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Three universities built before Israel existed. Technion in Haifa dates back to 1924, the Institute Weizmann in Rehovot in 1934, the Hebrew University in 1918. All three were born within the orbit of the Zionist movement to respond to needs such as forming a new collective identity, developing scientific capabilities, and establishing a Jewish presence in historic Palestine. On Mount Scopus, the location of the Hebrew University was chosen with clear premeditation. It dominated Jerusalem and sanctioned, in architectural forms even before political ones, the territorial claim.
The story of a project
The Zionist leaders had openly identified one's own business in the colonisation of Palestine. The objective was building a Jewish majority capable of sustaining a Jewish state in historic Palestine, and the words used at the time were as explicit as the intentions. To achieve it, it was necessary to supplant those who already inhabited that land. Dominion over territory coincided with dominion over life. Settler colonialism continued over time, branched out into institutions, and made the Violence Initial administration. The Palestinians were in the way, and the expulsion of the natives was a continuous process of gradual expropriation and progressive settlement, rather than a single, isolated historical event.
The planned dispossession of Palestinians proceeded in this direction for decades, before 1948 accelerated the trend with the mass expulsion that Palestinians call the Nakba, catastrophe. Once the state was founded, the Israeli government adopted Judaization to describe the demographic and territorial control programme that would influence public choices for decades to come. Maintaining Jewish demographic superiority and distributing the population in a way that weakened Palestinian claims to the land became explicit state policy objectives.
Universities as a crucial element of the Zionist plan
The universities were a determining factor of a plan that emerged precisely in the pre-state period. On the eve of the 1948 war, the Haganah, the main Zionist militia, established a scientific unit with a base in each of the three existing campuses. Lecturers and students developed and manufactured weapons. Equipment, expertise, and academic spaces directly served the military operations that led to the mass expulsion of Palestinians. With the founding of the state, the Technion and the’Weizmann Institute they became the pillar of Israel's scientific-military capabilities. Rafael and Israel Aerospace Industries, among the country's leading arms manufacturers, are the result of the infrastructure created by those institutes.
In the first two decades of the state, the relationship between academia and government was further consolidated. Prominent academics aligned themselves with political leaders, actively supporting the consolidation of Israeli control over the entire territory. By the late 1960s, the Judaization programme it had expanded on multiple fronts, along with the university network tasked with supporting it. New universities were founded at strategically important points, also conceived as outposts of the demographic project on a regional scale. The University of Haifa received full accreditation in 1972, in Palestinian-majority Galilee. The same year, Ben-Gurion University was established in the Naqab, the region with the lowest concentration of Israeli Jewish population. All campuses were designed to function as engines of regional demographic engineering, promoting the expulsion of Palestinians and the expansion of Jewish settlements.
In 1967, the occupation became ingrained in the DNA of Israeli universities, which contributed to the permanent settlement of Jewish communities in the occupied territories through land annexations. The Hebrew University expanded its campus on Mount Scopus in occupied East Jerusalem. Ariel University, in the West Bank, received full accreditation in 2012. Governing a mixed population—composed of Jewish citizens, Palestinians with limited civil rights, and Palestinians under occupation—required specific, ever-expanding knowledge. Disciplines such as archaeology, legal studies, and Middle Eastern studies were put to use in the production of knowledge that served the Israeli state and its regime in the occupied territories, while simultaneously expanding their own academic fields.
What was studied and taught followed government and military priorities. Universities designed degree courses tailored to train soldiers and security forces, with research applied to the military sector forming the foundation of their programmes. The development of Israeli higher education remained linked to the rise of the arms industry, which universities continue to renew. Today, they collaborate with the military sector in the development of technologies used in the occupied territories, which are then exported to the international market with the status of battle-tested technologies.
Philosophy, jurists, and war within Israeli universities
In 2002, a commission of Israeli academics and military lawyers convened to establish how many Palestinian civilians it was ethically acceptable to kill in an attempt to assassinate a Palestinian considered by Israel to be a militant, in order to save the life of just one Israeli citizen. The commissioners' responses varied from zero to however many it took. The average calculated by the commission was 3.14 Palestinian civilians for every militiaman.. That commission was the culmination of a decade or more of academic study. Leading the way was Professor Asa Kasher of Tel Aviv University, a renowned ethicist, who established himself as an academic at the service of the state in 1994. collaborating on the drafting of the Israeli Army's Code of Ethics. When the code was updated, Kasher was joined by philosophers and jurists from various Israeli universities. The revised document, entitled Ruach Tzahal, “Spirit of the Israel Defence Forces”, was officially adopted by the army as a summary of founding values and an ethical guide for commanders and soldiers, complete with implementation methods. It was from there that Kasher began a long collaboration with Major General Amos Yadlin to provide the army with an operational ethical manual. In 2001, the army's International Law Department had already issued a legal opinion defining the limits of the new Israeli policy of targeted assassinations. The 2002 commission was a natural continuation.
As Maya Wind, an Israeli anthropologist and author who has extensively studied militarism and the role of Israeli universities concerning the Palestinian occupation, observes, Kasher embodies one of the most striking cases of an academic structurally integrated into the state apparatus, an expression of a much more widespread trend. Over the past twenty years, law departments at Israeli universities have put their expertise and research at the service of the army and security apparatuses, developing legal interpretations designed to cover up military operations that would otherwise be difficult to justify. Ethicists in philosophy departments have acted as a counterweight, crafting moral justifications for military policies and operations, both during their execution and once they have concluded, often coinciding with subsequent international investigations.
The legal apparatus constructed in recent years permits the legitimisation of extrajudicial killings, torture, and the disproportionate use of force against civilian populations. Doctrines tailor-made by Israeli academics and military jurists have altered categories of international humanitarian law, and they have done so starting from a historical turning point. With the Second Intifada, which began in 2000, the military repression of protesters and insurgents raised international alarm concerning Israel. The Israeli government reacted by arguing that the use of force against Palestinians should be considered a novel form of warfare, exempt from existing codes. The thesis was that of an armed conflict without war, a sui generis situation to which the current laws on armed conflicts were inapplicable. Those interpretations, devised specifically to circumvent international regulatory frameworks, eventually ended up modifying them, circulating beyond the country's borders to the point of corrupting the very parameters with which the international community assesses warfare conduct.
The uniform in the classroom
More recently, and in explicitly warlike contexts, a few months before the Israeli offensive on Gaza in July 2023, Tel Aviv University announced that having won the tender from the Ministry of Defence to host the Erez degree course, a programme reserved for officers from combat units. The dual degree includes an academic curriculum focused on areas of military interest, combined with humanities, social sciences, economics, or engineering disciplines. Military training and academic education are integrated throughout the course to produce elite combat cadets. A degree with honours, a rifle, and employment. All in a single study cycle, with an on-field internship. Literally.
Accompanying the prestige and state funding is a forty-page contract that sets out the terms of the agreement. The soldiers will attend courses in uniform and will be permitted to bring their issued weapons onto campus. They will attend most lectures alongside civilian students, with the exception of non-academic courses taught by high-ranking military personnel, which will still be recognised as valid credits towards their degree. For courses attended by both soldiers and civilians, the Ministry of Defence has provided a list of topics to be included in the curriculum, including strategic thinking and national security. Lecturers are required to report any security issues to the military and adhere to military restrictions. The text of the agreement is explicit in stipulating that the university shall undertake to ensure the academic staff refrain from making defamatory statements towards the Defence Forces soldiers attending the university, both with regard to their military service and the wearing of the uniform, an undertaking which the said agreement defines as essential.
Tel Aviv University is one of the most well-documented cases, but the phenomenon is widespread, as university campuses in territories under Israeli control have never been separate from the military apparatus. Israeli universities are effectively extensions of the military establishment, incorporated into a state system that supports and perpetuates the occupation. Officers who complete programmes like Erez graduate from campuses with a degree and military training, ready to impose Israeli domination on millions of Palestinians, including university students.
Western collaborations
Looking beyond Israel's borders, Columbia University The University of Tel Aviv embodies the same unwavering spirit of openness and innovation as its Israeli metropolis, boasting a vibrant and pluralistic campus life. This was highlighted in 2020 when the university publicised a newly launched dual degree programme with the Israeli institution, presented as the sole academic pathway offered by Columbia in the entire Middle Eastern region.
For decades, European and North American institutions have maintained research collaborations and joint programmes with Israeli universities, which are often the only partnerships of their kind in the entire Middle East. Israeli academic freedom has been taken as a given, rarely as an object of verification.
The Cornell case is one of the most well-documented. It dates back to 2011, when Cornell University, one of the eight private universities that make up the U.S. Ivy League, and the Technion in Haifa won a competition launched by the City of New York to build a campus for applied sciences on Roosevelt Island. This led to the creation of the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute, funded by a $133 million donation from the founder of Qualcomm. The program offers dual master’s degrees in Connective Media, Health Tech, and Urban Tech and has incubated over 100 deep-tech startups. In March 2026, Cornell President Michael Kotlikoff rejected a student resolution calling for an end to the partnership, stating that the Technion is one of the university’s 159 international partners and that singling out a single partner on political grounds would be incompatible with academic freedom.
In Europe, however, the cooperation network around Horizon Europe continues to involve Israeli institutions in Union research programmes. In 2021, Israel joined the programme as an associated country, which allocated €1.11 billion of European funds to businesses, universities, and public bodies, distributed across 921 projects involving 231 beneficiaries. Among these are companies closely connected to the Israeli military. UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese has described this system as a channel facilitating scientific collaboration with institutions accused of complicity in the occupation and apartheid. Israel Aerospace Industries, which produces drones and components for F-35 fighter jets, participates in projects funded by Horizon Europe alongside Israeli universities and European companies.
Quanto all’Italia, da noi certe collaborazioni vengono servite con l’eleganza del buffet nei convegni universitari. I rapporti strutturali con il sistema accademico israeliano coprono settori che vanno dall’ingegneria all’aerospazio, dalla Cyber security alla ricerca dual use. Il Politecnico di Torino ha firmato nel 2013 an agreement with the Technion and the University of Turin to foster exchanges of students, faculty, and researchers, and joint participation in international tenders. This collaboration was part of an ongoing process initiated in the early 2000s when the Polytechnic took part in the European CAPECON project, coordinated by Israel Aerospace Industries, which focused on the development of unmanned aircraft. The programme included the Technion, European aerospace companies, and groups linked to the Israeli military industry, such as Tadiran. In the following years, relationships grew around aerospace research, artificial intelligence, and new technologies, involving the Polytechnic in industrial and scientific networks alongside Leonardo, Avio Aero, and TIM.
As for Italy, here certain collaborations are served with the elegance of the buffet at university conferences.
Politecnico di Milano has launched Collaborations with the Technion within European programmes dedicated to electronics, robotics and technological innovation. Bocconi University maintains exchange agreements with Tel Aviv University's Faculty of Law. The University of Milan had relations with Ariel University, an institution built within an Israeli settlement in occupied the West Bank.
Protest movements and unrest
Following October 7th, 2023, protests have made the debate unavoidable, leading students, researchers, and technical staff to call for the suspension of relations with Israeli universities accused of being integrated into the military and technological system of a state engaged in genocide in the Gaza Strip, a situation to which Italian institutions have responded unevenly. The University of Milan has formalised the termination of relations with Ariel University in December 2023, at the conclusion of an investigation initiated in 2022. The University of Palermo He/She/It has suspended the Erasmus project and future agreements with Israeli universities. The University of Cagliari initially motion rejected which requested the withdrawal from all existing agreements, only to then backtrack. The University of Turin He/She has decided to withdraw from the MAECI 2024 scholarship. for scientific cooperation with Israel, clarifying that this was a choice related to a single call for proposals. The Polytechnic University of Turin has Confirmed instead their own participation. Bocconi, however, maintains its exchange programmes with Tel Aviv University, which continues to feature among the universities partner on the university website.
Contrary to what happened in Italy, elsewhere in Europe the responses have been more categorical, as demonstrated by the University of Granada which in May 2024 approved the suspension of Erasmus mobility with Israeli universities and the interruption of agreements with Bar-Ilan and Tel Aviv for summer courses. An administrative court then partially suspended the decision, limited to research consortia promoted by the European Commission, while the other measures remained in force. The Université Libre de Bruxelles announced the suspension of all agreements and research projects with Israeli universities until an explicit commitment to respect the decision of the International Court of Justice. The University of Antwerp informed students that future cooperations would be discontinued, and ongoing projects would be completed but subject to an ethical review. The Faculty Council for Law immediately closed the agreement with Bar-Ilan, citing violations of international law in Gaza. In the Netherlands, the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies banned professional travel for its employees to Israel in June 2024 and Stuck the acceptance of bilateral funding from the state of Israel. In Canada various Trade unions and faculty associations have voted in favour of boycotting, including the University of Montreal, Wilfrid Laurier University, Renison University College, Emily Carr University, the University of Saskatchewan, and Toronto Metropolitan University.
Research collaborations of all kinds, linked to Israel, have come under fire in public disputes, dragging university administrations and research centres into the vortex of a conflict that is now also affecting the Western academic world.
The BDS against Israeli universities
Behind this pressure lies a movement that began way back in 2004 with PACBI, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. A year later, 170 organizations from Palestinian civil society launched the BDS call, inspired by the boycott of South African apartheid. The 2014 guidelines unequivocally state that the boycott is directed against institutions, sparing individuals. It extends to events, agreements, and joint projects until Israeli universities recognize the rights of the Palestinian people and end all complicity in violations of international law.
The reasoning underpinning this position is based on the evidence that Israeli universities place knowledge at the service of the army, train its officers, develop technologies used in the occupied territories, and provide legal and moral justifications for state violence. Collaborating with them constitutes a form of approval of this function. Institutions that benefit from a system of domination, proponents of BDS argue, have little reason to claim academic normality, treating it as an unearned privilege.
European and North American countries treat Iran or China as adversaries or troublesome competitors. The relationship with Israel is fundamentally different, because funding, weapons, diplomatic cover, and military alliances are guaranteed to a country that denies fundamental rights to millions of people, and boycotting Israel means putting an end to this complicity rather than imposing a generic sanction.
The inevitable accusation of antisemitism also arrives with the punctuality of the most exorbitant taxes, but the PACBI guidelines distinguish between criticism of the Israeli state and hostility towards Jews, targeting institutions that participate in government violence while sparing individuals. Supporters include anti-Zionist Jews, dissident Israeli academics, and intellectuals who reject the identification of the state of Israel with the Jewish people. They note that conflating the two serves to protect a regime rather than a community.
Yet, despite years of campaigns, protests, and international pressure, the academic boycott still remains far from having any structural effects. A 2024 study on the 2023-2024 academic boycott it concludes that the measures adopted are of a compromising nature, but there is a lack of radical rupture. Israeli universities continue to participate in European programmes, publish in international journals and receive funding from community funds, so the interruption of bilateral agreements leads to partial isolation.
This happens because many universities have perfected the art of writing verbose communiqués on peace and holding conferences on international law, only to then sign agreements with those who have ignored that law for decades. They use the same skill as a smoker who works as an oncologist. Or a chancellor who speaks of human rights in the morning and signs agreements with the Israeli army in the afternoon. For a long time, it was enough to package everything under the word “research” and no one asked too many questions. After all, with a sufficiently elegant PowerPoint, even war can seem like technological innovation. The novelty is that the herd of the naive has thinned, and some have begun to follow the thread that connects the slogans to the funding.
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2 Comments
Thank you for your interesting article. I would, however, like to point out that from a perhaps superficial reading, it might appear that all high-level research developed in Israeli universities is solely functional to a political project. This is patently false. To begin with, for an intrinsic reason: fortunately, purely speculative research still exists, consider fundamental mathematics for example. It is often implicitly assumed that knowledge for its own sake is not, or should no longer be, of this world. To believe this, or to implicitly endorse it, is perfectly functional to the dominant economic system.
I am highlighting world-class excellence in fundamental research in Israel, the Einstein Institute of Mathematics, to cite just one of many examples. I believe it is very difficult to argue that the research developed there is aimed at any political project or that it follows the priorities of the government of the state of Israel.
It remains true that only a minority (albeit not a negligible one) of Israeli academics take a firm and public stand against the horror. This is evidently a general and complex phenomenon that goes beyond the academic context and involves the entire Jewish people, including those in the diaspora.
Regarding the academic boycott (about which I had and continue to have reservations), linking it solely to the connection between academia and a supremacist government is reductive, misleading, and perhaps counterproductive for those proposing it. In my opinion, the strong argument for supporting it is that the boycott must force academics, who often live pleasantly in their splendid isolation, to take a stand.
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