In our ongoing effort to alienate the left and lower the highbrow, here's another New Left Review piece ($$) by Gadi Algazi on Israeli corporate expansion into the West Bank. An IT company called Matrix has set up (sweat?)shop in the Modi'in Illit settlement where — leaving aside the dispossession of Palestinians caught between the Green Line and Sharon's "Protection Wall" — orthodox Jewish women practice a form of indentured servitude. Money quote:
The state indeed sustains Matrix’s venture in Modi‘in Illit: not only are the workers’ wages subsidized by the government for at least five years, but the colonial project continues to put at the disposal of the developers, contractors and high-tech firms the cheap, stolen land of the local farmers, as well as the public resources, policemen and soldiers necessary to secure it—and a captive and disciplined workforce. A much-publicized feature of Matrix’s ‘offshoring at home’ operation in Modi‘in Illit is the company’s use of ultra-orthodox women’s labour. At the Talpiot software development centre there the rules of Kashruth are observed, and there are separate kitchens for women and men. There is also a ‘pumping room’ for women to nurse their babies—since, while working for Matrix, they are also breeding for Israel. ‘Although many are mothers of six, they miss fewer days of work than a mother of two in Tel Aviv’, an Imagestore project director in Modi‘in Illit told a journalist. ‘These women have no issues. They just work. No smoking or coffee breaks, chatting on the phone, or looking for vacation deals in Turkey. Breaks are only for eating, or pumping breast milk in a special room. Some women can pop home, breast-feed and come back.’
Not sure how I feel about the phrasing of "breeding for Israel," but I mean, come the fuck on: a whole room for pumping breast milk? What's wrong with these demanding chicks? Can't they squirt and code simultaneously? Sheesh! Where's "Think different" strategizing when you really need it?
Actually, haredi hackers are nothing new (the hegemony is another story.) Check out this old Salon article on how the Talmud was the first "hypertext."