On October 7, when Israel began its latest war on Gaza following a Hamas incursion into southern Israel, the EU’s position was immediately clear.
“Israel has the right to defend itself – today and in the days to come,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen posted on X, alongside a photo of her office headquarters lit up with the Israeli flag. “The European Union stands with Israel.”
Israel has been in place ever since Trial for genocide At the International Court of Justice in The Hague, its leaders – in addition to a senior Hamas leader – were present. Charged by the International Criminal Court (International Criminal Court). However, the European Union continues to partner with Israeli institutions under the Horizon scheme, a program that funds research and innovation.
Data collected by the European Commission and analyzed by Al Jazeera show that since October 7, the EU has granted Israeli institutions more than 238 million euros ($250 million), including 640,000 euros ($674,000) to Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI). It is a leading company in the field of aviation and space. And the aviation factory that supplies the Israeli army.
While the guidelines governing the Horizon framework require that funded projects be “focused exclusively on civilian applications,” they acknowledge that “a large number of technologies and products are generic and can meet the needs of both civilian and military users.”
Technology capable of serving both civilian and military uses – so-called “dual use” – may be eligible for EU funding as long as the declared purpose is civilian.
But in July, when some 40,000 people were killed in Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, more than 2,000 European academics and 45 organizations came together. File a petition The European Union halts all funding to Israeli institutions, saying the Horizon Framework played a “crucial role in developing Israeli military technology” by transferring know-how to the defense industry.
“These funding plans directly support projects to develop Israeli military and weapons capabilities,” the petition stated. “Given the scale, duration and nature of human rights violations committed by the Israeli government, the participation of Israeli institutions in European research and education programs should be suspended.”
That call went unanswered.
Financing the Israeli military apparatus
The European Union’s support for Israel has been a key element of its foreign policy since long before the Hamas attack, during which 1,139 people were killed and more than 200 Israelis were captured.
The bloc has transferred huge sums of public money to Israel since 1996 through research and innovation programmes. Israel is not a member of the European Union, but participates as an associated country in financing initiatives.
Under the Horizon 2020 Framework Program, which ran between 2014 and 2020, Israeli organizations received a total contribution from the European Union of €1.28 billion ($1.35 billion). Since Horizon Europe launched in 2021, more than €747 million ($786 million) has been awarded to date.
European Commission data show that IAI, which exports weapons systems worldwide, received 2.7 million euros ($2.8 million) under the Horizon Europe program and more than 10.7 million euros ($11.2 million) under Horizon 2020.
Elbit Systems, an Israel-based military company whose largest client is the Israeli Ministry of Defense, has been awarded grants for five projects under Horizon 2020 with a total value of 2.2 million euros ($2.3 million).
All funded projects have a specific “civilian” theme – such as border protection, disaster control, maritime surveillance – and are subject to ethical assessments to review their compliance with EU values.
But there is no mechanism in the European Union to prevent the use of advanced technology acquired with funds for military applications in parallel or at a later stage.
IAI was awarded €1.4 million ($1.47 million) under the ResponDrone project launched in 2019 to develop 3D mapping drone technology to “provide precise location information to first responders.”
Under a scheme called COPAC, launched in 2017, Elbit Systems and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem received more than 1 million euros ($1.05 million) to work on engineering quantum dots, the technology centered around super-fast computers that perform tasks such as breaking or disabling… Or eavesdrop on computers. Current security systems.
Al Jazeera has filed a freedom of information request seeking the results of ethical evaluations of projects involving Israel. The European Commission rejected the request, saying that revealing this information would “seriously undermine the Commission’s work and internal decision-making.”
In March, the Commission responded to the left group in the European Parliament, which questioned why grants to Israel Aerospace Industries were signed in the middle of the war in Gaza.
The bloc stressed that it “does not finance measures to develop products and technologies prohibited under applicable international law.”
The office of Ileana Ivanova, the European Commissioner for Innovation responsible for implementing the Horizon programme, did not respond to Al Jazeera’s requests for comment.
“Dual-use technologies”: from civilian to military applications
Al Jazeera contacted dozens of researchers who worked with Israeli institutions within the framework of Horizon. Most declined to be interviewed but emphasized the civic intent of their projects.
Fabrizio Calderoni, a professor at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, Italy, participated in the ROXANNE project, which concluded in 2022. It aimed to develop “new speech, facial recognition and network analysis techniques to facilitate the identification of criminals.”
Israel’s Ministry of Public Security — which oversees agencies including the police and prison service — was among those participating with a grant of about 135,000 euros ($142,145).
Calderone said research involving law enforcement — rather than the military — is considered “civilian” in nature under EU standards.
He added that the project focused “on a network of unknown people who committed robberies, with the aim of finding patterns to identify the perpetrators of these crimes.”
Asked whether the findings could be used to guide Israeli military action in Gaza or the occupied West Bank, he told Al Jazeera: “We have no evidence that these tools have been used for a purpose other than that stated in the project. “
While it may be impossible to determine how Israeli partners will use the expertise gained through EU-funded projects, critics say the possibility of enabling systemic human rights violations should be enough to quash cooperation.
Fabrizio Sebastiani, director of research at Italy’s National Research Council (CNR), is using machine learning – a subset of artificial intelligence (AI) – to determine the authorship of unattributed medieval texts.
“Although this topic may seem innocuous, I was horrified to learn that the same machine learning techniques are also the basis of recently documented information.” Lavender He told Al Jazeera that the system “is used by the Israeli army for use in Gaza.”
Several media outlets have reported on Israel’s use of Lavender, an artificial intelligence-based system that creates kill lists by analyzing surveillance data.
A tool said to be called “similarly” is used in Gaza “Where’s my father?”which tracks individuals, links them to specific locations and sends an alert when they return, and “gospel”which the Israeli army boasts of its ability to “produce targets at a rapid pace.”
UN human rights experts say Israel’s use of artificial intelligence in Gaza has had an “unprecedented toll” on civilians. Human Rights Watch warned that these tools may pose a risk of violating international humanitarian law.
“These are techniques that need to maximize the target, and the target can be changed,” Sebastiani said. He explained that an algorithm designed to analyze repeated use of punctuation and jargon in unattributed text, for example, could be modified to pick up signals that are indicators of a potential threat and flag it as a military target.
Sebastiani was recently approached by an Israeli organization to collaborate on a project outside of Horizon. He refused.
Al Jazeera found that Horizon Europe funds Israeli institutions to participate in artificial intelligence-based research similar to Sebastiani’s work.
In January, Reichmann University, in the coastal city of Herzliya, Israel, was awarded nearly €3 million ($3.16 million) as part of a project to study Sanskrit and Tibetan Buddhist texts to develop “sophisticated computational tools to revolutionize the study of these materials.” .
Israeli institutions have also been involved in plans to develop “surveillance and security tools” in order to “fight terrorism.”
Under the Horizon 2020 programme, Bar-Ilan University and the Israeli Ministry of Public Security received €1.3 million ($1.37 million) and €267,000 ($281,000) respectively to develop an interrogation training simulator.
Since January, the Israeli International Counterterrorism Institute (ICT) and its parent institution, Reichmann University, have participated in the EU-GLOCTER project to promote “scientific excellence and technological innovation in the fight against terrorism.” The project description offers few details, but its website shows a photo of camouflage-clad soldiers raiding a disheveled brick house.
Dublin City University, which is coordinating the project, told Al Jazeera that funds initially allocated to Israeli partners were suspended earlier this year. The reasons behind the decision were not explained, but the move came in the wake of a student-led campaign in Ireland against Israel’s participation in the project.
The European Commission database still lists Reichman and ICT as partners in EU-GLOCTER.
The relationship of Israeli universities with the army
The largest share of Horizon funds awarded to Israeli entities is allocated to academic institutions.
While universities are often viewed as bastions of civil liberties, Israeli researcher Maya Wind said Israeli academia is the backbone of the country’s military industry.
He added: “Israeli universities are pillars of Israeli apartheid rule, are essential to the infrastructure of Israeli settler colonialism and apartheid, and are now also actively serving this genocide and making it possible for (the war in Gaza) to continue for more than 13 months.” The wind said.
In her book, Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom, she describes how Hebrew University was the first to be established by the Zionist movement in 1918, followed by the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in 1925 and the Weizmann Institute of Technology. Science in 1934.
These institutions became central to the development and manufacture of weapons used to forcibly displace Palestinians in the period leading up to the formation of the State of Israel in 1948.
Later, the Weizmann Institute and the Technion led the development of Israel’s military industries.
In 1954, the Technion founded the Department of Aeronautical Engineering and its students led the development of IAI, an aviation and space company. The state-owned defense technology company Rafael was also born at its headquarters.
“Cooperation of any kind with an Israeli university comes at the direct expense of Palestinian liberation,” Wind said.
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