Over the last 11 months, a mass protest movement across the United States has brought “divestment” into the lexicon of the U.S. public. While many were surprised that the governmental and educational institutions around them had funds invested in a genocidal foreign occupation, the Boycott-Divest-Sanctions movement has been gaining momentum for years. Inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement, the Palestinian BDS call urges nonviolent pressure on Israel until it complies with international law. In Cleveland, health care workers have been organizing to pressure their hospital systems to recognize the genocide in Gaza, and condemn Israel’s crimes against their profession. However, in Ohio, these institutional connections with Israel are deeper than they seem at first glance.
Following a 1993 visit by then-governor George Voinovich, Ohio has actively fostered a business relationship with Israel. Today, Ohio’s corporate community is so intertwined with the Zionist government that, despite ranking near the bottom in economic growth since 1998, it ranks 12th among U.S. states for exports to Israel. Ohio politicians regularly engage in bipartisan delegations to Israel to explore opportunities for investment and co-location — an arrangement in which an Israeli company establishes a facility in the United States. This practice builds and reinforces relationships between U.S. capitalists and Israeli startups, particularly in the field of biotechnology.
Racist, whitewashing propaganda
The narrative of Israel as a miraculous hub of technology and innovation has been a tool to assert its legitimacy. While this line has been pushed hard since the neoliberal turn of the late 1970s, the history of settler-colonialism and bio-capitalism in Israel has specifically given rise to a thriving hub for the biotech industry. The shiny veneer of innovative medical technology and research is part of the image of superiority that Israel strives to project to the world: a beacon of enlightenment in a hostile land. This plays nicely into their racist, whitewashing propagandist messaging about “making the desert bloom.”
Israel’s biotechnology “miracles” have always been undergirded by illegal and unethical practices that should make any medical professional question their humanity — for instance, reports circulating of organ theft from detained Palestinians and desecrated corpses in the pursuit of medical research. The occupation government has also admitted to harvesting skin from Palestinians murdered by the Israeli military, and using it to stock their skin bank for Israelis. Despite these horrific ethical breaches, Israel proudly promotes medical science and technology in its “start-up nation” propaganda. It boasted almost 500 active biotech firms in 2021, with 300 research groups and 30 academic centers working on bioconvergence R&D. From 2018 to 2022, with the aid of government initiatives and a remarkably permissive regulatory framework, this sector raised over $3 billion.
Israel’s deep ties to Cleveland’s hospitals
The relationships between Israel and Cleveland’s medical and educational institutions include joint research collaborations and educational training pipelines. A 2020 trip to Technion University in Haifa saw Case Western Reserve University’s Cancer Center partnering with multiple institutions to establish research projects and drum up funding from Zionist philanthropists.
University Hospital is also affiliated with Technion, bringing fourth-year medical students to Cleveland to secure rotations at UH sites and facilitate further collaboration between the two institutions. This relationship functions as an exchange program that exposes participants to Zionist ideology.
Cleveland Clinic, the largest private employer in Northeast Ohio, co-founded the Center for Transformative Nanomedicine with Hebrew University, which provided grants for collaboration between researchers from both institutions. The Center was kick-started by a $2 million donation from wealthy Cleveland real estate developer Victor Cohn.
Powerful business, political interests
Organizations and individuals who are part this web of web of collaboration with Israeli institutions have played key roles in the region for decades. This involvement ranges from leaders in the non-profit industrial complex to deep-pocketed investment firms and incubators that facilitate collaboration between the criminal Zionist government and the business community of Cleveland. One well-documented example of this dynamic is BioEnterprise — a business incubator that began as an amorphous biotech accelerator at Case Western Reserve University and ended in a spectacular implosion of scandal and corruption in 2020.
Despite the scandal, key players in that saga can still be found in positions of power all around the city, from nonprofits to municipal government, where they continue to promote a pro-Zionist agenda.
Cracks in the foundation
Taken as a whole, the interconnections between Israeli institutions and Cleveland’s medical and research industry may seem insurmountable, but our vantage point at the vanguard of the struggle illuminates the cracks in the foundation. The rising voice of the popular movement for human rights and institutional transparency is beginning to drown out the decrepit drone of the status quo. Those who have operated with impunity are finally encountering resistance from a mass movement with an organized working class coalition at its helm.
Feature photo: Health care workers in Cleveland march June 5 near the Cleveland Clinic to demand their institutions acknowledge the genocide in Gaza. Liberation photo
