We Don’t Support Israeli Cybersecurity Here at Home!
July 18, 2025
Hello, my name is Allison Gunderson and I am a member of the MN Anti-War Committee. I’m also a new member of the WAMM Palestine Solidarity Committee.
I want to remind everyone that the MN state board of investments, which is Governor Walz, Steve Simon, Julie Blaha, and Keith Ellison, are still investing $5.4 billion dollars of MN Money into Israel and Israeli companies. The MN Anti-War Committee has been campaigning to get the state board of investments to divest all it’s investments into Israeli companies and companies complicit in the genocide like Caterpillar whose bull dozers are used to demolish Palestinian homes, even with them inside it. Or like Airbnb, who have listings available in occupied territory. Shame! As Minnesotans, I know we don’t want our money to be directly invested in this genocide!
But it doesn’t even end there, in addition to this heinous use of MN money, we now know St. Paul has a contract with the Israeli CyberSecurity company, Waterfall. Waterfall, as other speakers have mentioned, is providing cyber security for the St. Paul Regional Water Services departments computer system. The contract is up in October, and I don’t know about you all but I know I don’t want St. Paul or our Water supply in a contract with a company who is directly complicit in offensive cyber tactics for the Israeli Military. I don’t want a company who does offensive cyber security for the IDF to have access to computer systems that hold data on water customers throughout St. Paul and the 13 other surrounding suburbs that receive these services. When we hear “offensive cyber tactics” I want you all to think about war crimes such as the Israeli pager attacks from Sept. 2024 where thousands of pagers went off simultaneously across Lebanon and Syria. These pager bombs killed at least 32 people and maimed and injured 3,250 others. This is what Offensive Cyber Security is involved in. It is also used to surveil, locate, and detain Palestinians, and journalists, activists. I don’t want St. Paul to have a contract with a company whose owner says these types of offensive cyber activities are “Really fun stuff.”
I encourage you all to call the board of water commissioners to tell them to not renew the contract in October. We have more info on these flyers we are passing around and if you’re looking to get more involved directly come to a WAMM meeting or an AWC meeting and start organizing to get MN to divest from apartheid Israel! These are incredibly tangible actions we can take as Minnesotans to delegitimize the Apartheid state of Israel. Next time someone tells you they don’t care because Palestine isn’t a local issue, you can tell them about waterfall security or the MN SBI.
Not another nickel, not another dime, no more money for Israel’s crimes!