Despite outrage over Gaza war, EU research funds flow to Israel | Israel-Palestine conflict news

When Israel launched its latest war against Gaza on October 7 following Hamas’ incursion into southern Israel, the European Union’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 a photo of her office headquarters illuminated by the Israeli flag on Page X. “The European Union stands by Israel”

Israel has been deployed ever since trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague and its leaders, as well as a senior Hamas commander He is accused by the International Criminal Court (ICC). However, the EU continues to cooperate with Israeli institutions under the Horizon program, which funds research and innovation.

Data collected by the European Commission and analyzed by Al Jazeera show that the EU has given more than 238 million euros ($250 million) to Israeli organizations since October 7, including 640,000 euros ($674,000) to top aerospace company Israel Aerospace Industries ( IAI) gave. and an aircraft manufacturer that supplies the Israeli military.

While the guidelines governing the Horizon framework require funded projects to be “focused on civilian applications only,” they acknowledge that “many technologies and products are generic and can meet the needs of both civilian and military users.”

Technology that can serve both civilian and military purposes – so-called “dual-use” technology – may be eligible for EU funding as long as the stated purpose is civilian.

But in July, when nearly 40,000 people were killed in Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, more than 2,000 European scientists and 45 organizations petitioned The EU should freeze all funding to Israeli institutions and said the Horizon framework “plays an important role in the development of Israeli military technology” by transferring knowledge to the defense industry.

“These funding schemes directly support projects that develop Israel’s military and weapons capabilities,” the petition states. “Given the scale, duration and nature of human rights violations by the Israeli government, the participation of Israeli institutions in European research and education programs should be suspended.”

That call went unanswered.

Funding of Israel’s military apparatus

EU support for Israel has been a key element of its foreign policy since long before the Hamas attack in which 1,139 people were killed and more than 200 Israelis were captured.

Since 1996, the bloc has sent large amounts of public money to Israel through research and innovation programs. Israel is not a member of the EU, but participates in funding initiatives as an associated country.

Under the Horizon 2020 framework program, which operates between 2014 and 2020, Israeli organizations received a total contribution of 1.28 billion euros ($1.35 billion) from the EU. Since its launch in 2021, Horizon Europe has been awarded more than €747 million ($786 million).

According to the European Commission, IAI, which exports weapons systems around the world, received 2.7 million euros ($2.8 million) under Horizon Europe and more than 10.7 million euros ($11.2 million) under Horizon 2020.

Israel-based military company Elbit Systems, whose largest customer is the Israeli Defense Ministry, received a total of 2.2 million euros ($2.3 million) in grants for five projects under Horizon 2020.

All funded projects have a defined ‘civilian’ theme, such as border protection, disaster control and maritime surveillance, and are subject to ethical assessments to check their compatibility with EU values.

However, there is no mechanism in the EU to prohibit the use of advanced technology acquired with funds for parallel or later-stage military applications.

The IAI was awarded 1.4 million euros ($1.47 million) to develop 3D mapping for drone technology to “provide precise location information to first responders” under the ResponDrone project launched in 2019.

Under a scheme called COPAC launched in 2017, Elbit Systems and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem received more than one million euros ($1.05 million) to work on engineering quantum dots centered around ultrafast computers that perform tasks such as hacking, disrupting or eavesdropping. they bought modern security systems.

Al Jazeera has filed a freedom of information request to learn the results of the ethics review of projects involving Israel. The European Commission rejected the request, saying that their disclosure would “seriously affect the Commission’s activity and internal decision-making process.”

In March, the Commission responded to the Left group in the European Parliament, asking why grants were signed for IAI during the war in Gaza.

The bloc claimed that it “does not finance activities for the development of products and technologies prohibited by applicable international law.”

The office of Iliana Ivanova, the European Commission’s innovation commissioner responsible for implementing Horizon, did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

‘Dual use technologies’: From civilian to military applications

Al Jazeera reached out to dozens of researchers working with Israeli institutions under Horizon. Most declined to be interviewed but emphasized the civilian 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 ends in 2022. The goal of the project was to develop “new speech technologies, facial recognition and network analysis to facilitate the identification of criminals.”

With a grant of about 135,000 euros ($142,145), participants included Israel’s Ministry of Public Security, which oversees agencies including the police and prison service.

Calderoni said research involving law enforcement — as opposed to the military — is considered “civilian” in nature under EU parameters.

He added that the project is aimed at “a network of anonymous individuals who steal with the aim of finding patterns to identify the perpetrators of these crimes.”

Asked whether the results could be used to inform Israel’s military operation in Gaza or the occupied West Bank, he told Al Jazeera: “We have no evidence that these tools were used for any purpose other than what is in the project. “

While it is impossible to determine how the experience gained through EU-funded projects is used by Israeli partners, critics argue that the fact that it enables systematic human rights abuses should be enough to stop cooperation.

Fabrizio Sebastiani, director of research at Italy’s National Research Council (CNR), uses machine learning, a subset of artificial intelligence (AI), to determine the authorship of non-medieval texts.

“While this topic may seem innocuous, I was horrified to learn that the same machine learning techniques are also based on recently documented data. Lavender The system that the Israeli army used to use in Gaza,” he told Al Jazeera.

Several media outlets have reported on Israel’s use of the artificial intelligence-driven “Lavender” system, which analyzes surveillance data and generates kill lists.

A similar tool was reported to be used in Gaza “Where’s dad?”which tracks and links individuals to specific locations and sends alerts when they return and “The Bible”The Israeli military boasts that it can “create targets at high speed”.

United Nations human rights experts say Israel’s use of artificial intelligence in Gaza has caused “unprecedented damage” to civilians. Human Rights Watch has warned that the tools risk violating international humanitarian law.

“These are technologies that are needed to maximize a goal, and the goal can be changed,” Sebastiani said. For example, an algorithm designed to analyze the reuse of punctuation and terminology in unattributed text could be modified to pick up indicators of a potential threat and mark it as a military target, he explained.

Sebastiani was recently approached by an Israeli organization to collaborate on a project outside of Horizon. He refused.

Al Jazeera has discovered that Horizon Europe is funding Israeli institutes to participate in AI-based research similar to Sebastiani’s work.

In January, Reichman University in the coastal city of Herzliya, Israel, was awarded nearly 3 million euros ($3.16 million) as part of a project to study Sanskrit and Tibetan Buddhist texts to develop “advanced computing tools to revolutionize the study of this material.” .

Israeli institutions have also collaborated in schemes to develop “surveillance and security tools” to “fight terrorism”.

Under Horizon 2020, Bar-Ilan University and Israel’s Ministry of Public Security received 1.3 million euros ($1.37 million) and 267,000 euros ($281,000), respectively, to develop an interrogation training simulator.

Since January, Israel’s International Counter-Terrorism Institute (ICT) and its local institute, Reichman University, have participated in the EU-GLOCTER project to promote “scientific excellence and technological innovation in the fight against terrorism”. A description of the project provides few details, but its website includes a picture of camouflaged soldiers storming a ramshackle brick house.

Dublin City University, which is coordinating the project, told Al Jazeera that funding initially allocated to Israeli partners was suspended earlier this year. The reasons for the decision were not given in detail, but the move follows a student-led campaign in Ireland against Israel’s involvement in the project.

The European Commission database still lists Reichman and ICT as partners in EU-GLOCTER.

Relations of Israeli universities with the military

The largest share of EU Horizon funds given to Israeli institutions is allocated to academic institutions.

Although universities are often seen as bastions of civil liberties, Israeli academic Maya Wind said that Israeli academia is the backbone of the country’s military industry.

“Israeli universities are the pillars of Israel’s racial rule, they are the center of the Israeli settler colonialism and apartheid infrastructure, and now they actively serve this genocide and make it possible to continue (the war in Gaza) for more than 13 months.” said the wind.

In his book Ivory and Steel Towers: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom, he describes the Hebrew University as the first university founded by the Zionist movement in 1918, followed by the Technion Israel Institute of Technology in 1925 and the Weizmann Institute. Science in 1934.

These institutions became central to the development and production of weapons used to forcibly relocate Palestinians in the run-up to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.

The Weizmann Institute and the Technion later led the development of Israel’s military industry.

In 1954, the Technion established an aeronautical engineering department, and its students led the development of the aerospace company IAI. The state-owned defense technology company Rafael was also born in their buildings.

“Any cooperation with an Israeli university is directly at the expense of Palestinian freedom,” Wind said.