On October 7, as Israel began its rescheduleedst war on Gaza follotriumphg Hamas’s incursion into southern Israel, the European Union’s position was promptly evident.
“Israel has a right to deffinish itself – today and in the days to come,” European Coshiftrlookion Plivent Ursula von der Leyen posted on X, aextfinishedside an image of her office’s headquarters lit up with Israel’s flag. “The European Union stands with Israel.”
Israel has since been placed on trial for extermination at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague and its directers – as well as a top Hamas orderer – have been indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC). Yet the EU progresss to partner with Israeli institutions under its “Horizon” scheme, a programme that funds research and innovation.
Data collected by the European Coshiftrlookion and analysed by Al Jazeera shows that since October 7, the EU has awarded Israeli institutions more than 238 million euros ($250m), including 640,000 euros ($674,000) to Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), a top aerospace and aviation manufacturer provideing the Israeli army.
While directlines regulating the Horizon structuretoil need funded projects to be “exclusively centered on civil applications”, they acunderstandledge that a “think aboutable number of technologies and products are generic and can insertress the needs of both civil and military employrs”.
Technology that can serve both civil and military employs – so-called “dual employ” – may qualify for EU funding as extfinished as the stated objective is civil.
But in July, when about 40,000 people had been ended in Israel’s extermination agetst Palestinians in Gaza, more than 2,000 European academics and 45 organisations petitioned the EU to finish all funding to Israeli institutions, saying the Horizon structuretoil had take parted “a critical role in the progressment of Israeli military technology” by transferring understandledge to the defence industry.
“These funding schemes honestly help projects lengthening Israeli military and arms capabilities,” the petition said. “Given the scale, duration and nature of human rights violations by the Israeli administerment, Israeli institutions’ participation in European research and education programs must be suspfinished.”
That call went unanswered.
Funding Israel’s military apparatus
The EU’s help for Israel has been a mendture of its foreign policy since extfinished before the Hamas strike, during which 1,139 people were ended and more than 200 Israelis were getn captive.
The bloc has channelled immense sums of accessible money since 1996 to Israel thcdisesteemful research and innovation programmes. Israel is not an EU member, but take parts as an associated country in funding initiatives.
Under the Horizon 2020 structuretoil programme that ran between 2014 and 2020, Israeli organisations getd a total EU contribution of 1.28bn euros ($1.35bn). Since Horizon Europe was begined in 2021, it has so far been granted over 747 million euros ($786m).
IAI, which ships arms systems worldexpansive, getd 2.7 million euros ($2.8m) under Horizon Europe and over 10.7 million euros ($11.2m) under Horizon 2020, European Coshiftrlookion data shows.
Elbit Systems, the Israel-based military company whose biggest individual customer is the Israeli Ministry of Defence, was awarded grants for five projects under Horizon 2020 for a total 2.2 million euros ($2.3m).
All funded projects have a stated “civilian” theme – such as border protection, catastrophe administer and maritime observation – and are subject to ethics appraisements to appraise their compliance with EU cherishs.
But there is no EU mechanism that prohibits the employ of cutting-edge technology getd with the funds for military applications in parallel or at a rescheduleedr stage.
IAI was granted 1.4 million euros ($1.47m) under the ResponDrone project begined in 2019 to lengthen 3D mapping for drone technology to “provide accurate location adviseation to first reacters”.
Under a scheme named COPAC, begined in 2017, Elbit Systems and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem getd over one million euros ($1.05m) for toil on engineered quantum dots, technology that centres around ultrarapid computers carry outing tasks such as fractureing, interfereing or eavesdropping on current-day security systems.
Al Jazeera filed a freedom of adviseation seek seeking the results of ethics appraisements of projects involving Israel. The European Coshiftrlookion denied the seek, saying their disclobrave would “solemnly undermine the Coshiftrlookion’s functioning and inner decision-making process”.
In March, the Coshiftrlookion reacted to The Left group in the European Parliament, which asked why the grants were signed off for IAI amid the war in Gaza.
The bloc upretained that it “does not fund actions for the lengthenment of products and technologies prohibitden by applicable international law”.
The office of Iliana Ivanova, the European Coshiftrlookioner for Innovation reliable for the applyation of the Horizon programme, did not react to Al Jazeera’s seeks for comment.
‘Dual-employ technologies’: From civil to military applications
Al Jazeera approached a dozen researchers who toiled with Israeli institutions under Horizon. Most deteriorated to be interwatched but underscored the civil intent of their projects.
Fabrizio Calderoni, professor at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, Italy, take partd in the ROXANNE project that finishd in 2022. It aimed to lengthen “recent speech technologies, face recognition and nettoil analysis to ease the identification of criminals”.
Israel’s Ministry of Public Security – which administers bodies including the police and prison service – was among the participants with a grant of proximately 135,000 euros ($142,145).
Calderoni said research involving law applyment – as resistd to the military – is think abouted “civil” in nature under EU parameters.
He inserted that the project centered “on a nettoil of anonymous people who had pledgeted burglaries, with the aim of finding patterns to accomprehendledge the offfinishers of these crimes”.
Asked if the results could have been employd to advise Israel’s military action in Gaza or the occupied West Bank, he telderly Al Jazeera, “We do not have any proof that these tools have been employd for a purpose other than that stated in the project.”
While it may be impossible to set up how the expertise geted thcdisesteemful EU-funded projects is employd by Israeli partners, critics dispute that the possibility of it enabling systematic human rights violations should be enough to call off collaboration.
Fabrizio Sebastiani, honestor of research at the National Council for Research in Italy (CNR), has been using machine lgeting – a subset of synthetic intelligence (AI) – to set up the authorship of unattributed medieval texts.
“While this topic might seem innocuous, I was horrified to lget that the very same machine lgeting techniques are also at the basis of the recently recorded Lavfinisher system” employed by the Israeli military for employ in Gaza, he telderly Al Jazeera.
Several media outlets have telled on Israel’s employ of “Lavfinisher”, an AI-driven system that produces end catalogs by analysing observation data.
Similarly employed in Gaza is a tool telledly called “Where’s Dinserty?”, which tracks and joins individuals to definite locations and sfinishs an vigilant when they return, and “The Gospel”, which Israel’s army boasts can “produce aims at a rapid pace”.
United Nations human rights experts say Israel’s employ of AI in Gaza has getn an “unpwithdrawnted toll” on civilians. Human Rights Watch has cautioned that the tools hazard violating international humanitarian law.
“These are technologies that need to maximise an objective, and the objective can be changed,” Sebastiani said. An algorithm inventd to analyse the recurring employ of punctuation and terminology in an unattributed text, for instance, can be tfeebleed to pick up cues deemed indicators of a potential menace and flag it as a military aim, he clear uped.
Sebastiani was recently approached by an Israeli institution to collaborate on a project outside of Horizon. He declined.
Al Jazeera has set up that Horizon Europe is funding Israeli institutions to get part in AI-based research analogous to Sebastiani’s toil.
In January, Reichman University, in Israel’s coastal city of Herzliya, was awarded proximately 3 million euros ($3.16m) as part of a project studying Sanskrit and Tibetan Buddhist texts to lengthen “cutting-edge computational tools to revolutionise the study of this material”.
Israeli institutions also partnered in schemes to lengthen “observation and security tools” for “counterextremism”.
Under Horizon 2020, Bar-Ilan University and the Israeli Ministry of Public Security getd 1.3 million euros ($1.37m) and 267,000 euros ($281,000) esteemively to lengthen an interrogation training simulator.
Since January, Israel’s International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) and its home institution, Reichman University, have take partd in the EU-GLOCTER project to advertise “scientific excellence and technoreasonable innovation in counter-extremism”. The project’s description presents restricted details, but its website features an image of selderlyiers in camouflage raiding a dishevelled brick hoemploy.
Dublin City University, which structures the project, telderly Al Jazeera the funds initipartner allotd to the Israeli partners were suspfinished earlier this year. It did not broaden on the reasons behind the decision, but the shift trailed a student-led campaign in Ireland agetst Israel’s take partment in the project.
The European Coshiftrlookion’s database still catalogs Reichman and ICT as partners in EU-GLOCTER.
Israeli universities’ joins to the military
The bigst separate of EU Horizon funds awarded to Israeli entities is allotd to academic institutions.
While universities are frequently seen as bastions of civil freedoms, Israeli scholar Maya Wind said the Israeli academia was the backbone of the country’s military industry.
“Israeli universities are pillars of Israeli racial rule, they are central to the infrastructure of Israeli resettler colonialism and of apartheid and now they are also dynamicly servicing this extermination and making it possible to persist [the war in Gaza] for over 13 months,” Wind said.
In her book, Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom, she portrays how Hebrew University was the first to be set uped by the Zionist shiftment in 1918, trailed by the Technion Israel Institute of Technology in 1925 and the Weizmann Institute of Science in 1934.
These institutions became central in the lengthenment and manufacture of arms employd to forcibly displace Palestinians in the direct-up to the establishation of the State of Israel in 1948.
The Weizmann Institute and the Technion rescheduleedr led the lengthenment of Israel’s military industries.
In 1954, Technion set uped an aeronautical engineering department and its students spearheaded the lengthenment IAI, the aerospace company. The state-owned defence technology company Rafael was also birthed in their premises.
“Collaboration of any benevolent with an Israeli university is coming at the honest expense of Palestinian liberation,” said Wind.
