Joint press release by European Legal Support Center (ELSC), Stop Arms Trade, Solid Sustainability Research and The Rights Forum – Amsterdam, 7 June 2024
Relations with Israel’s military-industrial complex and Israeli human rights violations underline demands from actions at universities
Today, civil society organisations Stop Arms Trade, European Legal Support Center (ELSC) and Solid Sustainability Research published the new website www.academiccomplicity.nl, which provides an overview of all current institutional ties with Israeli entities for all Dutch research universities. With this website, the initiators aim to provide students and staff members taking action at universities in the light of the ongoing genocide in Gaza and calling to end complicit ties, as well as all other interested parties, with a reliable and comprehensive source of information. It reveals over 200 relationships with Israeli companies, universities and government agencies, among others, a significant number of which work with or for the Israeli military.
The database, compiled in collaboration with students from various Dutch? universities, relies on publicly available information including collaborations in EU-funded research projects, exchange programs and other joint initiatives.
Israeli partners’ involvement in violence and repression against Palestinians varies.
Most worrying are the collaborations with Israeli military companies, such as Israel Aerospace Industries, which is a major arms supplier to the Israeli armed forces,says Mark Akkerman (researcher at Stop Arms Trade)
but also with large international arms companies such as Lockheed Martin, Thales and Airbus, which not only supply weapons, but also frequently collaborate with the Israeli arms industry. This arms industry, closely linked to the military, is highly regarded on the international market, where it advertises weapons as ‘combat proven’, or, in other words, ‘tested on Palestinians’.
Itaï van de Wal, from ELSC, adds:
Israeli universities are also deeply embedded in apartheid, occupation and Israel’s military-industrial complex. They produce the knowledge and skills to keep these systems of oppression against Palestinians running, in concert with the military, the state and industry. A number of universities train officers and campuses also lend themselves to military purposes.
Michiel Bot, from Dutch Scholars for Palestine, says:
The complicity of Israeli universities in the occupation, apartheid, and now genocide is not limited to the development of military technology. For example, law faculties are developing doctrines to justify flagrant violations of international law; international relations institutes develop strategic doctrines that legitimize the periodic bombing of Gaza (“Mowing the Grass in Gaza”); archeology departments erase traces of non-Jewish culture in Palestine; students engage in state propaganda on social media.
Access the website here: https://academiccomplicity.nl