Joint Statment: Call for University’s Withdrawal from CATALOOP Partnership with Israel’s Technion and Ben-Gurion University
Date: 13 March 2025
University College Dublin has recently joined a new EU-funded consortium, CATALOOP, which researches artificial intelligence. The €2.6 million project includes Israel’s Ben-Gurion University (BGU), and the Technion, Israel’s Institute of Technology, which are deeply embedded and complicit in Israel’s regime of apartheid, illegal colonial settlement, and occupation. University College Dublin’s decision to join a new project with BGU and the Technion is indefensible and runs counter to the spirit of its own statement that ‘UCD is a university with a strong commitment to human rights’ and is ‘outraged by the ongoing mass killing of civilians, the withholding of humanitarian aid, and the destruction in Palestine by Israel.’
In particular, Ben Gurion University (BGU) hosts the Homeland Security Institute whose partnerships include Israel’s top weapons companies, the Israeli Ministry of Defense, and BGN Technologies–a technology transfer company that develops unmanned ground vehicles as well as climbing robots for military use. Furthermore, the Israeli military’s ‘smart’ technology campus adjacent to BGU has been built with the specific aim of furthering the ties between the military and BGU. As a brigadier general at the ribbon cutting ceremony put it, it ‘reinforces the army's operational capabilities.’ Similarly, the Technion works with Israel’s arms industry, including its top weapons manufacturer Elbit systems, has joint programs with the Israeli military, and develops technology used in Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians. The Technion prides itself on its financial, technological, and personnel contribution to the Israeli military and its occupation of Palestinian territory and has been described for many years as ‘an elite university for Israeli student-soldiers … the Technion, its lecturers, researchers and students have become an essential cog in the Israeli war machine, a pillar of hard-line Israeli policy.’
As highlighted by Dr Maya Wind, an expert on the international export of Israeli security expertise who spoke at several Irish universities in 2024, Technion even offers ‘courses on arms and security marketing and export.’ This is a central part of the Technion’s history and ongoing identity. Before, during, and since the forced displacement and expulsion of three-quarters of the Palestinian people in the 1948 Nakba (catastrophe), the Technion was part of the original group of universities that became ‘the military-scientific center of the Israeli state” and “led the development of Israeli military industries.’ The Technion helped create both Rafael, ‘one of Israel’s leading state-owned weapons corporations,’ which is a major supplier of missiles to its military, and Israel Aerospace Industries, another of the country’s major arms manufacturers, which supplies the Israeli military with jets, drones, and weapons systems. The extent of military research, laboratories, and partnerships are such that Israel’s military industries are ‘embedded in the Technion and are often difficult to distinguish from the university.’ This is reflective of the sector as a whole: while there is, as Wind puts it, sometimes a misunderstanding in the West that Israeli universities are liberal and progressive spaces that are independent of the Israeli security state, ‘they are actually central to sustaining it.’ Entering into major institutional projects with Israeli universities such as the Technion and BGU grants significant legitimacy to this complicity, at a time when our duty as members of the international academic community compels us to do precisely the opposite.
University College Dublin’s joining of CATALOOP, following 17 months of the ongoing EU and US-backed Israeli genocide, stands in stark contrast to the spirit of its statement in June 2024 when it condemned the violence in Palestine, proclaimed that the university followed the Irish government’s ‘recognition of the state of Palestine and their intervention in South Africa’s case against Israel under the Genocide Convention at the International Court of Justice’ and offered its own acknowledgement that ‘the university recognises the International Court of Justice rulings to prevent the violation of international laws in Palestine.’ Furthermore, in response to calls for divestment from the UCD BDS, UCD SU and the staff and faculty of UCD Justice for Palestine, the university pledged its commitment to ‘sustaining an anti-racist and anti-apartheid culture.’
These calls for UCD’s divestment followed an earlier call from almost 1,000 scholars across Ireland, including many in UCD, calling for an academic boycott of Israel and the suspension of any partnerships or affiliations with Israeli institutions in the context of the ongoing genocide. Just days after that call was published in the Irish Times in November 2023, as United Nations experts were increasingly warning of the devastating impacts of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza and legal submissions against Israeli genocide were being prepared for the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, and various national courts, the Technion announced the creation of additional financial grants and benefits for its 3,000 soldier students who joined the genocidal assault on Gaza.
For over two decades, the Palestinian movement for freedom, justice, and equality has called for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions ‘as a contribution to the struggle to end Israel’s occupation, colonization and system of apartheid.’ Calls for boycotting the Technion have been made throughout Israel’s ongoing genocide due to the institute’s involvement in the Israeli weapons industry and development of technology used in Israel’s genocide and destruction of Palestinian homes, schools, universities, medical facilities, emergency shelters, water and sanitation, and other vital infrastructure. Our Palestinian higher education colleagues have called for isolating Israeli universities and institutions such as the Technion in support of freedom and justice in Palestine. They have also highlighted Israel’s scholasticide in Gaza, where 494 schools and universities have been partially or completely destroyed by the Israeli occupying forces. According to the Gaza-based Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, 12,800 students, 760 teachers and educational staff, and 150 academics and researchers are estimated to have been killed in Israel’s ongoing genocide.
In signing approval of funding allocation by the European Commission to join the CATALOOP consortium on 5 July 2024, with the project funding commencing on 1 March 2025, University College Dublin has not only expressly disregarded legitimate calls for boycotting complicit institutions, but has also gone against the spirit of its own commitments to review the ethics of its existing investments and institutional affiliations in light of international law. The partnership with Technion and BGU also represents a double standard in the university’s response to serious breaches of international law. In November 2023, UCD Justice for Palestine and the UCD Students’ Union wrote to university management demanding that University College Dublin uphold its stated commitment to human rights by immediately enforcing a comprehensive and consistent boycott of all Israeli academic institutions in line with the precedent set in its response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In the latter case, the University announced ‘UCD’s absolute condemnation of the invasion of Ukraine’, reviewed its collaborations and connections with Russia and Belarus in order to ‘comply with all EU and Irish restrictive measures/sanctions which have been put in place against Russia and Belarus’, and took a ‘policy decision not to accept any research funding from entities in Russia or Belarus, whether from state-funded or private entities.’
In addition, we note that University management’s approval of the CATALOOP project was undertaken without any meaningful consultation, despite good faith engagement by students, staff, and researchers with the University over 17 months of Israel’s ongoing genocide. This seems a further continuation of the trend that UCD’s The University Observer noted when it wrote that the college’s administration has been reluctant to identify or amend its ‘existing and public ties with higher education institutions in Israel.’
Academics for Palestine, UCD BDS, UCD Justice for Palestine, and the UCD Students’ Union thus issue this urgent call. In particular, we:
Condemn University College Dublin’s decision to enter into partnership with the Technion and Ben-Gurion University as indefensible in the context of Israel’s genocide, settler colonial apartheid, and occupation.
Express our full support for UCD BDS and UCD SU’s critique of this latest project, and for any subsequent protests and solidarity actions undertaken by Palestine solidarity organisations on campus until the University fully withdraws and ceases its partnership with BGU and the Technion through CATALOOP.
Call for urgent interrogation of this partnership and any other projects or partnerships with ties to Israeli institutions and industry and for the development of clear policy recommendations aimed at ending all complicity in Israeli apartheid, genocide, and occupation, as required by international law.
Call for full transparency in University College Dublin’s decision-making, including good faith engagement with students, staff, and researchers. As such, we request the university as a matter of urgency to:
Develop a human rights impact assessment tool and applying it to the partnership with the BGU and Technion, detailing the grounds on which the project was approved, as well as applying it to all other existing collaborations with Israeli institutions;
Establish a mechanism for students, researchers, and staff to raise issues regarding University College Dublin’s existing partnerships, agreements, or investments that do not comply with its human rights commitments, allowing for the possibility of review and termination of such ties;
Reverse its funding approval and fully withdraw from any partnership involving the Technion, Ben-Gurion University or any other institution complicit in serious breaches of international law. This commitment demands that University College Dublin fully divest from, cut existing ties, and not enter into any new partnerships, including research consortia, with Israeli institutions and all other complicit companies and institutions.
Signed,
Dr. John Reynolds, Dr. David Landy, Academics for Palestine
Éabha Hughes,Aoife Kilbane-McGowan, Cillian Murphy, UCD BDS
Dr. Patrick Brodie, Dr. Sharae Deckard, Dr. Anne Mulhall, UCD Justice for Palestine
Miranda Bauer, President of UCD Students’ Union
