How EU helped an Israeli spy chief build a lucrative career

Nadav Zafrir, an Israeli spy who is now a tech guru. (Steve Jennings / Wikimedia Commons)

Snooping on Palestinians is a springboard to a lucrative career.

Nadav Zafrir – a guru in Tel Aviv’s tech scene – offers a textbook example of how spies can make a killing.

Zafrir has gone from commanding Unit 8200 – an elite division in Israel’s military focused on electronic espionage – to leading Check Point, a big success story in the business known as cybersecurity.

One element of his rise which has received scant attention is that he has been helped along the way by the European Union.

In 2020, the Brussels bureaucracy issued a research grant worth more than $2.5 million to Illusive Networks, a firm then chaired by Zafrir. Illusive Networks had developed what it called a “solution that allows early detection of cyber attacks” and the grant was explicitly aimed at enabling the firm to “expand into the EU market.”

As “ethics checks” for EU-funded research projects involve little more than box-ticking, it is a safe bet that Brussels officials did not raise objections to Unit 8200’s activities before approving the grant.

The sinister nature of those activities was summarized in a 2014 letter signed by a few dozen of its veterans.

“The Palestinian population under military rule is completely exposed to espionage and surveillance by Israeli intelligence,” the letter reads. “While there are severe limitations on the surveillance of Israeli citizens, the Palestinians are not afforded this protection.”

A state which discriminates based on race or ethnicity is by definition an apartheid state. Although the 2014 letter did not use the word “apartheid,” the practices it described certainly fit the definition of apartheid.

Those practices did not materialize overnight. As Nadav Zafrir was head of Unit 8200 from 2009 to 2013, he had definitely practiced apartheid – a crime against humanity, according to the International Criminal Court.

By issuing a research grant to his firm, the EU was rewarding a spy chief who had served an apartheid system.

Ireland’s dereliction of duty

Profiles of Zafrir in the mainstream press do not call out his crimes. Rather, they celebrate how he has an “X factor” and how he has been offered a “compensation” package worth more than $15 million for 2025.

Since he joined Check Point as CEO last year – a time when his old buddies in the Israeli military were busy inflicting a genocide on Gaza – he has garnered numerous favorable headlines.

Check Point is consolidating its position by either snatching rivals or teaming up with them.

A partnership accord has been inked, for example, between Check Point and another Tel Aviv firm Wiz. “Check Point’s cloud network security tools will be merged into Wiz’s cloud security platform,” The Times of Israel informed its readers in February.

Technology reporters may get excited by what’s happening in the clouds. Back on the ground, activists are raising awareness about Check Point’s inextricable links to Israel’s military.

In Ireland, a protest against Check Point last month grabbed some media attention. It involved a disruption of a promotional event organized by Check Point and featuring a speech from the former rugby international Brian O’Driscoll, who is regarded as a hero to many following that sport.

The group behind the protest – Your Tech = Their Deaths – is rightly sounding the alarm about Irish companies and public authorities which use Check Point’s software.

I contacted the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) in Dublin following reports that it had renewed a contract relating to Check Point technology over the past few weeks. The DPP’s office replied that it “does not comment on any arrangements related to cybersecurity.”

Ireland is a country still grappling with the effects of colonization. Overcoming those effects requires not only the unification of the island but a willingness to stand up for oppressed peoples around the world.

Defending Palestinian rights – through action, not just rhetoric – is surely a moral duty for Ireland. Handing over money to Check Point is a dereliction of that duty.