Jewish Invention Myths: The Firewall

Continuing on with highlighting and addressing ‘Jewish Invention’ claims we have the claim that Israeli jews invented the Firewall that computers use for the safety of their data when connecting to the internet.

‘Culture Trip’ for example claims that:

‘Software developments

Firewall – the original protection against malware

The software that protects our data from dangerous cyber activity is one of the cornerstones of computer security – and arguably one of the greatest tech inventions from Israel. The biological parents of the firewall are widely accepted to be Gil Shwed, Marius Nacht and Shlomo Kramer of Israel-based Check Point Software Technologies. The team developed the first ever fully viable commercial firewall in 1993, and since then Check Point has expanded, opening subsidiaries overseas and partnering with major tech companies, including Nokia.’ (1)

Now this is simply dishonest since while Check Point Software Technologies did create and begin to sell a Firewall; it was in 1994 not 1993! (2) The first Firewalls were actually created in the late 1980s by DARPA in the United States as alternative to internet routers several years before the Shwed, Nacht and Kramer even launched Check Point Software in 1993. (3)

As it turns out Shwed, Nacht and Kramer were also beaten to the punch commercially as two American computer scientists named John Mayes and Brantley Coile created and launched the ‘PIX (Private Internet eXchange) Firewall’ which was patented and trademarked in December 1994 having been created in July and begun to be marketed in August of that year, (4) while Check Point’s Firewall was only being commercially sold in early 1995. (5)

So no jews and Israelis did not invent the Firewall!

References

(1) https://theculturetrip.com/asia/israel/articles/11-israeli-innovations-that-changed-the-world

(2) Shay Tzafrir, Aviv Barhom-Kidron, Yehuda Baruch, 2009, ‘Cultural Mythology and Global Leadership in Israel’, p. 279 in Eric Kessler, Diana Wong-MingJi (Eds.), 2009, ‘Cultural Mythology and Global Leadership’, 1st Edition, Edward Elgar Publishing: Cheltenham

(3) Allan Liska, 2015, ‘Building an Intelligence-Led Security Program’, 1st Edition, Elsevier: Amsterdam, pp. 2-3

(4) https://www.jma.com/nti.html

(5) http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-17461605.html