On October 7, as Israel started its newest struggle on Gaza following Hamas’s incursion into southern Israel, the European Union’s place was instantly clear.
“Israel has a proper to defend itself – right now and within the days to come back,” European Fee President Ursula von der Leyen posted on X, alongside a picture of her workplace’s headquarters lit up with Israel’s flag. “The European Union stands with Israel.”
Israel has since been positioned on trial for genocide on the Worldwide Court docket of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague and its leaders – in addition to a high Hamas commander – have been indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC). But the EU continues to companion with Israeli establishments beneath its “Horizon” scheme, a programme that funds analysis and innovation.
Information collected by the European Fee and analysed by Al Jazeera reveals that since October 7, the EU has awarded Israeli establishments greater than 238 million euros ($250m), together with 640,000 euros ($674,000) to Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), a high aerospace and aviation producer supplying the Israeli military.
Whereas pointers regulating the Horizon framework require funded tasks to be “solely centered on civil functions”, they acknowledge {that a} “appreciable variety of applied sciences and merchandise are generic and may deal with the wants of each civil and army customers”.
Know-how that may serve each civil and army makes use of – so-called “twin use” – might qualify for EU funding so long as the said goal is civil.
However in July, when about 40,000 individuals had been killed in Israel’s genocide towards Palestinians in Gaza, greater than 2,000 European lecturers and 45 organisations petitioned the EU to finish all funding to Israeli establishments, saying the Horizon framework had performed “a important function within the development of Israeli army know-how” by transferring data to the defence trade.
“These funding schemes immediately assist tasks creating Israeli army and weapons capabilities,” the petition stated. “Given the size, period and nature of human rights violations by the Israeli authorities, Israeli establishments’ participation in European analysis and teaching programs have to be suspended.”
That decision went unanswered.
Funding Israel’s army equipment
The EU’s assist for Israel has been a fixture of its overseas coverage since lengthy earlier than the Hamas assault, throughout which 1,139 individuals have been killed and greater than 200 Israelis have been taken captive.
The bloc has channelled huge sums of public cash since 1996 to Israel via analysis and innovation programmes. Israel just isn’t an EU member, however participates as an related nation in funding initiatives.
Beneath the Horizon 2020 framework programme that ran between 2014 and 2020, Israeli organisations obtained a complete EU contribution of 1.28bn euros ($1.35bn). Since Horizon Europe was launched in 2021, it has up to now been granted over 747 million euros ($786m).
IAI, which exports weapons programs worldwide, obtained 2.7 million euros ($2.8m) beneath Horizon Europe and over 10.7 million euros ($11.2m) beneath Horizon 2020, European Fee knowledge reveals.
Elbit Programs, the Israel-based army firm whose greatest single buyer is the Israeli Ministry of Defence, was awarded grants for 5 tasks beneath Horizon 2020 for a complete 2.2 million euros ($2.3m).
All funded tasks have a said “civilian” theme – reminiscent of border safety, catastrophe management and maritime surveillance – and are topic to ethics assessments to evaluate their compliance with EU values.
However there isn’t any EU mechanism that forbids the usage of cutting-edge know-how acquired with the funds for army functions in parallel or at a later stage.
IAI was granted 1.4 million euros ($1.47m) beneath the ResponDrone venture launched in 2019 to develop 3D mapping for drone know-how to “present correct location data to first responders”.
Beneath a scheme named COPAC, launched in 2017, Elbit Programs and the Hebrew College of Jerusalem obtained over a million euros ($1.05m) for work on engineered quantum dots, know-how that centres round ultrafast computer systems performing duties reminiscent of breaking, disrupting or eavesdropping on present-day safety programs.
Al Jazeera filed a freedom of data request searching for the outcomes of ethics assessments of tasks involving Israel. The European Fee denied the request, saying their disclosure would “significantly undermine the Fee’s functioning and inside decision-making course of”.
In March, the Fee responded to The Left group within the European Parliament, which requested why the grants have been signed off for IAI amid the struggle in Gaza.
The bloc maintained that it “doesn’t fund actions for the event of merchandise and applied sciences prohibited by relevant worldwide legislation”.
The workplace of Iliana Ivanova, the European Commissioner for Innovation liable for the implementation of the Horizon programme, didn’t reply to Al Jazeera’s requests for remark.
‘Twin-use applied sciences’: From civil to army functions
Al Jazeera approached a dozen researchers who labored with Israeli establishments beneath Horizon. Most declined to be interviewed however underscored the civil intent of their tasks.
Fabrizio Calderoni, professor on the Catholic College of the Sacred Coronary heart in Milan, Italy, participated within the ROXANNE venture that concluded in 2022. It aimed to develop “new speech applied sciences, face recognition and community evaluation to facilitate the identification of criminals”.
Israel’s Ministry of Public Safety – which oversees our bodies together with the police and jail service – was among the many contributors with a grant of practically 135,000 euros ($142,145).
Calderoni stated analysis involving legislation enforcement – versus the army – is taken into account “civil” in nature beneath EU parameters.
He added that the venture centered “on a community of nameless individuals who had dedicated burglaries, with the goal of discovering patterns to establish the perpetrators of those crimes”.
Requested if the outcomes might have been used to tell Israel’s army motion in Gaza or the occupied West Financial institution, he instructed Al Jazeera, “We do not need any proof that these instruments have been used for a goal apart from that said within the venture.”
Whereas it could be unimaginable to determine how the experience gained via EU-funded tasks is utilized by Israeli companions, critics argue that the potential of it enabling systematic human rights violations needs to be adequate to name off collaboration.
Fabrizio Sebastiani, director of analysis on the Nationwide Council for Analysis in Italy (CNR), has been utilizing machine studying – a subset of synthetic intelligence (AI) – to determine the authorship of unattributed medieval texts.
“Whereas this matter may appear innocuous, I used to be horrified to be taught that the exact same machine studying methods are additionally on the foundation of the not too long ago documented Lavender system” employed by the Israeli army to be used in Gaza, he instructed Al Jazeera.
A number of media shops have reported on Israel’s use of “Lavender”, an AI-driven system that generates kill lists by analysing surveillance knowledge.
Equally employed in Gaza is a instrument reportedly referred to as “Where’s Daddy?”, which tracks and hyperlinks people to particular places and sends an alert once they return, and “The Gospel”, which Israel’s military boasts can “produce targets at a quick tempo”.
United Nations human rights specialists say Israel’s use of AI in Gaza has taken an “unprecedented toll” on civilians. Human Rights Watch has warned that the instruments danger violating worldwide humanitarian legislation.
“These are applied sciences that must maximise an goal, and the target will be modified,” Sebastiani stated. An algorithm devised to analyse the recurring use of punctuation and terminology in an unattributed textual content, as an illustration, will be tweaked to select up cues deemed indicators of a possible risk and flag it as a army goal, he defined.
Sebastiani was not too long ago approached by an Israeli establishment to collaborate on a venture exterior of Horizon. He refused.
Al Jazeera has discovered that Horizon Europe is funding Israeli establishments to participate in AI-based analysis just like Sebastiani’s work.
In January, Reichman College, in Israel’s coastal metropolis of Herzliya, was awarded practically 3 million euros ($3.16m) as a part of a venture learning Sanskrit and Tibetan Buddhist texts to develop “cutting-edge computational instruments to revolutionise the research of this materials”.
Israeli establishments additionally partnered in schemes to develop “surveillance and safety instruments” for “counterterrorism”.
Beneath Horizon 2020, Bar-Ilan College and the Israeli Ministry of Public Safety obtained 1.3 million euros ($1.37m) and 267,000 euros ($281,000) respectively to develop an interrogation coaching simulator.
Since January, Israel’s Worldwide Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) and its residence establishment, Reichman College, have participated within the EU-GLOCTER venture to advertise “scientific excellence and technological innovation in counter-terrorism”. The venture’s description affords few particulars, however its web site options a picture of troopers in camouflage raiding a dishevelled brick home.
Dublin Metropolis College, which coordinates the venture, instructed Al Jazeera the funds initially allotted to the Israeli companions have been suspended earlier this yr. It didn’t elaborate on the explanations behind the choice, however the transfer adopted a student-led marketing campaign in Eire towards Israel’s involvement within the venture.
The European Fee’s database nonetheless lists Reichman and ICT as companions in EU-GLOCTER.
Israeli universities’ hyperlinks to the army
The most important share of EU Horizon funds awarded to Israeli entities is allotted to educational establishments.
Whereas universities are sometimes seen as bastions of civil freedoms, Israeli scholar Maya Wind stated the Israeli academia was the spine of the nation’s army trade.
“Israeli universities are pillars of Israeli racial rule, they’re central to the infrastructure of Israeli settler colonialism and of apartheid and now they’re additionally actively servicing this genocide and making it potential to maintain [the war in Gaza] for over 13 months,” Wind stated.
In her e-book, Towers of Ivory and Metal: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom, she describes how Hebrew College was the primary to be established by the Zionist motion in 1918, adopted by the Technion Israel Institute of Know-how in 1925 and the Weizmann Institute of Science in 1934.
These establishments turned central within the growth and manufacture of weapons used to forcibly displace Palestinians within the lead-up to the formation of the State of Israel in 1948.
The Weizmann Institute and the Technion later led the event of Israel’s army industries.
In 1954, Technion based an aeronautical engineering division and its college students spearheaded the event IAI, the aerospace firm. The state-owned defence know-how firm Rafael was additionally birthed of their premises.
“Collaboration of any variety with an Israeli college is coming on the direct expense of Palestinian liberation,” stated Wind.
