Why is the EU still teaming up with Israel's tech firms?

Josep Borrell, the EU’s chief diplomat, is now a hate figure for Israel. (European Union)

If news headlines are a reliable gauge, relations between Israel and the European Union are worse than ever.

Josep Borrell, the EU’s chief diplomat, is now a hate figure for the Tel Aviv government. Israel Katz, the foreign minister, recently branded Borrell an anti-Semite – a baseless accusation – for observing that an attack on a Gaza school violated international law.

The headlines do not tell the complete story.

Borrell has actually been accommodating toward Israel for most of his five-year term (which ends in November). He effectively gave the green light to the wholesale destruction of Gaza as it got underway in October 2023 by depicting Israel’s massive state violence as defensive.

The Brussels bureaucracy has, in any event, plenty of staff managing links with Israel apart from Borrell. Numerous officials have continued dealing with Israel on a business as usual basis despite how the International Court of Justice has deemed a genocide case against that state as plausible.

One thing that has escaped the attention of the mainstream media is that the EU approved a project on computer chip technology involving five Israeli firms during the current genocide.

The lack of media interest is intriguing given that the project is quite expensive. It has been allocated $109 million, nearly one quarter of which comes from the EU.

Named 10ACe, the project is ostensibly aimed at “pushing the boundaries of semiconductor design.”

The project is taking place amid a bigger drive by the EU to strengthen its so-called “technological leadership.”

Israel is a full member of an EU-led partnership on chip development. The partnership combines both public authorities and private firms.

Teaming up with Israel is morally reprehensible. But it is also suspect from a more hard headed perspective.

Israel’s economy is in evident decline as a direct consequence of that state’s belligerence over the past year. Its repeated downgrading by credit rating agencies is perhaps the most visible manifestation of that decline.

Israel’s attractiveness to the tech industry has diminished.

The US corporation Intel has invested heavily in Israel for decades and signaled last year that its chip manufacturing activities there would soon expand. The expansion plans have, however, been put on ice, almost certainly because of the current situation.

The economic decline is likely to worsen if Israel persists in waging war on Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon. And there is a distinct possibility that Israel will eventually become an international pariah in the way apartheid South Africa became.

Against this backdrop, the European Union’s business as usual approach to Israel is both repugnant and foolish.