st richest in the world according to Forbes magazine. After his father’s death in 1952, Murdoch took over the running of The News, a small Adelaide newspaper owned by his father. In the 1950s and 1960s, Murdoch acquired a number of newspapers in Australia and New Zealand before expanding into the United Kingdom in 1969, taking over the News of the World, followed closely by The Sun. In 1974, Murdoch moved to New York City, to expand into the US market; however, he retained interests in Australia and the UK. In 1981, Murdoch bought The Times, his first British broadsheet, and, in 1985, became a naturalized US citizen, giving up his Australian citizenship, to satisfy the legal requirement for US television network ownership. In 1986, keen to adopt newer electronic publishing technologies, Murdoch consolidated his UK printing operations in London, causing bitter industrial disputes. His holding company News Corporation acquired Twentieth Century Fox (1985), HarperCollins (1989),[6] and The Wall Street Journal (2007). Murdoch formed the British broadcaster BSkyB in 1990 and, during the 1990s, expanded into Asian networks and South American television. By 2000, Murdoch’s News Corporation owned more than 800 companies in more than 50 countries, with a net worth of more than $5 billion. In July 2011, Murdoch faced allegations that his companies, including the News of the World, owned by News Corporation, had been regularly hacking the phones of celebrities, royalty, and public citizens. Murdoch faced police and government investigations into bribery and corruption by the British government and FBI investigations in the US.[8][9] On 21 July 2012, Murdoch resigned as a director of News International. In September 2023, Murdoch announced he would be stepping down as chairman of Fox Corp. and News Corp. Many of Murdoch’s papers and television channels have been accused of biased and misleading coverage to support his business interests and political allies, and some have credited his influence with major political developments in the UK, US, and Australia.
several dozen young adults crowded on stage to meet the speakers – and more than one business card was exchanged.
Google’s Sergey Brin at Western Wall, Jerusalem
We write more on the Zionists attending this conference in our section on Yahoo!.
Google’s business cooperation with Israel
Ha’aretz online edition 15/05/2008, writes:
Google co-founder lauds Israeli innovation in tech, environment by Lior Kodner Haaretz Correspondent and Haaretz Service
Google co-founder Sergey Brin on Thursday lauded Israeli innovations in technology and environmental efforts, saying Israel,
“Takes our climate challenges very seriously.”
Brin, visiting as a delegate to President Shimon Peres’ Presidential Conference, told Haaretz that these challenges have,
“Great geopolitical ramifications on this country, in addition to environmental ones.”
He noted that Israel’s leading efforts in the field of sustainable energy, saying:
“Obviously in Israel they need to innovate with water and things like that.
I was really intrigued to see drip irrigation.
I just realized that came out of Israel.”
Brin gave particular attention to Israel’s work in environmentally friendly transportation.
A prototype of the world’s first fully electric car was demonstrated for the first time on Sunday in Tel Aviv, by Israeli entrepreneur Shai Agassi.
Shai Agassi (Hebrew: שי אגסי, born April 19, 1968) is an Israeli entrepreneur and he was recognized for his involvement in the electric vehicle industry. He is the founder and former CEO of Better Place, which had developed a model and infrastructure for employing electric cars as an alternative to fossil fuel technology. The company went bankrupt in 2013, after Agassi spent over $850 million on publicity while deploying fewer than 1000 cars. Prior to founding Better Place, Agassi was President of the Products and Technology Group (PTG) at SAP AG until 2007. In 2003, at the age of 36, Agassi was named one of the top 20 ‘Global Influentials for 2003’ by CNN-Time magazine. In 2008, he was named in one of TIME’s “Heroes of the Environment”. In 2009, Agassi was included in TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people list.[8] In 2010, Foreign Policy magazine included Agassi on its annual list of the 100 most influential global thinkers. Throughout the 90s, Agassi started and successfully sold a number of technology startups, in the areas of enterprise software, internet technology, multimedia and small business administration. Agassi has a bachelor’s degree in computer science and has been awarded a large number of patents in software, automotive and energy infrastructure.
Developers hope the car will revolutionize transportation in the country and serve as a pilot for the rest of the world.
If all goes as planned, Israel will be the first country to have electric cars on its highways in large numbers in the next few years.
Brin also spoke about new projects ongoing at Google, including the “huge range of efforts” being made on mobile technology and the patience needed in the field.
“I think it takes a while to develop the technology, to develop, to educate advertisers about it,” he said.
“We have to bootstrap everything. our search based targeted ads took a number of yearsand people are expecting overnight that you work a miracle. It is a combination of technology, advertising networks, bad user expectations.
All those things have to come together and that takes time,” he said.
During his visit, Brin toured Jewish sites, including the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin, attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, announced the establishment of an R&D center in Israel.
Ha’aretz 30/01/2006 writes:
Google founder plans R&D center in Israel by Guy Rolnik
DAVOS, Switzerland
Google
“is in the process of establishing an R&D center in Israel,”
Sergey Brin, a founder of the Internet search titan, told Haaretz during the World Economic Forum here.
Brin and co-founder Larry Page were among the more visible participants at the economic conference.
Both have a solid connection with Israeli entrepreneurs in the Internet field.
A Google executive told Haaretz that the company had recently recruited a large number of:
academics
engineers
mathematicians
statisticians
and economists for additional development of the company’s search engine algorithm and its smart ad systems on the Net.
There is still a shortage of quality personnel for developing analytic tools and predicting the massive volume of information accumulated on the search engine.
[…]
Last summer, Google decided to establish a local marketing and sales branch in Israel to bolster its advertising revenues in the Israel market.
Google hired Meir Brand to head its Israel office, choosing a former Microsoft executive just as it had done in China.
[…]
Ha’aretz interview with Sergey Brin in Israel, May 29, 2008:
[…]
This is Brin’s third visit to Israel.
The first time was with his parents, when he was still a teenager, and the second was in September 2003, when Google was still a relatively small, privately owned company.
Last week, however, Brin arrived here as the head of one of the largest and most influential companies in the world.
How has Israel changed since your previous visits?
“It’s pretty impressive just to see how the tech industry has continued to grow.
The development, kind of just looking at the city of Tel Aviv.
I mean, there are a bunch of buildings.
Maybe I’m crazy, but I feel like there are lots of buildings that weren’t here when I was here last.
And I’ve just seen some of the companies and their state of development, the levels developed here – it’s just incredible.”
[…]
Did your family ever consider immigrating to Israel?
“Boy, I need to ask them that. In fact, my great-grandmother lived in the U.S. for a period of time, so we did have some ties to the U.S. I think my dad actually had a colleague who had moved to the U.S., who had given him greater certainty [with respect to] the job market.
And those were the big factors.
But I can ask.
My parents are here with me – I mean, not in the office, but in Israel.”
In hindsight, considering what you see now in the U.S. and Israel, if your parents had come here, do you think we would have Google today?
[Laughs]
“Look, I’ve been very lucky in my life, and I’m sure there’ve been lots of random circumstances that have contributed to that, so I probably would not be the first to change it.
But looking at the kinds of innovation and development that I see here now, I certainly think it’s possible to enjoy great success coming to Israel.”
Google’s cooperation with Jewish censors
Below are some articles illustrating how Google assists Jewish Internet censorship.
The articles show that Google follows dictates from ADL and the Zionist Organization of America, that Google “robots” censor pro-Palestinian bloggers, and that sites like Radio Islam are censored.
ADL Praises Google for Responding to Concerns About Rankings of Hate Sites includes letter from Google Jew Sergey Brin and Google’s explanation for the word “Jew”.
How the Zionist Organization of America shapes Google’s policies ZOA complains about “anti-Semitism” …and Google adjusts promptly.
ZOA Convinces Google to Change the Earth the Zionist Organization of America changes the way we view the World through Google Earth.
Google’s war on pro-Palestinian bloggers Google’s “robots” unmasked, Is Google ethnic cleansing the Internet?
Uruknet cut off from Google News again! – external link information on how an Iraq war information site is being censored by Google.
Jew Gotta’ Friend at Google – what is “hate speech“?
Google News stops indexing what it calls “hate speech”.
“Google This”! – on Google’s Israel rush by Philip Jones, Rense.com
Google Fascists?
looking into the worrying implications of Google’s near monopoly of web search engines
Censorship of the Internet – study reveals Google censorship of Radio Islam’s sites by Germar Rudolf
Here we will give attention to one extra article to show how the Zionist organization ADL cooperates with Google.
In 2007 a conference was held in Israel with ADL, the International Network Against Cyberhate, and Google’s Israel Director Meir Brand.
Ha’aretz, 12/11/2007, writes:
Organizers of the conference representing the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish group that counters anti-Semitism, brought examples of anti-Jewish hate material freely available on the Internet, and participants called for more action to stop it.
[…]
He [Meir Brand] said Google removes results from its search index only when required to by law, for example, when copyright infringement is an issue.
In Germany and Austria, he said, Google removes Nazi content, which is against the law there.
Recognizing the problem, however, Google has instituted a warning system for hate entries, taking viewers to a page warning that some of the search results may be offensive, and noting that opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect Google’s views.
Just as a small reminder ADL’s Director Abraham Foxman was one of many top Jewish dignitaries in Israel celebrating Israel’s 60th Anniversary back in 2008.
Abraham Henry Foxman (born May 1, 1940) is an American lawyer and activist. He served as the national director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) from 1987 to 2015 and is currently the League’s national director emeritus. From 2016 to 2021 he served as vice chair of the board of trustees at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City in order to lead its efforts on antisemitism.
Appendix
Excerpts from the article “Sergey Brin: the Google revolutionary“, by Mark Malseed, The Jewish Chronicle, April 6, 2007:
“This intensity emerges during weekly strategy meetings, where he and Page – who share the title of Google president – command the last word on approving new products, reviewing new hires and funding long-term research.
Brin also holds sway over the unscientific but all-important realms of people, policy and politics.”
“Brin’s Jewish sensibility is, likewise, grounded in his family’s experience of life in the Soviet Union, and their eventual emigration to the United States.
“I do somewhat feel like a minority,” he says.
“Being Jewish, especially in Russia, is one aspect of that.
Then, being an immigrant in the US.
And then, since I was significantly ahead in math in school, being the youngest one in a class.
I never felt like a part of the majority.
So, I think that is part of the Jewish heritage in a way.””
“As a young boy, though, he had only a vague awareness of why his family wanted to leave their native Russia.
He picked up the ugly details of the antisemitism they faced bit by bit years later, he says.
Nevertheless, he sensed, early on, all of the things that he wasn’t – he wasn’t Russian; he wasn’t welcome in his own country; he wasn’t going to get a fair shake in advancing through its schools.
Further complicating his understanding of his Jewish identity was the fact that, under the atheist Soviet regime, there were few religious or cultural models of what being Jewish was.
The negatives were all he had.”
“For many Soviet Jews, exit visas never came. But, in May 1979, the Brins were granted papers to leave the USSR.
“We hoped it would happen,” Genia says,
“But we were completely surprised by how quickly it did.”
The timing was fortuitous – they were among the last Jews allowed to leave until the Gorbachev era.
Sergey Brin, who turned six that summer, remembers what followed as simply unsettling” – literally so.
“We were in different places from day to day,”
he says.
The journey was a blur.
First Vienna, where the family was met by representatives of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, which helped thousands of Eastern European Jews establish new lives in the West.
Then, on to the suburbs of Paris, where Michael’s “unofficial” Jewish PhD adviser, Anatole Katok, had arranged a temporary research position for him.”
Anatoly Borisovich Katok (Russian: Анатолий Борисович Каток; August 9, 1944 – April 30, 2018) was an American mathematician with Russian-Jewish origins. Katok was the director of the Center for Dynamics and Geometry at the Pennsylvania State University. His field of research was the theory of dynamical systems.
“One thing the Brins shared with thousands of other families emigrating to the West from the Soviet Union was the discovery that, suddenly, they were free to be Jews.”
“Russian Jews lacked the vocabulary to even articulate what they were feeling,”
says Lenny Gusel, the founder of a San Francisco-based network of Russian-Jewish immigrants.
“They were considered Jews back home.
Here, they were considered Russians.
Many longed just to assimilate as Americans.”
Gusel’s group, which he calls the “79ers”, after the peak year of immigration in the 1970s, and its New York cousin, RJeneration, have attracted hundreds of 20- and 30-something immigrants who grapple with their Jewish identity.
“Sergey is the absolute emblem of our group, the number one Russian-Jewish immigrant success story,” he says.
The Brins were no different from their fellow immigrants in that being Jewish was an ethnic, not a religious, experience.
“We felt our Jewishness in different ways, not by keeping kosher or going to synagogue.
It is genetic,”
explains Sergey’s father Michael.
“We were not very religious.
My wife doesn’t eat on Yom Kippur; I do.”
Genia interjects:
“We always have a Passover dinner.
We have a Seder.
I have the recipe for gefilte fish from my grandmother.”
Religious or not, on arriving in the suburbs of Washington, the Brins were adopted by a synagogue, Mishkan Torah of Greenbelt, Maryland, which helped them acquire furnishings for their home.
“We didn’t need that much, but we saw how much the community helped other families,”
Genia says.
Sergey attended Hebrew school at Mishkan Torah for almost three years but hated the language instruction – and everything else, too.
“He was teased there by other kids, and he begged us not to send him anymore,”
his other remembers.
“Eventually, it worked.”
The Conservative congregation turned out to be too religious for the Brins and they drifted.
When a three-week trip to Israel awakened 11- year-old Sergey’s interest in all things Jewish, the family inquired at another synagogue about restarting studies to prepare for a Bar mitzvah.
But the rabbi said it would take more than a year to catch up and Sergey abandoned the pursuit.
If there was one Jewish value the Brin family upheld without reservation, Michael says, it was scholarship.
Sergey Brin
“What came next is Google legend.
In the spring of 1995, Sergey met an opinionated computer- science student from the University of Michigan named Larry Page.
They argued over the course of two days, each finding the other cocky and obnoxious.
They also formed an instant bond, relishing the intellectual combat.
Like Sergey, Larry is the son of high-powered intellects steeped in computer science.
The two young graduate students also share a Jewish background.
Larry’s maternal grandfather made aliyah, and his mother was raised Jewish.
Larry, however, brought up in the mold of his father, a computer-science professor whose religion was technology, does not readily identify as a Jew.
He, too, never had a Bar mitzvah.
Larry and Sergey soon began working on ways to harness information on the web, spending so much time together that they took on a joint identity, Larry and Sergey.
“Their venture quickly bore fruit. After viewing a quick demo, Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim (himself a Jewish immigrant from Germany) wrote a $100,000 cheque to “Google, Inc”.”
“They are without a doubt two of the most eligible bachelors on Google Earth, but both are reported to be in serious relationships – Sergey is reportedly engaged to Anne Wojcicki, a healthcare investor and the sister of Google executive Susan Wojcicki, who owned the garage where Google got started.
In a 2001 interview, Genia said she hoped Sergey would find
“Somebody exciting who could be really interesting to him… [who] had a sense of humor that could match his”.
As one might expect, she also prefers that Sergey marry a Jewish girl.
“I hope that he would keep it in mind,” she confided.”
“The Ten Commandments it is not, but Google does operate with a moral code of sorts.
“Don’t be evil” is the maxim supposed to guide behavior at all levels of the company.
When pressed for clarification, Google chief executive officer Eric Schmidt has famously said:
“Evil is whatever Sergey says is evil.”
One malevolent practice, in Google’s view, is tampering with or otherwise censoring the list of results produced by a Google search.
An early test of the Google founders’ commitment to providing unfiltered information struck very close to home.
The antisemitic website Jew Watch appeared prominently in Google results for searches on the term “Jew”, prompting Jewish groups to demand that Google remove the site from the top of its listings.
Google refused.
Sergey said at the time:
“I certainly am very offended by the site, but the objectivity of our rankings is one of our very important principles.”
As a compromise, Google displays a warning at the top of questionable pages.”
“Viewed against the backdrop of Sergey’s distaste for authority, the decision to cave in to China’s totalitarian leadership seems out of character.
Sergey’s public comments on the matter have evolved to reflect this contradiction.
While defending the decision at first, he later acknowledged that Google had “compromised” its principles.
“Perhaps now the principled approach makes more sense,” he has said, but adding:
“It’s not where we chose to go right now.”
Does a company founded by two Jews, no matter how assimilated, necessarily retain some defining Jewish characteristics?
The Google masterminds’ penchant for pushing boundaries – without asking permission – might as well be called chutzpah.
However you label it, it is an attitude that runs deeply through Google and may help explain why the company is embroiled in lawsuits over many of its new projects: the aggressive scanning of library books it does not own; display of copyrighted material; and copyright issues connected to its acquisition of YouTube, the online video site whose popularity rests in part on the availability of pirated television and movie clips.
Google’s first employee and several other early hires were Jewish and, when the initial winter-holiday season rolled around, a menorah rather than a Christmas tree graced the lobby. Google’s former chef, Charlie Ayers, cooked up:
latkes
brisket
tzimmes
and matzah-ball soup for Chanukah meals and turned the Passover Seder into a Google tradition.
Charles David Ayers, Jr. (born July 5, 1966) is an American chef, cookbook author, and restaurateur. He is the former executive chef for Google, from 1999 until 2006. His work there was widely publicized in the media, and David Vise’s corporate history The Google Story contains an entire chapter about him called “Charlie’s Place.” By the time he left Google in 2006, Ayers and his team of five chefs and 150 employees were serving 4,000 daily lunches and dinners in 10 cafes across the company’s headquarters campus in Mountain View, California.
To some, Google’s emphasis on academic achievement – hiring only the best and the brightest and employing hundreds of PhDs – could be considered Jewish.
So, perhaps, could
“Don’t be evil”.
With its hint of tikkun olam, the Kabbalistic concept of:
“repairing the world”
it reflects the company’s commitment to aggressive philanthropy.
Nevertheless, he and his parents do support a few charities.
“There are people who helped me and my family out. I do feel responsible to those organizations,” he says.
One of them is Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the group that helped the Brins come to the United States.
Genia serves on its board and heads its project to create a digital record of Jewish-immigrant archives.
Has Sergey been a target of antisemitism since he left the Soviet Union?
“I’ve experienced it,” he says.
“Usually, it is fairly subtle.
People are on about all the media companies being run by Jewish executives, with the implication of a conspiracy…
I think I’m fortunate that it doesn’t really affect me personally, but there are hints of it all around.
That’s why I think it is worth noting.”
Several years ago, Sergey and Larry visited a school for gifted math students near Tel Aviv.
When they took to the stage, the audience roared, as if they were rock stars.
Every student there, many of them, like Sergey, immigrants, from the former Soviet Union, knew of Google.
Sergey began, to the crowd’s delight, with a few words in Russian, which he still speaks at home with his parents.
“I have standard Russian-Jewish parents,”
he then continued in English.
“My dad is a math professor.
They have a certain attitude about studies.
And I think I can relate that here, because I was told that your school recently got seven out of the top 10 places in a math competition throughout all Israel.”
The students applauded their achievement and the recognition from Sergey, unaware that he was setting up a joke.
“What I have to say,”
he continued,
“Is in the words of my father: ‘What about the other three?'”
The students laughed.
They knew where he was coming from.
That Sergey has parlayed his skills into unimaginable business success does not mean those “standard Russian-Jewish parents” are ready to let him off the academic hook.”
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