Rights and Accountability 25 June 2025
Protesters in Brussels demand the arrest of Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu. (David Cronin)
The European Union is in no hurry.
The situation in Gaza has become so horrific that starving people are regularly massacred as they try to find food.
Yet in Brussels, a debate about potential action against Israel only began this week, as Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign policy chief, confirmed.
No debate should be necessary. The evidence that Israel is committing genocide is incontrovertible.
Stating that plain fact is nonetheless taboo among Western diplomats. A formal assessment requested by EU foreign ministers merely concluded there are “indications” that Israel is in breach of its obligation to respect human rights.
That obligation is supposedly central to the association agreement underpinning the EU’s relations with Israel.
This month marks the 25th anniversary of the agreement coming into effect.
Throughout those 25 years, it has always been possible to find a lot more than “indications” of something being amiss. For Palestinians, the denial of fundamental rights is a daily reality.
Every so often during the past 25 years, the EU has signaled that Israel may have to face some consequences for its illegal conduct. In 2013, for example, the Tel Aviv government accused it of causing an “earthquake” by drawing up guidelines saying that Israeli firms and institutions based in the occupied West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Golan Heights were not eligible for EU funding.
The guidelines were a response to complaints that Ahava – a cosmetics maker with a factory in the West Bank – was participating in the EU’s scientific research activities.
The seismological significance of those guidelines was wildly exaggerated. Ahava has continued operating in the West Bank – although, according to the firm, its plant there is temporarily closed – and has continued receiving EU subsidies.
Greening the occupation
In May, the EU approved two research projects involving Ahava. One is focused on “sustainable oil crops,” the other on biodegradable packaging.
Ahava has been allocated a combined total exceeding $880,000 under the two projects. But the issue is far bigger than the financial sum involved: The EU is helping a firm that is inextricably linked to Israel’s unlawful occupation of the West Bank to market itself as environmentally responsible.
Israel is a major recipient of EU research funding, bagging $1.25 billion between 2020 and last year.
Beneficiaries of those subsidies in the past few months include the Israel Innovation Authority.
A state body, it is working with Israel’s military – the same military that has destroyed Gaza and committed countless other crimes – on encouraging the greater use of artificial intelligence.
The authority also promotes Israel’s drones – routinely tested on Palestinians – as tools for reducing traffic congestion and pollution. Implying that weapons can be clean and green is in keeping with the optimistic note lately sounded by Dror Bin, the authority’s CEO.
He has predicted a “baby boom” of new technology start-ups following the war against Gaza. One consequence of the boom will be that arms used in the genocide can be adapted for civilian purposes, he has suggested.
While Bin speculates about a possible “baby boom,” Israel is busily slaughtering and starving actual Palestinian babies. The Brussels hierarchy considers the killing of civilians as abhorrent, just not abhorrent enough to expel Israel from its activities.
Hydrolite, another firm awarded an EU science grant in the past few weeks, is a subsidiary of the Israeli weapons giant Elbit Systems.
Elbit is adept at finding sales opportunities amid a genocide. Its order backlog is now valued at more than $23 billion.
True, Elbit encountered a small setback earlier this month when it and other Israeli companies were blocked from exhibiting their wares at a Paris arms fair. The ban offended Elbit to such an extent that it posed as a victim of oppression.
If an Elbit subsidiary is deemed eligible for an EU science grant, then it has not exactly been ostracized in Western Europe.
Nor is the EU threatening to deprive Israel of further funding. The debate about possibly doing so at some unspecified time in the future has only just begun.
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