The leaders of nine Israeli universities have issued a statement making violent, dangerous and totally baseless accusations against the student mobilizations inspiring defunding from Israeli genocide and apartheid. These same universities defend Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians. Bar Ilan University is one of them.
The Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory has an agreement with the Bar-Ilan University in Israel, described as “a new era of scientific cooperation” that will allow Israel to “maintain its technological superiority”, in the words of the Israeli University. Bar Ilan University works closely with the Shin Bet, Israel’s IDF security services, which have been condemned by the UN Committee against Torture for their use of torture and other illegal violent interrogation tactics. Bar Ilan’s engineering school has been running hackathons in collaboration with the Israeli military and Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapon producer. Bar Ilan University established the “College of Judea and Samaria”, now the independent Ariel University, in the illegal Israeli settlement of Ariel in occupied Palestinian territory in violation of international law. Colonial settlements are considered a war crime under international law.
Nanotechnology is an advanced science that can change the world and save lives. But it can also be used for war and genocide! Several of Bar Ilan’s researchers are involved in these developments, seeking to produce, for example, bulletproof vests that are much more resistant than traditional ones, which could then be used by the Israeli military in the Genocide of the people in Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan and elsewhere.
We demand that INL, its researchers and directors, and the Iberian states:
– Do everything possible to divest from this partnership, and cancel it if evidence is found that the final applications of the research benefit the Israeli genocidal state;
– Assure the international community that you are not using this advanced technology for genocide or military technology, military self-defense, personal armor or other war applications;
– Do not abuse the international and renowned status of the INL and the United Nations, to propagandize the so-called “Israeli Scientific Superiority” in the terms of its partner, – “superiority” which has already caused thousands of deaths in Palestine during 75 years of illegal occupation in an Apartheid regime, leaving ALL the universities in Gaza destroyed in bombings;
– Disclose in a public statement the scope of their partnerships and research with Israeli Universities, and commit to disclose and divest from business with Israeli companies complicit in the Genocide, such as Bar Ilan University.
According to the report of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Israel is plausibly committing genocide in Gaza and Occupied Palestine. All states, institutions and corporations – including the INL, are placed on urgent notice: they must consider very carefully their involvement with Israel and its institutions as such ties may now constitute complicity in genocide.