Petition: Stop European funding for Israeli institutions

by European Scholars for Human Rights.

Israel's war on Gaza is causing previously unseen levels of death and destruction amongst the Palestinian people, already suffering from decades of illegal occupation and apartheid. While Palestinian universities are being deliberately annihilated by the Israeli military, Israeli academic institutions continue to enjoy a privileged status as partners of European science, receiving over €2.6 billion in EU research funding since 2007. Israeli universities, far from being stalwarts of “academic freedom”, have been an integral part of the Israeli settler-colonial project since their inception. They produce scholarship that seeks to normalize and legitimize crimes committed by the State of Israel, they develop technology and strategies that are deployed by the Israeli military on Palestinians, and they undermine academic freedom by repressing critical Jewish and Arab voices in their own institutions. Plausible evidence of Israel’s crimes has been found and is being pursued by both international courts (ICC, ICJ) and by the UN, which now considers Israel to be an entity “committing violations against children”. Yet, Israel continues to enjoy access to EU research funding as a privileged “associated country” in Horizon Europe and other programs, and many European institutions are refusing to act to cut these ties.

The European scholars for human rights demand the following:

1. The EU must stop all institutional collaboration with Israeli universities, and revoke Israel's status as a Horizon Europe associated country.
2. Individual academic freedom and bilateral contacts are preserved with subsidies to individual scholars, with no involvement of Israeli institutions.
3. The EU takes the lead, with funds, expertise and political support, in reconstructing Palestinian universities and institutions destroyed by Israel.

Read the full statement and join the campaign by signing the petition.

Statement PDF available here.