By ¡Do Not Panic! – The Grayzone
The EU has given Israeli technology start-ups run by ex-IDF soldiers nearly half a billion euros in research grants since the start of the Gaza genocide. Some of the founders of these tech start-ups have served as reservists in Gaza, and in at least one instance the technology has been deployed to aid the genocide.
The Horizon Europe program, described by the EU as ‘a scientific research initiative to develop a sustainable and livable society in Europe,’ has awarded around 475 million euros to 348 Israeli start-ups and research projects since October 2023, many of which are run by former IDF soldiers and intelligence officers.
In 2024, the EU awarded grants of €220m to 179 companies and initiatives run by Israelis. The scale of this funding, coming in a year when the world’s pre-eminent genocide experts all declared Israel was committing a genocide, a year in which entire cities were wiped out and tens of thousands of civilians murdered, is staggering.
In the same year Israel was also the third largest recipient, behind France and Germany, of ‘accelerator’ grants, a separate component of the Horizon program intended to support small and medium-sized companies working to improve life in Europe.
In 2025, the year in which Israel announced its full-scale ethnic cleansing plans and scholars estimated that 434,000 Palestinians in Gaza had been murdered by Israel, EU funding for Israeli tech initiatives still topped 110 million euros.
And this summer, with Gaza being driven officially into famine by Israel’s deliberate starvation campaign and as the Knesset was voting through a final solution, the EU was still dolling out tens of millions to companies run by ex-IDF personnel.
Horizon funding is critical to Israeli science and the Israeli economy. Since the inception of the programme in 1996, the EU has given Israeli companies, some of which have been directly spun out from the Israeli military, €3.4 billion euros. Israel is by far the largest non-EU recipient of Horizon, and its researchers are given an extremely generous, even curious amount of money for a program designed to support European researchers and European society. The president of Israel’s Academy of Sciences and Humanities said in May that cutting Israel off from EU research and innovation funds would be “almost a death sentence for Israeli science.”
Israel’s participation in the Horizon program has drawn attention in the past. Campaigners have argued the program is breaking its purely civilian mandate by giving money to Israeli institutions linked to the security state, and have demanded Israel is cut from the program. Under pressure with the genocide of Gaza moving into its final stages, the European Commission recently proposed a limited, partial ban on Israeli access to Horizon. It’s unclear though if the tepid move will garner enough votes from member states to pass. While Israel’s participation in Horizon has been the subject of controversy, the individuals behind these EU-funded initiatives, many of whom have a significant military background, have not previously been named. I’ve also found clear evidence that the program, which is mandated to support exclusively civilian applications, has funded military technology deployed during the genocide of Gaza.
The largest Israeli recipients of Horizon funds, as detailed by the EU in its database of funded initiatives, are Israeli universities and research institutes. Number one on the all-time list, having raked in over half a billion euros, is the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel’s most important scientific center. Information about the projects funded by Horizon at the institute are hard to find, and the publicly documented ones are wrapped in the language of civil use. But Weizmann has long partnered with Israeli weapons makers including Rafael, Israel Aerospace Industries, and Elbit Systems. The institute also hosts a masters program for active duty IDF soldiers, promising to help them ‘balance’ killing with study. A 2023 press release boasted about a brainstorming session between Elbit Systems and Weizmann researchers to “integrate Weizmann Institute’s scientific innovation to accelerate joint development.” Since then Elbit and Weizmann have announced they’re collaborating on bio-inspired materials for the IDF and a military space telescope. The chairman of Elbit Systems, the billionaire Michael Federmann, sits on the Weizmann Institute’s board. Iran significantly damaged the institute with a targeted missile attack in June, citing its connection to Israel’s military and its nuclear weapons program.
Second and third on the list are Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv University, which combined have been given nearly €1 billion through Horizon. Hebrew University hosts a military base on campus offering academic training to Israeli soldiers while Tel Aviv University runs joint centres with Israeli military and weapons companies. The Technion, Israel’s institute of research, is fourth in the all-time list, receiving €316 million in European funds. It has multiple partnerships and scholarships sponsored by Israel’s biggest weapons manufacturers, and runs a course on how to market the Israeli arms industry to international export markets. Technion also plays a key role in developing the quadcopters which have murdered untold Palestinians in Gaza.
Bar Ilan University is fifth on the EU’s grantee list having been given €123 million. It has a whole faculty called the Security Arms Section which acts as a pipeline to a career in Israel’s apartheid apparatus, providing undergraduate and graduate programmes on all elements of Israel’s security state. Bar Ilan also runs an annual ‘hackathon’ in collaboration with the Israeli Ministry of Defense. The university is also known to work closely with Shin Bet, Israel’s security services.
Ben Gurion University, sixth on the all-time list having received €121 million of EU taxpayer cash, hosts the Homeland Security Institute, whose partnerships include Israeli arms companies and the Israeli ministry of defense.
We see in these connections what the full militarization of an apartheid state looks like. Few countries in the world have such overt, casually declared links between the military, the security establishment and academic institutions.
And in the midst of a genocide committed by the people and technologies that flow from these institutions, the EU has kept the tap open. Last year the Weizmann Institute received €52m and has been granted €15m so far this year. Tel Aviv University got €30m from the EU last year and has been given €21m in Horizon funds to August this year. Hebrew University was granted €30m last year and €10m so far in 2025.
Another institutional grantee, the Israel Innovation Authority, received €4m from Horizon in 2024. The IIA is led by Dror Bin, a former Israeli air force officer and its chairman is Ami Applebaum who served in unnamed ‘classified technology units’ of the IDF. In 2023 the IIA, sitting alongside Israel’s fanatically genocidal finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, announced the launch of a new fund for Israeli tech start-ups, underscoring the IIA as a component part of Israeli genocide.
The EU also gave millions in Horizon grants to launch a European Innovation and Technology Hub in Israel. Part of the team at the EIT Hub Israel is Sahar Sazgar who served in the IDF’s Egoz Unit, a specialist branch tasked with secretive commando operations including assassinations.
IBM Israel, which has taken €7m from the Horizon program since the genocide began, provides and operates the software which documents all Palestinian arrivals, departures and crossings at Israel’s military-run checkpoints. IBM also provides the software which enables the systemic collection of information, including biometric information, on the Palestinians.
Precisely what European taxpayer money is funding at IBM and these other institutions is ambiguous. What the data can’t hide however are the names of the individual start-ups and initiatives backed by the Horizon program. And this information tells us that EU research grants legally restricted for civilian use only are funding people and technologies funneled directly out of the Israeli military, some of whom have participated in the genocide of Gaza.
SpacePharma, a start-up developing laboratories to orbit in space, was given €2.1 million of Horizon cash last year. SpacePharma’s CEO, Yossi Yamin, is the former chief commander of the Israeli Satellites Unit. The satellites unit is a wing of Israel’s space agency, itself a subdivision of the Israeli military, and is responsible for the satellites that surveil and spy on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. These satellites also direct missile launches and are fundamental to the country’s missile interception system. SpacePharma is effectively a direct spinout from Israel’s apartheid framework.
The team behind OncoHost, an immunotherapy start-up which received a €2.5m Horizon grant in May this year, are direct participants in genocide. In 2023 they sent five of their employees to serve in Gaza, led by CEO, Ofer Sharon.
The founder of Codium, an AI start-up backed by Horizon funds in 2024, also served in Gaza at the start of the genocide. Itamar Friedman said he “wanted to be part of the people who protect our country.”
A transparently direct IDF carve out backed by Horizon money is Wi-Charge, a wireless mobile charging system the EU supported last year with €2.2m. Wi-Charge began as a project of Unit 81, a specialized technological unit within the IDF dedicated to developing technology to maintain its apartheid system. For their work the team behind Wi-Charge, including CEO Victor Vaisleib (who spent 15 years in the IDF) and chief technology officer Ori Mor were given the Israel Defense Award, the highest award for technological excellence and contributions to the State of Israel.
Sightec, a manufacturer of AI navigation technology for drones, received almost €2.5 million from the EU last year. I found evidence the technology is not only designed for military use, but has been deployed on Palestinians in Gaza. Earlier in August the CEO of Sightec, Roy Shmuel, bragged on LinkedIn that Sightec technology was ‘combat-proven and deployed on over 3,000 drones in critical missions.’ This admittance of Sightec’s military use is a clear breach of Horizon’s ostensibly civil mission and a violation of EU treaties which explicitly prohibit the program from funding military applications.
NeuReality is another Israeli AI start-up backed by Horizon cash. NeuReality, which makes processing units used to train AIs, is led by Moshe Tanach, a run-of-the-mill Jewish Israeli supremacist. Last year he posted on LinkedIn about the need to dismantle UNRWA, the UN agency which provided a huge amount of civil services, including food, to Palestinians in Gaza. The dismantling of UNRWA enabled Israel to wage its campaign of starvation on Gaza.
A start-up backed with significant EU funds and steeped in Jewish supremacy is Belkin Vision. The company, which makes lasers to treat eye diseases, received €17.5 from the Horizon program. Its CEO Michael Belkin, a high-profile ophthalmologist from a family of settlers, was head of a research department in the IDF and fought in the 1973 war between Israel and Arab states.
NeuroKaire, a personalized medical care company, is another company receiving EU funds led by a probable war criminal. Its chief executive Elad Bibi-Aviv, was a lieutenant colonel during the second intifada when Israel committed numerous atrocities. His LinkedIn profile says he was specifically responsible for coordinating ‘government activities in the Territories’ i.e. Gaza and the West Bank, during the period.
Israel is a high-tech terror cell masquerading as a liberal democracy. A logic of militarization is baked foundationally into the fabric of the country and the military touches every strata of society, including science and research. It could hardly be otherwise. Israel itself is a product of dispossession and ethnic cleansing at the barrel of a gun. The evolution of the state has proceeded logically from this material basis.
And today the Israeli tech sector is the jewel in the crown of the Israeli economy. It delivers tax revenues worth billions and is a central component of apartheid and genocide. Israeli science and technology is also a critical weapon in Israel’s soft power arsenal, enabling the country to wash its brutal history and bloodthirsty present in a pro-social scientific facade. And this, as much as the funding itself, is why Israel is practically begging the EU not to cut it out of the Horizon program. Through the integration of its people into European institutions, Horizon is an integral component of the legitimization structure that surrounds Israel. This integration into European scientific institutions provides Israel with a form of coercive leverage by morally compromising European researchers working with Israelis.
The EU’s Horizon program is another node in the network of western taxpayer support which keeps Israel artificially afloat. Israeli researchers benefitting from EU grants (researchers who also received free higher education at Israeli universities as a result of western aid) are structurally integral to Israeli genocide and some have likely directly committed, or aided, war crimes.
Whether the EU can disentangle itself from Israeli science and research will help determine whether, against all the odds, liberalism can locate a moral center and revive itself.