Only 1.4% of Arab salaried employees work in high-tech industries, compared to 12.6% of Jewish salaried employees, according to a discussion held earlier this month in the Knesset's Science and Technology Committee.
According to Elad De Malach of the Bank of Israel’s Research Division and Yosef Masharawi, institutional coordinator for community relations with the Arab sector at Tel Aviv University, those disparities are due to educational disparities starting as early as preschool.
Yosef Jabarin from Givat Haviva pointed out that many Arab schools do not offer majors in computer science, engineering, and technology. Jabarin also noted the cultural barrier, as most colleges and universities offering technical degrees are geographically distant from Arab villages and cities. Israeli campuses, composed mainly of Jews, feel culturally foreign to young Arab students. Instruction is conducted in Hebrew, which is a second or third language for Arab students, and one in which they do not have sufficient proficiency.
De Malach said that the trend is slowly heading in the right direction. "We clearly see that change within the Arab community is slow and very moderate compared to the Jewish community," he said. "Even within the Arab community, we see gaps between Druze, Christian Arabs, and Muslim Arabs. Between 2012 and 2024, the number of Arab salaried employees in high-tech has quadrupled. We are seeing early signs of a positive growth trend."
"About half a million people are employed in high-tech jobs in Israel, of whom 5,164 are women and 14,148 are men from the Arab community," Roi Herzog, head of high tech employment at the Ministry of Labor, said. "The numbers are indeed low, but they are on the rise compared to previous years. The Ministry of Labor aims to reach about 14,000 Arab women employed in high-tech within five years."
Some organizations are working to promote high tech work within the Arab sector, like Samana, a nonprofit that trains Bedouin women to work in the sector. Bushra Mazarib, CEO of Samana, criticized the government's budget cuts.
"Unfortunately, Arabs from the north cannot afford to pay for this training,” Mazarib said. “Without the budget, we have no way to train them, and it is an expensive training program."
This article was translated from Hebrew by Matthew Levy.
