On October 7, as Israel started its newest warfare on Gaza following Hamas’s incursion into southern Israel, the European Union’s place was instantly clear.
“Israel has a proper to defend itself – as we speak 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 Courtroom 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 exhibits 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 tips regulating the Horizon framework require funded tasks to be “completely centered on civil functions”, they acknowledge {that a} “appreciable variety of applied sciences and merchandise are generic and might tackle the wants of each civil and army customers”.
Expertise 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 folks had been killed in Israel’s genocide in opposition to 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 essential position within the development of Israeli army know-how” by transferring data to the defence trade.
“These funding schemes straight assist tasks creating Israeli army and weapons capabilities,” the petition stated. “Given the dimensions, period and nature of human rights violations by the Israeli authorities, Israeli establishments’ participation in European analysis and education schemes 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 international coverage since lengthy earlier than the Hamas assault, throughout which 1,139 folks had been killed and greater than 200 Israelis had been taken captive.
The bloc has channelled huge sums of public cash since 1996 to Israel by way of analysis and innovation programmes. Israel will not be 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 acquired a complete EU contribution of 1.28bn euros ($1.35bn). Since Horizon Europe was launched in 2021, it has thus far been granted over 747 million euros ($786m).
IAI, which exports weapons techniques worldwide, acquired 2.7 million euros ($2.8m) beneath Horizon Europe and over 10.7 million euros ($11.2m) beneath Horizon 2020, European Fee information exhibits.
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 – akin to border safety, catastrophe management and maritime surveillance – and are topic to ethics assessments to overview their compliance with EU values.
However there isn’t any EU mechanism that forbids using 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 info to first responders”.
Beneath a scheme named COPAC, launched in 2017, Elbit Programs and the Hebrew College of Jerusalem acquired over a million euros ($1.05m) for work on engineered quantum dots, know-how that centres round ultrafast computer systems performing duties akin to breaking, disrupting or eavesdropping on present-day safety techniques.
Al Jazeera filed a freedom of knowledge request searching for the outcomes of ethics assessments of tasks involving Israel. The European Fee denied the request, saying their disclosure would “critically 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 had been signed off for IAI amid the warfare in Gaza.
The bloc maintained that it “doesn’t fund actions for the event of merchandise and applied sciences prohibited by relevant worldwide regulation”.
The workplace of Iliana Ivanova, the European Commissioner for Innovation accountable 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 members with a grant of practically 135,000 euros ($142,145).
Calderoni stated analysis involving regulation 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 purpose 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 advised Al Jazeera, “We shouldn’t have any proof that these instruments have been used for a goal aside from that said within the venture.”
Whereas it could be unimaginable to determine how the experience gained by way of EU-funded tasks is utilized by Israeli companions, critics argue that the potential of it enabling systematic human rights violations must be ample 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 subject may appear innocuous, I used to be horrified to study that the exact same machine studying strategies are additionally on the foundation of the just lately documented Lavender system” employed by the Israeli army to be used in Gaza, he advised Al Jazeera.
A number of media retailers have reported on Israel’s use of “Lavender”, an AI-driven system that generates kill lists by analysing surveillance information.
Equally employed in Gaza is a device 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 consultants 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 regulation.
“These are applied sciences that have to 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 example, will be tweaked to choose up cues deemed indicators of a possible menace and flag it as a army goal, he defined.
Sebastiani was just lately approached by an Israeli establishment to collaborate on a venture outdoors of Horizon. He refused.
Al Jazeera has discovered that Horizon Europe is funding Israeli establishments to participate in AI-based analysis much 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 examine 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 acquired 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 house establishment, Reichman College, have participated within the EU-GLOCTER venture to advertise “scientific excellence and technological innovation in counter-terrorism”. The venture’s description gives 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, advised Al Jazeera the funds initially allotted to the Israeli companions had 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 in opposition to 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 biggest 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 attainable to maintain [the war in Gaza] for over 13 months,” Wind stated.
In her ebook, 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 Expertise in 1925 and the Weizmann Institute of Science in 1934.
These establishments grew to become central within the improvement 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 form with an Israeli college is coming on the direct expense of Palestinian liberation,” stated Wind.