European Union science research project helping to fund Israeli war machine

Silence over EU science grants to Israel’s war machine

by David Cronin

Top European Union officials seem to be in denial about how they are subsidising Israel’s war industry in the name of innovation.

Although it probably won’t send pulses racing in many newsrooms, a vitally important debate is taking place at the moment about the future of Europe’s policy on scientific research. The debate directly concerns Israel because it is the most active non-European participant in the Union’s multi-annual programme for research. Manufacturers of the weapons used to blitz Gaza during Operation Cast Lead have proven especially adept at accessing funds from the programme, which has been allocated 53 billion euros ($37 billion) between 2007 and 2013.

The ethical and legal questions behind handing over taxpayers’ money to Israeli arms companies are being avoided by the Brussels elite. On Friday, June 10, Europe’s science commissioner Máire Geoghegan Quinn will host a conference to discuss what the priorities of the successor programme – beginning in 2014 –should be. If the agenda for the event is anything to go by, the discussion will be dominated by big picture themes like “strengthening competitiveness”and “tackling societal challenges”. Israel is barely mentioned in preparatory documents – or at least in those that have been made public.

The EU’s cowardice towards Israel is in stark contrast to the stance taken by Norway. In 2009, the Oslo government decided that a state-owned pension scheme should withdraw its investment in Elbit because that Israeli company had supplied an electronic surveillance system to the annexation wall in the West Bank. Yet despite how the wall was declared unlawful by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2004, Elbit has been deemed eligible to take partin at least four EU-funded science projects for the 2007-13 period.

Both Elbit and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) made the pilotless drones or unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) used to bomb Gaza’s civilians in 2008 and 2009. IAI has similarly contributed components to surveillance equipment fitted into the West Bank wall. And IAI is doing nicely,too, out of the EU, taking part in no fewer than 15 of its research projects. more

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