#tau — Public Fediverse posts on home.social

[...] Like most of Israeli society, Israeli academia keeps digging in and ignoring the growing criticism and the calls for boycott from other academic institutions over its part in building and refining Israel's war and destruction machine. It does not acknowledge its responsibility for the crimes Israel commits in Gaza, the West Bank and across the Middle East. It would rather please those in power and those who profit from the war.

A new report examines the symbiosis between Israeli universities and the army.

Academia under Command, by New Profile, documents military-academic programmes and curricula that train troops for military roles, recruitment of teenagers into the army, joint research and development of arms, campuses that function as de facto military bases, arms companies and Shin Bet and Mossad recruiting students on campus, discrimination in admissions and student housing, and the exclusion of students, the silencing of academics and military indoctrination.

[...] The conference website also carries four recent publications on the Israeli military industry. Two of them came out last December: a Wall Street Journal article headlined "Israel's new military technology: tested in Gaza, coveted in the West", and a piece in Breaking Defense, a journal devoted to the arms industry, headlined "Israeli official says Gaza conflict was ‘first robotics war’".

[...] Alongside the Israeli bodies, there are development and trade bodies and government and private associations from Germany, Sweden, Taiwan, Canada and the US. In 2023 Ramot boasted of a memorandum of understanding for research cooperation it signed with the international arms giant Leonardo. Ramot's then CEO, Keren Primor, told the ice website it was "a great privilege to be the first Israeli academic institution to join Leonardo".

#UNESCO counts 79% of higher education campuses in Gaza destroyed or damaged and 88,000 students stripped of access to higher education. The report says the destruction of Palestinian academia in Gaza is "a distorted mirror image of the state of academia in Israel." Israeli institutions "remained silent as the Israeli state has been committing war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Tel Aviv University is the model. Its new vice president for industry is Hagi Itkin, 20 years in Shin Bet, ending as head of its technology division, and chair of Ramot, TAU's commercialisation company, which signed a research agreement with Leonardo in 2023. TAU co-hosts DefenceTech Week with the Defence Ministry and MAFAT: 22 sponsors, 28 partners, Shield AI, Rafael, IAI, Lockheed Martin.

Hebrew https://www.mekomit.co.il/%D7%9E%D7%9C%D7%97%D7%9E%D7%94-%D7%A0%D7%A9%D7%A7-%D7%A2%D7%A1%D7%A7%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%95%D7%90%D7%A7%D7%93%D7%9E%D7%99%D7%94-%D7%94%D7%9E%D7%A7%D7%A8%D7%94-%D7%A9%D7%9C-%D7%90%D7%95%D7%A0%D7%99/

PDF: https://newprofile.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Militarism-in-Israeli-Academia.pdf

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israels-latest-military-tech-tested-in-gaza-wanted-by-the-west-3d9add02

https://breakingdefense.com/2025/12/israeli-official-says-gaza-conflict-was-first-robotics-war/

#unesco #bds #academicboycott #tau #gazagenocide #israel #palestine