That’s been the theory until now in Israeli policy-making circles – and it’s a theory that’s proved true, at least when it comes to Iran. The regimes in the Sunni Gulf, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt are all deathly afraid of Iran’s Shi’ite tentacles, according to Wikileaks cables that have been published over the past several weeks – to the extent that some of them have even urged the U.S. to either directly attack Iran itself, or to encourage Israel to do so.

Why can’t they all just get along? The bottom line is that the Sunnis are running scared from the Shi’ite Iranians – which, it would appear, would be just another chapter in a history full of strife between the two groups. But after having thoroughly studied the TV broadcasts from the Arab world over the past months, I think I can say that it’s not the Shi’ites the Sunnis fear – it’s the Shi’ite’s fanatical resistance to modernization.

Although “fear of Shi’ism” and “fear of Shi’ite fanaticism” sounds like the same thing, it isn’t. The Egyptians, the Kuwaitis, Abu Dhabians, and Dubai-ites would certainly consider themselves to be as good Muslims as the Iranians; certainly, with a little goodwill, you’d think that the relatively small differences between Shi’ites and Sunnis could be bridged, and a united Muslim front could be established.

But they can’t – and won’t – get together. Iran and the majority of the rest of the Muslim world want two different things. If Iran ever did get control of the Muslim world, the leaders of the western-leaning states in the Gulf, Egypt, and even Jordan would find themselves on the firing line. Not because they’re Sunnis, but because they encourage a western lifestyle, at least to some extent, among their citizens. And, the more western-leaning the country, the more likely it was to speak against Iran, as quoted by American diplomats in the Wikileaks documents. It’s a package deal: The more a Muslim country seeks to modernize the more likely they are to speak out against Iran – and the more open their TV broadcasts.

Unlike in Israel or the U.S., most Arabic-speaking residents of the Middle East are treated to free TV broadcasts, via satellite. Of course, there are cable and DBS pay systems, but unlike many other places, residents of the Middle East can enjoy a rich diet of news, entertainment, movies, and TV series – both in Arabic and English. In fact, there are any number of TV stations, especially in the Gulf states, that could give YES and HOT a run for their money, broadcasting for free the same TV series and movies that Israelis have to pay to watch. The major satellites serving Arabic-speakers – Nilesat, Arabsat, etc. – carry about 600 channels, and each country’s stations have their own “personality” – with a direct correlation between the “modernity” of the broadcasts, the western-leaningness of the country, the fear of Iran by the country’s leaders, and their openness to dealing with Israel.  Here are some examples:

Dubai: Without doubt, the most Western of Middle Eastern states, Dubai is home to the MBC network, the premier free-to-air broadcaster in the region, and perhaps the world. While a private network, the fact that an ostensibly conservative regime like Dubai’s lets MBC broadcast the latest American sitcoms, dramas, and movies, with no censorship whatsoever (even rough language isn’t cut out) makes it clear where the regime stands on the question of how modern Dubai should be.

MBC channels run commercials, many for Western products like Ford cars, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Close-Up toothpaste, and a host of others.  If you turn down the sound, you will have a hard time believing you are watching commercials aimed at residents of a conservative Muslim country; none of the women are wearing veils (although some of the men are dressed in jalabiyas and the like), and there is plenty of physical contact between men and women. Dubai’s leaders have strongly advocated U.S. action in restraining Iran, and it’s “well-known” that Israel and Dubai have pursued relations on an unofficial level for years.

Egypt: Having signed a peace treaty with Israel decades ago, the Egyptians have stuck to the letter, if not the spirit, of that agreement. But despite leaving much to be desired when it comes to our relations with them, Egypt most certainly would prefer Israel’s company over Iran’s.

As the most populous and influential Arab country with a substantial fundamentalist population, Egypt treads a fine line, and comes off a bit more conservative than Dubai on TV. The country has only a couple of English-language free-to-air TV stations (one of them government-sponsored, with another dedicated to, of all things, horror movies!).

The Egyptian government runs the county’s main TV entertainment network, called Nile, which has a mix of comedies, drama, and sports, depending on the channel. Here the actors are dressed a little more conservatively, and the shows appear to be homey-type dramas with original programming (in Dubai, Kuwait, and other more modern places, many of the shows are from Turkey, dubbed in Arabic, and many are rather “racy”) that don’t fit the Nile formula. However, Egypt has several private networks as well, such as Melody Entertainment, which plays MTV-style music videos and Turkish dramas.

Saudi Arabia: You won’t find much on official Saudi Arabian TV, other than live broadcasts of services in the Mecca Masjid and Koran readings. But the largest entertainment network in the Arabic-speaking world, called Rotana, is owned by none other than Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal. A media conglomerate, Rotana broadcasts everything from western movies and TV shows (in cooperation with the News Corporation’s Fox networks, a 9% owner of Rotana) to western music videos, to religious programming. The Saudis, as we noted, were the ones that called for the U.S. to “get Iran.”

I could go on, but you get the idea. When it comes to Iran, Muslim countries like Egypt, Saudia Arabia, Dubai, and others have much in common with Israel – and when it comes to TV, they have much more in common with our western lifestyle than with the Iranian alternative. Who says you can’t learn anything from TV?

Actually, the hype preceding the actual release of the documents seemed to be greater than the sum of the several hundred of 250,000 or so documents that Wikileaks plans on eventually releasing. The first batch was released on its special “Cablegate” website on November 28th. It’s called Cablegate, of course, because the leaked documents are largely cables that were sent from U.S. embassies, consulates, and diplomats around the world to the State Department, via SIPRNet, the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network, a special under-the-radar internet run by the U.S. Defense Department. Not under-the-radar enough, apparently – according to the guy who allegedly handed the documents over to Wikileaks, a U.S. soldier, it was “childishly easy” to get access to the cables (the whole leak story is documented here.

Based on the press reports so far, the Cablegate documents don’t contain any real bombshells; most of them contain information we already kind of knew (of course Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, along with Israel, want to eliminate Iran as a threat, and the U.S. had to bribe countries into taking Guantanamo detainees – why else would they take them?). But of course, things are different when you see them in print or online. On the other hand, we’re only at the beginning of the process – a mere few hundred of the promised 250,000 plus documents have been released so far. It’s possible the Wikileaks people are saving the “juicy” stuff for later.

Whether the initial fears pan out – that the Cablegate documents will cause all manner of international mischief and even endanger the lives of those named (and those suspected of being the ones not named) as sources, the cat is out of the bag, and there’s no chance of stuffing it back in. What does it all mean? Well, the news media (especially the “Chosen” outlets, like the Guardian and the New York Times) will tell you what they think you ought to know. But Cablegate is all about power to the people – and there’s no reason you shouldn’t be making your own decisions on what content is important and what isn’t.

There are several sites on the internet that have begun to try and organize the information that has been released so far, like the Guardian’s blog page, which has an index of which embassy the cables were sent from and when, the subject matter, graphics of where the data relates to, and other interesting information. But not the contents of the cables themselves. The Guardian is one of the papers chosen to disseminate the information, and in what seems to me to be a restriction completely at odds with the spirit – and fact – of Wikileaks’ releasing the data to the public, the Guardian won’t let you download the cables from their site, just information on who sent what to whom, when, and on what subject.

I would suggest downloading your own copy of the archive itself; Wikileaks offers a torrent of the full archive released so far, which you can download using an application that supports Bittorrent downloads. Remember, Wikileaks has only released a few hundred of the promised documents so far, so the archive isn’t all that big – just a few megabytes or so. You can also find alternative copies of this archive on various torrent download sites around the internet, as well as a torrent of a download of the full Wikileaks site itself, which several enterprising folk pulled when Wikileaks reported that its site was getting attacked (just do a search for “Cablegate torrent” and you’ll find plenty of hosts to download the archive from).

I’d suggest going with the latter; the unzipped torrent downloaded directly from the Wikileaks site was pretty bare-bones, and although it is in HTML format, for use with a web browser, my copy was missing an index, or home page file – meaning that I got annoying boxes instead of graphics, and not very pleasant looking pages. The archive of the full site itself I got from a third-party site was much nicer looking. With either version, you can use your operating system’s search engine to narrow down the data you want – Israel, Iran, sex (don’t bother, because it looks like they cut out all the good parts). You can also get updates on the latest releases and other useful information at the Cablegate Facebook page (the comments are quite interesting; not everyone, it appears, believes that Wikileaks is really on the peoples’ side).

Regardless, you will now have the same information the folks at the Guardian and the Times have, and you will be able to read for yourself what the brouhaha is all about. Or will you? It’s possible that the reason the documents are having a much more mellow impact than expected is because they are much more mellow than they are supposed to be. Many of the cables as published by the site contain a disclaimer: “This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.” Huh? I thought this was about no-holds-barred, out in the open, give the people what they want journalism? Did someone “get” to Wikileaks’ publisher Julian Assange? How is it that this guy is actually still walking around after revealing this sensitive data – much less the scandalous (for the U.S. government) information he released earlier this year about Iraq? This sounds like a story that needs to be investigated by a dynamic, gimme the truth no matter how bad it hurts kind of website – like Wikileaks?

As was announced recently, Google suspects China of stealing intellectual property (both from it and from other companies), as well as hacking into the mail accounts of human rights activists. According to Google’s press release, released in an official blog last week, “we have discovered that at least twenty other large companies from a wide range of businesses (besides Google), including the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors,” have been targeted by hack attacks originating in China. Why? “We have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists,” Google says. “These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users’ computers.”

So: Some sites were hacked and hackers managed to get some malware onto the computers of “prime targets.” That is the sum of Google’s charges against China, and the reason the company has decided “that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.”

The reaction to this (possible) decision to shut down China’s Google operations has been much more mixed than you might imagine. On the one hand, even constant Google critics like the Electronic Freedom Foundation have praised Google for its stance (although it did remind readers that it Google originally agreed to Chinese censorship when it began operations in the country in 2006). On the other hand, there are plenty of contrarian blogger and talkback opinions posted on the thousands of articles that have appeared on this subject in the past week. Opinions have ranged from comments like “Google just doesn’t understand China’s culture,” to “this is no different than what goes on in many countries, where hacking and phishing are daily occurrences.”

China evokes strong emotions among many Westerners, who fear what many still refer to as the “red menace,” because of its Communism, its lack of human rights, and its industrial fecundity. While many (mostly younger) Chinese bemoan the dictatorship that still controls the country, many older residents are thankful for the material benefits the “Chinese way” has bestowed upon them, especially in the past decade. It may be a dictatorship – on the net and off -  say China-lovers, but at least the country has done much to raise the standard of living of many of its citizens.

I certainly do not approve of China’s policies on human rights – all people should be free to surf and connect to anything they want, unless they make a personal decision to filter their own access willingly, imho. But I bring the above by way of contrast – to the internet policies of countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and even Jordan. Google not only does not protest the censorship and invasive net practices of Arab governments – it even cooperates with them. And not only has there been no criticism of these policies by Google, there has been no hint from the company that it intends to close down its offices anywhere in the Arab world – ever.

An extensive catalog of Arab governments’ netizen abuses can be seen at http://openarab.net/en, which catalogs, country by country, the limitations on freedom of net surfing in Arab countries. Of course, you would expect heavy censorship in countries like Syria (where, the site says, all traffic is strictly monitored) and Libya (where just walking into an internet cafe can get you into trouble). But even countries that regard themselves as “westernized” to some extent, like the UAE, Kuwait, and of course that bastion of democracy, Egypt, keep tabs on users and sites, sniffing out “inappropriate” use of the internet.

Bloggers who dare to write something that their government disapproves of are likely to find themselves in jail, or worse. Contrary to the impression given in many Western media reports, the governments in conservative, Western-allied countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia not only seek to ban websites and blogs written by radical Islamists seeking to overthrow the old order – they’re out to get any hint of criticism of the regime or its institutions, including (perhaps especially) complaints by the citizenry on even banal, everyday problems. Who knows where such complaints could lead, after all?

Most countries ban access by users to thousands of sites that contain, in the words of a 2006 UAE law on legal use of the internet (similar to laws in many other Arab countries), “content challenging public interest, public morality, public order and national security, national reconciliation, and Islamic morals, or content prohibited by the laws of the United Arab Emirates and their regulations.” The law can be, and generally is, very widely interpreted, to include a panoply of “offenses;” just how widely can be seen at http://www.anhri.net/en/, which contains a depressingly long list of abuses against internet users and “uncooperative” citizens seeking basic rights. Even Jordan, arguably the most “liberal” Arab country when it comes to internet use, blocks hundreds of sites perceived to be critical of King Abdullah’s regime, and according to OpenArabNet, “tens of reporters were tried and face imprisonment” for “libel,” a law that is apparently all too easy for journalists in Jordan to violate.

Believe it or not, even internet voice services like Skype are banned in most Arab countries – apparently in order to keep up the profits of cellphone network operators! Tens of millions of foreign workers, especially in the Gulf countries, are forced to spend exorbitant amounts on cellphone service in order to keep in touch with their loved ones, instead of using the far less costly VoIP services denied them.

So what does Google have to say about any of this? Not a word (I searched the net high and low, using Google, of course!).  Apparently Google has invested all its human rights energy in China, leaving nothing left over for Egypt and the UAE – two countries where Google has offices, and that heavily censor (and punish) “inappropriate” internet use, probably more harshly than China does. Yet there is no talk of Google closing down its offices in either country. It’s not like the Arab world really wants Google around anyway – after all, YouTube (a Google product) has long been banned in most Arab countries (because, as a UAE official says,  “YouTube stirs hatred between the sons of our homeland.”) Even China recanted its brief ban on Youtube last year. Why close offices in China, but not the Arab lands? If you’re going to take a stand on internet censorship, isn’t it discriminatory – even racist – to come down hard on one set of abusers, while letting another group of abusers off the hook altogether?

More than 50,000 people visited the 1,200 or so exhibitors at the show last year, and this year organizers hope to increase the number of visitors substantially.

Out of the 1,289 exhibitors this year, 88 are from Israel – more than any other country, except for the United States (208), Britain (188), France (146) and Germany (111). In fact, one could say that Israel is far more innovative than even these technology superpowers, since almost every booth run by an Israeli company at this year’s show works primarily in R&D, as opposed to the many service providers representative of other countries, both large and small, who are attending the show solely to build partnerships using their existing resources.

And it goes without saying – but we’ll say it anyway – that the entire Arab world was barely able to muster a minyan of representatives for the show – even “hot” Middle East economies like the UAE (three). Of Israel’s immediate neighbors, Lebanon (three), Jordan (two) and Saudi Arabia (10) have companies that will be attending, while none came from Syria or Egypt, which is the largest country in the Arab world and has had a GDP growth rate of more than 6 percent that has rivaled Israel’s over the past several years. Makes you wonder.

You may have already heard of the first bit of big news to come out of an Israeli company exhibiting at Barcelona – the “modular phone” being introduced by Israeli start-up Modu (http://www.modumobile.com/). You slip the credit-card-sized Modu component, the “guts” of a cellphone/PDA/GPS/Entertainment device/alarm clock/whatever into a “jacket” that primarily performs the function you are interested in at any given moment.

The product was announced with great fanfare last week and featured in the computer press around the world, guaranteeing that the Modu booth at the Congress will be jam-packed, as service and content providers clamor to join the three service providers Modu says it has already made a deal with.

This is pretty big news, if you ask me. And while it would seem that Israel has, with the Modu announcement, already received its share of Barcelona glory and fame, there are plenty of other innovative companies that will be presenting innovations no less impressive, in my humble opinion. I actually have written about a number of them in my “Stellar Start-ups” column, the latest being InfoGin, http://tinyurl.com/2hr9rp, whose technology could revolutionize the way cellphone surfers see and use Web sites.

With convergence the watchword in the computer, Internet and cellphone industries – and manufacturers and service providers trying to pack as much communications punch into their devices – cellphone/device development is now where it’s at in the technology world, attracting the best and brightest people and ideas to solve a whole new crop of problems that are preventing the cellphone revolution from moving forward.

One typical problem is battery power, which tends to fail when you need it most on portable devices like cellphones – but also on laptop computers, iPods and PDAs. Elaborate chargers are supplied when you buy these devices, but they’re difficult to lug around. Why can’t someone come up with a normal power supply – say, AAA batteries – to power cellphones? Probably because such batteries wouldn’t provide enough power to run a cellphone, but maybe they could help recharge the device’s lithium battery pack when you’re on the road.

Now that’s one idea most of us would never have thought of. Luckily, Israeli start-up Techtium (http://www.techtium.com/) did, and will be presenting their line of standard alkaline battery backup solutions for cellphones, laptops, video cameras and other devices at the congress. Batteries may not be as “sexy” an innovation as Modu-type “jackets,” but it’s a great solution to a practical problem faced by everyone who uses devices with rechargeable batteries.

Israeli companies will also be showing off software innovations this week, such as the one offered by Aerotel (http://www.aerotel.com), which takes GPS-based safety to a whole new level. Aerotel will be showing its GeoSkeeper GPS quad-band GSM module; it allows parents to keep track of their children’s whereabouts via GPS. If the kid leaves the specific area s/he is permitted to be at (school, the mall, etc.), the phone can send an SMS to parents, caregivers or security personnel – sort of like an electronic security guard following the wearer. The company also has a number of interesting solutions in the area of “Telemedicine,” enabling caregivers to provide long-distance assistance to patients.

There are plenty of others, too. EIM Telecom (http://www.eimtelecom.com/) has developed a bridge device to connect cellphones and laptops, enabling users to make Skype-style free and low-cost IP phone calls from their cell devices (http://www.skuku.com/).

Dblur (http://www.dblur.com/) develops software to enable cellphone cameras to take better pictures. Nexperience (http://www.nexperience.com) develops innovative testing procedures for cellphone makers.

It’s worth checking out the full catalog of Israeli companies at the congress site (on the home page, click on Exhibition > 2008 Exhibitor Listing, where you can select by country and/or industry). Many of the companies presenting at the congress are members of the Israel Mobile and Communications Association (IMA), which is sponsoring several events for the Israeli companies attending. In addition, the IMA will broadcast recorded video blogs from the show, so you can feel like you’re there, at least in spirit.

It seems that there’s nothing that can’t be blamed on the Jews – whether its missing Christian children during the Middle Ages, in the classic take on the “Blood Libel” – or the massive Internet outage that hit the Arab world over the past week. Well, not just the Arabs; India has had a lot of Internet problems, and Iran may still be 100% without Internet access, after several underwater fiber optic cables were damaged or cut.

The outages, which many in the Arab world and the far-left hate-Israel community are already blaming on you-know-who, began about a week ago, when a pair of undersea communications cables between Egypt and Europe – the data “lifeline” for much of the Arab world, it turns out – broke about 8 kilometers off Alexandria harbor, which was closed most of last week due to the massive storm that hit the region. India, which uses the FLAG Europe Asia and SEA-ME-WE 4 cables as well, was severely hampered, wreaking havoc with much of the world’s backoffice data-processing, and leaving frustrated Americans without the technical assistance that India does so well.

Banks in the Gulf region were hurting, and officials said it could be a week, maybe two, until things got back to normal. Besides being used for fast Internet communications, the cables also carry digital phone calls and TV signals, so even the many in the region who don’t use the Internet at all were affected, as the legions of guest workers in the Gulf and Saudi Arabia couldn’t make phone calls to family or transfer their salaries home to places like the Philippines and Pakistan (which had Internet problems of its own). Several African countries which use the cables, as well as Egypt and Syria, were all out of Internet luck too.

And then there was Iran. On Friday, a third cable (maybe a fourth, according to some accounts) got cut in the Persian Gulf, slowing the already bottlenecked traffic that could still get through – and cutting off Iran altogether. Curiously, the anti-Israel crowd crows, there were only two countries left unscathed by the cable fiasco: Israel and Iraq (I read contradictory reports on Lebanon). Hmm.

Actually, according to the companies that owns the Mediterranean cables, the outage was apparently caused by the anchor of a ship that spliced the cable when it fell overboard (I haven’t heard any explanation yet for the Gulf cable). Although it seems a little too coincidental, it’s not unreasonable for weather related mishaps to occur in the middle of a major winter storm on the high seas – and as far as the Gulf is concerned, I wouldn’t be surprised if this (http://tinyurl.com/yqf3ka) was the explanation. Of course, logic never comes into play for these people; it’s got to be Israel’s fault! Well, I’ve got a theory of my own; instead of saying that Israel and/or the CIA (which, as we all know, controls Iraq nowadays) deliberately cut the cables in order to isolate the Arab world, and especially Iran, to set them up for “something” (which has yet to take place), I think it was the Arabs/Iran themselves that did the cutting to make Israel look bad by having something to blame on us! Or we could just call it a draw, and attribute the breakages to bad winter weather and infrastructure failure, not unheard of with underwater cables.

Why wasn’t Israel affected? Simply because we use a different cable, with Egypt and company refusing to allow Israel to rent bandwidth on the same one it uses. Israel’s cable is called MedNautilus (http://www.mednautilus.com), originally put together by a consortium that involved Israelis, but now wholly owned by Spain’s Telefonica. “Our” cable travels under the Mediterranean from Tel Aviv to Sicily, and looks on the map to be several dozen kilometer north of the broken Egyptian cable.

Considering how important these cables are for business and telecommunication, one would think there would be a backup system of some sort, to avoid the outages and data-pipe shortages that have affecting nearly a billion people over the past week. Unfortunately for the Egyptians, Kuwaitis and Iranians Indians, there was apparently no sufficient backup data communications system to keep their businesses going. And the same holds true for us!

Actually, we have it worse than others in our neighborhood. While some reports said that Saudi Arabia was able to partially restore its service using “terrestrial routes” (overland cables, I guess), we don’t have that option. For high-speed communications, MedNautilus is the only option. There are two other cables available, the EMOS and CIOS systems, which have been around since the early 1990s (MedNautilus was set up in 2001), which, according to one Internet expert I spoke to, “couldn’t hold the bandwidth of even one big Israeli ISP today, much less all of them.” Not to mention that the price of access on MedNautilus has been rising in recent years, making things much more expensive for ISPs and keeping prices relatively high for many customers. And what would happen to Israel’s hi-tech economy if the line to the West was down for a couple of weeks?

The solution to both the redundancy problem and the high prices on MedNautilus would seem to be the construction of another high-speed underwater communications cable, and last month a number of Israeli ISPs got together to discuss doing just that (http://tinyurl.com/ypak5e). Unfortunately, given that the investment in such a project could reach tens of millions of dollars, it’s unlikely to get off the ground, many experts believe, even if all the communications companies work together to lower risks. If the mess in the Arab Internet world last week should teach us anything, it should teach us three things: One, the importance of redundant systems for an an advanced hi-tech economy; two, the importance of a strong navy, to keep troublemakers bent on economic terrorism from cutting the cable; and three, the importance for ship captains to make sure they don’t drop anchor in the wrong place!