An investigation by Follow the Money reveals that Dutch universities are participating in at least 28 European Union-funded research projects with Israeli partners that potentially benefit the Israeli military, despite EU rules prohibiting military applications.
Nine Dutch universities, including TU Delft and TU Eindhoven, as well as the University of Amsterdam, are involved in these projects, which are worth over €356 million, through the Horizon Europe program. Notably, 12 of these Horizon projects commenced after the Operation al-Aqsa Flood on 7 October 2023. According to arms experts cited in the article, many of these Dutch universities are involved in research that benefits Israeli defence companies.
Many of these projects focus on “dual-use” technologies that have both civilian and military applications. Yet, “the distinction between civil and military applications is sometimes hardly possible,” as quoted in the article by a spokesperson from Eindhoven University of Technology. This notion of “dual-use” technologies provides strategic cover for Israeli institutions that have been an integral part of the Israeli settler-colonial project since their inception.
The article highlights the absence of institutional accountability, whether from Dutch universities or the EU. It highlights the inadequacy of the European Commission’s oversight mechanisms, with ethical assessments reduced to researchers simply ticking a “civilian purposes only” box, and no monitoring of whether technologies are later used militarily. Similarly, ethical review frameworks by Dutch universities serve mainly as a delay and stalling tactic; a distraction from acting upon their complicity, despite repeated calls on the ground to stop European funding for Israeli institutions.
Why were collaborations with Israeli institutions permitted despite Israel’s decades-long violations of international law and human rights, including apartheid, occupation, ethnic cleansing and settlement expansion? Did it require genocide, ecocide, scholasticide and mass forced starvation for universities to begin questioning these partnerships, and even now, more than 600 days since the escalation of genocide in Gaza, many still refuse to sever ties?
Those in power in Europe continue to pick and choose which human rights apply to whom. At the borders, EU agency Frontex purchases Israeli drones to surveil migrants in the Mediterranean. At universities, severe repression, criminalisation, and violence continue to be inflicted upon the pro-Palestine student movement in the Netherlands and globally, by university boards under the guise of “neutrality,” “dialogue,” and “academic freedom”. The movement is asking the bare minimum: cut all ties, disclose existing investments and procurements, and divest.
Gaza continues to endure bombings, forced starvation, killings at “aid distribution” sites, and digital blackouts due to the destruction of telecom infrastructures by the Zionist entity. The number of gates and checkpoints across the West Bank has significantly increased in the past year, with many surveillance towers equipped with facial recognition cameras and ambient noise detection devices.
European institutions that fund and collaborate with Israeli partners under the guise of “science” and “innovation” which develop tools and systems that systematically repress, torture and kill Palestinians, including enabling and providing cover for an ongoing genocide in Gaza and other parts of occupied Palestine, is not an anomaly for Europe; but an extension of its deeply violent, racist and colonial structures and logics. Rising fascism, increasing militarisation by governments, and the deepening of tech companies’ role in defence, including the destruction of Palestinian lives and land, requires us to collectively sharpen our analyses and efforts to connect our struggles and strategically intervene wherever we can in the colonial cores.
See Negen Nederlandse universiteiten doen gezamenlijk onderzoek met defensie-industrie van Israël at Follow the Money.
Image from Follow the Money’s Wetenschap op bestelling dossier.