Role of Israeli Universities

The Technion Institute is an Israeli public research university, and one of the many examples in Israeli academia that blur the civilian-military distinction. Education and research at the Technion is focused on the development of technologies, including hi-tech weaponry, and the university serves as an incubator for the Israeli military-industrial complex. Technion University forms part of the R&D wing of the Israeli military. 

One facet of this relationship is the longstanding research partnership with Israeli arms company Elbit Systems Ltd., which in addition to supplying weapons to the IDF, also provides electronic detection devices used in the illegal Israeli Separation Wall in the West Bank, has developed and built drones for the Israeli military for combat use in occupied Palestine, and played a leading role in the construction and surveillance of Israel’s wall which was declared illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004 [4]. Elbit has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund research and scholarships at Technion, as well as training students in a laboratory they operate on campus focused on research relevant to military industry [22].  Elbit Systems' attack UAVs, the Hermes 900 and Hermes 450, have been widely used by the Israeli Air Force during its current attack on Gaza, as well as in previous assaults in 2014 and 2021 [5]. Weapons produced in collaboration with Elbit Systems are first used on Palestinians, marketed as battle tested, and then sold to other states [5]. 

“The Technion is woven into Elbit’s DNA.” —Michael Federmann, Chairman of Elbit Systems [21]

“Elbit Systems is proud to be an active partner in advancing the research being carried out at the Technion … the investment in research and development is one of the key factors for Elbit Systems’ success so far and it is a vital condition for our continued leadership in the global defense industry.” —Yossi Ackerman, Elbit Systems Ltd.’s President [22]

“The new program that we are launching and the annual contribution that Elbit Systems will give each year to research … is an example of fruitful cooperation between the Technion and the industry. I have no doubt that our students and Elbit Systems will enjoy and reap the fruit of this cooperation soon.” —Yitzhak Apeloig, Technion’s President [21]

In 2013, Rafael Advanced Defence Systems Ltd. directly recruited 150 students from Technion to direct research into future armaments. The students divided their studies between Rafael and the Technion [6]. Rafael, a major supplier of the Israeli military, is a product of Israeli academia. It is an evolution of the Science Corps from the universities of Technion, the Weizmann Institute, and Hebrew University [7] and has maintained a research and project-based relationship with Technion for many years. In 2001, Technion announced a three-year in-house MBA program, tailored specifically for Rafael managers [8]. In partnership with Rafael, students and faculty members of the Technion’s Faculty of Aerospace Engineering launched a “two-stage research rocket” in May 2006 was completed by the participation of approximately 20 different students under the supervision of Technion Professor Alon Gany and Yitzhak Greenberg from Rafael [9]. Rafael routinely engages in on-campus solicitation of students for employment, guiding them in choosing the academic paths necessary to meet the future needs of the company. It has even tailored positions explicitly for Technion graduates, including offering transportation between the campus and its facilities as well as offering tenure to selected students [22]. Technion’s Department of Aerospace Engineering was developed alongside and continues to collaborate closely with the Israeli military industrial complex. For example, it hosts faculty and student projects funded by the Ministry of Defense and Rafael to develop technology for drones and missile systems among other weapons [22]. In 2021, the Technion also committed itself to a new project developing software for Rafael, Elbit, and Lockheed Martin [22]. Elbit Systems also boasts close ties with the university as Technion specifically trains students to work at the company [14] . More broadly, student's academic theses at the university regularly involve weapons research [16] and the university also provides courses through a program called "Defense Strategy for International Markets" on how to brand the country's weapons industry to global audiences [15].

These military companies are deeply embedded into the Technion and are difficult to separate from the university itself. Researchers and students regularly move back and forth between the security state and academia, the companies often directly fund laboratories, and technologies developed at the university, including missiles and drones, have gone into production at military companies and then used by the Israeli military [22]. Furthermore, the Technion itself has manufactured technologies specifically to torment recalcitrant populations. The so-called ‘Scream' is a ‘non-lethal’ acoustic system that “creates sound levels that are unbearable to humans at distances up to 100 meters”; this crowd-control weapon is mainly used to suppress unarmed Palestinian demonstrations [10]. The Technion conducts a wide variety of research into technology and weapons used to advance Israel’s settler colonial project. For example, in 2007, the Technion Autonomous Systems Program (TASP) created unmanned controlled vehicles such as drones, autonomous cars, trucks and other vehicles. Under this program the D9 remote-controlled bulldozer was created [1] enabling the Israeli army engineering unit to demolish approximately 25,000 Palestinian homes since 1967, according to the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolition [2]. The bulldozer can demolish apartment buildings before the residents have a chance to escape. Because drivers might refuse to commit such horrendous acts or fear accountability for committing war crimes, the bulldozers can be remotely controlled by an anonymous operator [3]. Under the TASP, the “Stealth UAV drone” which carries 499 kg “smart bombs” and the “Dragonfly UAV” spying mini-drone were also created [3].

Technion plays key roles not only in helping develop technical advancements for the Israeli military industrial complex, but also in promoting its products abroad. For example, the university hosts a biannual Conference on Aerospace Science, organized in collaboration with the Israeli Air Force, Rafael, and Israel Aerospace Industries, in order to facilitate collaboration between the university and military industries directed at global export. After the start of the global War on Terror, Technion opened the Center for Security Science and Technology in order to enhance the collaboration between the Israeli security state and private industry abroad. It organizes annual conferences with military industry leaders and Ministry of Defense representatives alongside Technion faculty and students, where the latter are able to present recent technological innovations with military applications [22]. The university also explicitly offers courses on arms and security marketing and export. The academic advisor for that particular program, Meir Shalit, is the former head of the Department of Export Supervision at the Ministry of the Defense who has called the program an engine of growth for the Israeli security sector and particularly useful for new Israeli weapons companies [22]. 

While the Technion asserts its commitment to protecting freedom of speech, Arab students are restricted in exercising their basic rights of expression and in forming an Arab student union. In recent years, there has not been a single event organized by any Palestinian student movement at the Technion. Meanwhile, the general student union, which identifies as apolitical and claims to represent all students, routinely hosts political Zionist events. They do not organize programs for Palestinian students and typically oppose any efforts to do so. The university has long supported military personnel through official channels. It is a sponsor of the Psagot "IDF academic reserve program" depsite Psagot being an illegal settlement in the West Bank [11]. In another example, after the 2023 invasion of Gaza the university's president stated that at Technion "students, administrative personnel, and academic staff rally to aid IDF soldiers" [12]. Additionally the university provided financial grants and benefits to reserve soldier-students who were mobilized for the invasion [13]. 

According to Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, Technion was complicit in ethnic cleansing in the Galilee, a north-central region of Israel largely populated by Palestinians. Leading academics from The Technion prepared a plan, published in 2003, which stated that the Jewish ‘takeover’ of the Galilee was a national priority [57]. 

Tel-Aviv University (TAU) sits directly on stolen Palestinian land as it was built at the site of the village of Al-Shaykh Muwannis which was destroyed during the Nakba in 1948. The last remaining building in the village currently hosts the university’s faculty club [22]. The university plays an important role in shaping Israel’s security doctrine. The IDF ethical code was developed and maintained in cooperation with professor emeritus Asa Kasher, former Chair of Professional Ethics and Philosophy of Practice who has publicly argued in favor of mass killings of Palestinian civilians [17]. Kasher provided a complex academic analysis, according to which the amount of harm to the civilian population during Operation Accountability (1993) was “legitimate and in the precise dosage” [18]. Over 90% of the casualties in the operation were civilians that the Israeli military attacked with the stated purpose [19] of terrorizing the population in southern Lebanon, in order to induce a flow of refugees towards Beirut. Kasher co-authored an amended version of the ‘Hannibal Directive’, which stipulates that a dead soldier is better than a live captive. While denied by the IDF, it recently laid the grounds for the IDF killing of Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023 as reported by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory submitted to the Human Rights Council [20]. Kasher also worked on the committee that formulated the legal framework used by the Israeli state to justify targeted assassinations. This committee reportedly also debated how many Palestinian civilians it would be permissible to kill in order to save a single Israeli. Later, Kasher and the executive director of Tel-Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), Amos Yadlin, went on to write Israel’s “Ethical Doctrine for Combating Terror”. This document, which was supported by three military chiefs of staff during the Second Intifada, is considered to be Israel’s “counterterrorism doctrine” and forms the basis for its military guidelines. These theorizations were used to provide legitimacy to the policy of disproportionate killing. Kasher and Yadlin argue that large amounts of “collateral damage” beyond what is allowed under international law are permissible on the basis of Israel’s obligation to protect human life, positing that it is immoral for Israel to endanger the lives of soldiers deployed to the occupied territories by prioritizing the safeguarding of the lives of Palestinian civilians [22].

“We, in Israel, have a major role in developing the law in this area, because we are at the forefront of the fight against terrorism. This is gradually being accepted in both the world and the Israeli legal system … What we do becomes the law.” - Professor Asa Kasher, Tel-Aviv University [22]

The INSS, which is hosted inside of Tel-Aviv University itself, hires retired military officers and maintains close ties with politicians and generals. It prides itself in having developed the Dahiya Doctrine, or doctrine of disproportionate force that advocates violent collective punishment of the civilian population. Widely adopted and employed by the Israeli military, the Dahiya Doctrine calls for “the destruction of the national [civilian] infrastructure, and intense suffering among the [civilian] population”. The former head of the National Security Council, Giora Eiland, writing on behalf of the INSS, stated that Israel must conduct wars by “destroying houses and infrastructure and causing suffering for hundreds of thousands” [58].  

Tel-Aviv University also employs former Colonel Pnina Sharvit Baruch as a senior research fellow and director of the Law and National Security Program at the INSS. In her role, she facilitates the collaboration between military personnel and academics in order to develop interpretations of international law that defend Israeli military operations and policy. Prior to joining the university, military jurists under Sharvit Baruch’s leadership had contended that Palestinian police cadets would likely be absorbed into the armed forces resisting Israel’s military offensive and were therefore legitimate targets for assassination. Under her tenure, the Israeli military also developed and legalized the practice of “roof knocking”, where smaller munitions are shot at buildings ostensibly to warn civilians immediately before they are bombed, in order to clear the military of accountability for civilian casualties. This practice was first deployed during the 2008-2009 Gaza War and was condemned by the UN and human rights organizations as it was determined to be an inadequate measure to protect civilians. Two weeks after the ceasefire was signed in the 2009 Gaza War, Sharvit Baruch was hired as a lecturer into the Department of Law at Tel-Aviv University. Despite UN condemnation, the military extensively used the tactic of “roof knocking” in subsequent offensives on Gaza in 2012, 2014, and 2021 and the INSS Law and National Security Program continues to formulate legal defenses of the practice [22].

“...if a red line is crossed, Israel will be the one to strike first and very forcefully, in the timing, place and method of its choosing.” - Professor Asher Susser, Tel-Aviv University advocating for Israel to embrace “pre-emptive strikes” [22]

The university’s Law Department also trains lawyers for the Military Advocate General, which engages in the whitewashing of war crimes and avoidance of international monitoring mechanisms. One of the graduates of the academic reserve program is Prof. Gabriella Blum, who laid the groundwork for a legal authorization of extrajudicial assassinations as part of her work for the military [59,60].

In addition to providing the legal scaffolding for Israel’s occupation and military offensives, Tel-Aviv University is also closely involved in training military and intelligence agents. The university’s School of Electrical Engineering runs the “Galim” MSc. Program where soldiers receive academic instruction from the Intelligence Corps in order to prepare them for roles in the technological units of the military and security forces.

“The Galim program is another important step in strengthening the relationship between academia and industry, and in this case the IDF. It is about utilizing the potential that exists in the connection between exceptionally high-quality youth, and the needs of the IDF’s intelligence units.” - Mark Shtaif, Head of Tel-Aviv University’s School of Electrical Engineering [22]

Tel-Aviv University won a Ministry of Defense bid to host the “Erez” BA program for officers in military combat units. The degree offers an academic program focused on military areas of interest where “military and academic training are intertwined,” and the cadets are transformed “from civilians to elite fighters.” Soldiers enrolled in this program are in uniform and permitted to carry their military weapons to campus [22]. The university also hosts the Yuval Ne’eman Workshop for Science, Technology, and Security which is directed by the former head of the Israeli Ministry of Defense’s Directorate of Defence Research and Development, Issac Ben-Israel. This department is responsible for leading academic research with military applications, including missiles, guided weapons, robotics, and cyber-security projects. It hosts an annual conference on campus in collaboration with the Israeli government and weapons companies in order to showcase technological innovations from Tel-Aviv University to Israeli military companies [22]. Overall, the university has conducted more than 50 joint research projects with the Israeli military [27], including collaborations between Tel-Aviv University’s Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology and Israeli weapons manufacturers Elbit Systems and IAI. 

Additionally, Tel-Aviv University runs a venture capital fund named TAU Ventures. The fund worked directly with Shin Bet to establish the Xcelerator program for startups which provides selected student projects with a $50,000 grant from Shin Bet as well as mentoring and consultation from the agency. Companies that emerged from the program include Talamoos and Cybara, which develop algorithms to predict behavior and encourage targets to open links or install software which enable state surveillance [22].

Finally, the university’s archaeology department regularly conducts digs in the occupied West Bank, illegally removing artifacts and helping to provide legitimacy to  illegal settlement projects [22].

Tel Aviv University is an important participant in Israel’s mechanisms of occupation and war at every level: shaping the military doctrine and the ethical code that permit the intentional targeting of civilians, developing technology that allows the execution of this doctrine as precisely as possible, and finally – providing legal defense against accusations of war crimes.

Ben-Gurion University was founded in 1969 in the Negev, a southern arid region primarily inhabited by Bedouin tribes where Israelis were historically much less willing to settle [23] in order to “develop the Negev” and “make the desert bloom” [22]. The Israeli state has for decades expelled Bedouin communities from the region and expropriated their land [24], and Ben-Gurion University has played a key role in the “Judaization” of the region by attracting Israelis to the area and facilitating their settlement. The university hosts and supports several organizations on campus which found exclusively Jewish settlements across the region for students to live in with the explicit goals of forming permanent communities on lands previously inhabited by Bedouins. One such organization, Ayalim, is run by Israeli military veterans and has a stated goal to “revive Israel’s settlement model”. Ayalim has founded 22 student-villages with highly subsidized housing exclusively for Jewish students. The villages are run in collaboration with the local government as well as the World Zionist Organization’s settlement division and are promoted by Ben-Gurion University [22]. As with other Israeli institutions of higher learning, Ben-Gurion University also partners closely with the military. It is scheduled to receive over $16 million to expand the campus in order to absorb thousands of soldier-students, while the Ministry of Defense says it will encourage Israeli soldiers and their spouses to study at the university in order to “strengthen the ecosystem between the security apparatuses, academia, and the population in the Negev” [22].

The university offers several programs for training the next generation of soldiers and intelligence agents for the Israeli security state. Since 1990, it has partnered with the Israeli air force to provide the academic side of the curriculum for the Israeli Air Force Flight School’s training programs, a collaboration which was formalized in 2004 [25]. It offers specialized degree programs for soldiers, including an accelerated BA for fighter pilots. The university also offers the “Brakim” BSc and MSc programs in engineering in order to train soldiers for R&D in the military and defense industries [22].

“The combination of military and academic training requires close and deep cooperation between the university and the air force flight academy. Each side brings to this joint program tradition, principles and values that at first glance seem very different, but upon deeper examination it is evident that their similarities are greater than their differences.” - Professor Michael Codish, former head of the air force program at Ben-Gurion University [22]

Researchers at the university actively work on developing autonomous vehicles for surveillance, targeting systems, structures which can withstand rocket and artillery strikes, and cybersecurity technologies among other technologies [27]. The science and engineering departments at the university have institutional collaborations with Israeli military units specializing in information, communications technology, and aerospace [22]. This collaboration has been formalized through the development of the new Gav-Yam Negev, an advanced technologies park, where the IDF is planning on relocating thousands of soldiers related to cybersecurity and technology. The first IDF building at Ben-Gurion University was opened in 2019, directly adjacent to the Gav-Yam Negev [26]. The site was launched in collaboration with the Israeli military, private investors, and the local municipality, and is expected to become Israel’s principal R&D center. In addition to the IDF, Ben-Gurion University also has partnerships with Israel Aerospace Industries, Elbit Systems, and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. In 2019, Rafael and Ben-Gurion University signed a multi-year research collaboration after Rafael opened an R&D center at the advanced technologies park [28]. Additionally, the university’s commercialization company, BGN Technologies, operates joint research ventures with Rafael, Elbit, and Lockheed Martin [22,29].

Bar-Ilan University is another Israeli institution involved in the settlement of Palestinian land. Most notably, in 1982 it opened a regional branch in the illegal settlement of Ariel, located in the West Bank. Bar-Ilan University administered the site until 2004 when Ariel University gained its independence. Ariel University is one of 8 Israeli institutions with full university status and the only one located beyond the “Green Line” [30]. Continuing its role in settlement projects, Bar-Ilan has been heavily involved in illegal archaeological digs in the West Bank which serve as a pretext for founding or expanding illegal settlements in the region. One example is the case of Khirbet al-Mazra’a, where in 1998 Bar-Ilan University began an excavation which served as a cover for the establishment of the illegal settlement of Amona [22]. The university has continued these projects into the present day. The Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology conducted excavations at Khirbet Jib’it and Khirbet Marajim in 2020 and at Khirbet Tibnah in 2022 on the lands of Palestinian residents of the villages in that area [22]. The university is also involved in illegal digs in East Jerusalem, principally via its association to the settler organization Elad. Elad’s stated mission is to “Judaize” Palestinian East Jerusalem and runs archaeological digs and tourism around the Old City, facilitating the gradual takeover of Palestinian lands by Israeli settlers. Bar-Ilan University, together with Tel-Aviv University and Hebrew University, has collaborated with Elad on excavations, offered joint courses, and university staff have appeared on the Elad website as well as participated in Elad conferences and events [22]. 

“The only thing that can deter terrorists, like those who kidnapped the children and killed them, is the knowledge that their sister or their mother will be raped. What can you do, that’s the culture in which we live.” - Professor Mordechai Kedar, Bar-Ilan University [31] 

As is the case for other Israeli universities, Bar-Ilan maintains close ties with the security state. The university’s commercialization company, BIRAD, operates a long running partnership with Rafael and facilitated a research collaboration between the university and Elbit’s technology incubator. The company also organizes meetings between university researchers and Elbit’s technology team in order to introduce the weapons company to academic developments which are “on the verge of implementation” [22].

“[BIRAD’s] meetings are one of the tools that Elbit uses in order to maintain technological leadership, monitor emerging and breakthrough technologies, and provide feedback to academia on the needs of industry.” - Alon Stoppel, Chief Scientist at Elbit Systems [32]

Students are given the opportunity to work with the IDF [33] and defense companies [34] through annual hackathons organized by the engineering department. Additionally, Bar-Ilan University provides training for soldiers and other agents of Israel’s security apparatus. For example, it offers the “Bareket” MSc program in data engineering to teach soldiers data science, coding, and programming for military applications [22]. A separate set of BSc and MSc programs in security are aimed at training Shin Bet agents [35].

The University of Haifa is located atop Mount Carmel in the Galilee, the only region of Israel with a Palestinian majority, and has played a role in consolidating and expanding Israel’s control over the area. Palestinian villages once populated the slopes of the Carmel mountain range before their residents were expelled during the Nakba in 1948. The university overlooks the city of Haifa and the remains of these destroyed villages. Parts of the university campus were built on the ruins of one such village, al-Khureiba [22]. A key role that the university has played in expanding Israeli territorial control has come in the form of helping to plan “mitspim”: exclusively Jewish settlements located in strategic locations which serve as lookouts and break up Palestinian territorial contiguity. Scholars from the University of Haifa studied the geography and demographics of the area and published reports with suggestions such as “introducing a big urban Jewish settlement in the Nahal Eron region, which constitutes a consecutive Arab area” [36]. One such planner was the University of Haifa professor, Baruch Kipnis, who explained that the mitspim project sidestepped standard building procedures by not consulting the usual Israeli authorities and not holding a period for public comment in order to maintain secrecy and prevent Palestinian protest. These outposts served to create “facts on the ground” and continue to exist to this day. In the years since their founding, University of Haifa researchers have been recruited by the state of Israel to study, assess, and improve the settlements. Publications from these studies have designated state lands “subject to ‘Arab infiltration’ [as] infected areas”, framed the Palestinian presence as antithetical to the “natural landscape”, and that the mitspim constitute a “human right” to preserve the “character and culture” of the region and maintain “Jewish sovereignty” [22]. Arnon Soffer, professor at the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Haifa, has published dozens of books and articles about how to win the “demographic battle” against the Palestinians including forced population transfers of Arabs from Israel to the West Bank [22, 37]. 

Though Palestinians make up a majority of the population in the area, their students face long commute times as they live in areas far from the university. Students have protested in order to have the university organize transport with local companies but were disciplined for their actions. Due to these long commute times Palestinian students rely heavily on dormitories, though their applications are often denied. One reason is that military service constitutes up to 41% of the eligibility criteria for the dorms, but Palestinian citizens of Israel are not drafted into the military. A legal case brought by students against the university to remove this criterion resulted in the court determining that the policy did indeed constitute discrimination, but the university refused to accept the ruling and appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court which upheld the university’s right to give preference to military veterans [22]. 

Similar to other Israeli universities, the University of Haifa maintains a close relationship with the Israeli security state. Until at least the early 2000s, it hosted a communications tower operated by the Israeli military [22]. The University also offers training to military personnel. For 14 years it ran the “Havatzalot” program for soldiers in the Intelligence Corps. as part of their training before the program was transferred to Hebrew University. It still offers programs to military personnel through degree programs at three Israeli military academies: the National Security College, the Tactical Command College, and the Alon Command and Control College. At the National Security College it offers a masters degree in security theory for high ranking members of the military and security agencies. The National Security College is headed by an Israeli major-general and offers masters programs to members of the military and security forces. At the Alon Command and Control College the University of Haifa offers tailored degrees in political science to army battalion commanders and air force squadron commanders [22].

“The University of Haifa is responsible for the academic training of the IDF’s command core for years to come, and we are proud to open our door to IDF forces and to be the academic home of the security forces. These dear people are working day and night for the security of the State of Israel and we will provide them with the highest level of educational content.” - Professor Ron Rubin, former president of the University of Haifa [22]

When it comes to civil society, the university is also responsible for training Israel’s propaganda arm. In 2012, the Comper Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Anti-semitism and Racism at the University of Haifa started the “Ambassadors Online” program. Though initially an extra-curricular activity, the program is now an accredited course which offers scholarships for some participating students. The program offers academic and practical training to students so that they may become unofficial ambassadors for the country and create content for public diplomacy [22]. 

The University of Haifa is notorious for repressing the political expression of its Palestinian students on campus. Despite being only 30% of the student body, Palestinian students make up 90% of disciplinary cases. These cases have been brought against students for peaceful protests or even for holding vigils. Though organizations in Palestinian civil society and even the Israeli state comptroller have documented the university’s use of these disciplinary hearings as a method of suppressing Palestinian student activism, the practice remains common to this day. In the early 2000s, the University of Haifa added a clause to its charter which allowed its president to suspend all public activity on its campus indefinitely. The following decade saw the clause activated so often in order to prohibit Palestinian student activity that student organizers and some faculty took a court case all the way to the Israeli Supreme Court which ordered the clause rewritten to place some limits [22].

Hebrew University was founded in Jerusalem in 1918 and is the first major institution of higher learning established by the Israeli state. Early on, the university system was determined to be a critical part of the nascent Israeli state and since its inception Hebrew University has played an important role in expanding and reinforcing Israeli power within the region. Its role in dispossessing Palestinians goes back decades. The university was founded on the top of Mount Scopus, both as a strategic outpost and as a symbol of the political claim to the city of Jerusalem.  During the Nakba in 1948, the university negotiated with the military governor in order to gain the authority to appropriate books left behind by Palestinian refugees. Teams of librarians and students from the university joined soldiers as they combed through Palestinian neighborhoods, looting 30,000 books in addition to newspapers and journals over the course of the following ten months. These documents were added to the National Library and more than doubled the number of Arabic language texts held by the institution. The Palestinian neighborhood of Al-Issawiyeh located on the slope of Mount Scopus beneath the campus has been the most heavily affected by the presence of the university. Israel initially annexed one fourth of the neighborhood’s land in order to expand the university and build Jewish settlements but in the decades since over 90% of the neighborhood’s territory has been expropriated in order to build campus expansions, a hospital, more settlements, major highways, and two military bases. One of the major roads into the neighborhood runs through the university and was closed to the Palestinian residents. Israeli police use buildings on the university’s campus to conduct surveillance and police residents with the support of the Hebrew University administration. The university has also expanded its footprint into occupied East Jerusalem and also built student accommodation inside of an illegal settlement there [22].

In 1967, in the wake of Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, Hebrew University established the Institute of Archeology. Since then the institute has participated in illegal excavations in the occupied territories in order to justify Israeli claims. Israel established the Ir David National Park outside of the Old City walls in the East Jerusalem Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan. Part of the park has been designated as an archaeological site and is administered by the settler organization Elad whose stated mission is to Judaize Palestinian East Jerusalem. Inaugural excavations were headed by Hebrew University professor Yigal Shiloh in 1978, and faculty from multiple institutes and departments at the university have participated on digs there in the years since [22]. Hebrew University professors Shmarya Guttman, Yizhar Hirschfeld, and Avraham Negev also led digs at the West Bank village of Susiya [22] after the Israeli military expelled the residents from their homes and declared the area an “archaeological site” in 1986 [38]. Between 2017 and 2019, archaeologists from the university have performed excavations in the Qurman caves in the occupied West Bank where they claimed and removed scrolls and other artifacts from the site [22]. University researchers have also been involved in excavations at the Temple Mount, where digs came under criticism from international scholars for using bulldozers to dig straight through the strata from Arabic periods which erased artifacts and destroyed Islamic monuments [22].

Similar to other Israeli universities, Hebrew University maintains close ties with the military and security state. Researchers at the university are involved with research into cyber warfare, artificial intelligence, surveillance and defense technologies. The university operates a commercialization company, Yissum, which claims to be the global leader in “homeland security” technologies. Millions of dollars from the US annually go into funding “counter-terrorism” research efforts at Hebrew University, as well as to support the acquisition of technologies by Yissum [22]. Additionally, Yissum and Lockheed Martin have an agreement which grants the former the exclusive license for any invention resulting from joint research efforts [22, 39]. This close collaboration with the military industrial complex extends to the leadership of the university. Michael Federmann, who is the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Elbit Systems Ltd., is also a member of the Board of Governors at Hebrew University and the Weizmann Institute. Apart from working on weapons research, Hebrew University is also involved in training military and intelligence personnel. Among these is “Hvatzalot”, a program which offers soldiers a BA in Middle Eastern studies in addition to military training, and “Gamla”, a BA program for Intelligence Corps. officers who are preparing to reach the rank of major. The Department of Middle Eastern Studies also offers tailored academic programs with regional expertise to active duty soldiers in elite military units and personnel within the security services as well as a separate BA aimed at training Shin Bet agents. The “Talpiot” BSc program at the university, run under the Administration for the Development of Weapons and  Technological Infrastructure and the Israeli Air force, combines an education in physics, computer science, and math in order to prepare students for leadership in the technological research needed for the development of weapons systems [22]. 

The university also maintains close ties to the Israeli police forces. The Institute of Criminology at Hebrew University was selected to be the “home department” of the Israeli National Police (INP). Researchers from the institute have worked closely with INP and regularly use Palestinians arrested by the police as research subjects. Often data collected by Shin Bet or the police through torture or illegal interrogation methods is used in university research and the research generated by the university is sent back and helps shape police policy. Several studies at the institute were funded by the US Department of Homeland Security, and university faculty have served as experts for delegations of security agencies including US police departments. The university runs two educational programs for the police forces; an accelerated BA program in criminology for officers and a criminology program for station commanders and officers seeking promotion. In 2023, the rector of Hebrew University affirmed the institution's commitment to the INP at a graduation ceremony and expressed pride at “the privilege… to contribute to your training” [22]. Additionally, CCTV cameras located on the university’s campus serve as a part of a militarized surveillance network of the Old City [41]. 

“At our department there were discussions about what to do because there were ‘too many’ Palestinian students. In our field it is mostly women, and we have a lot of women Palestinian students. I often heard faculty and senior admin describe this as a problem.” - Professor As Ronit, Hebrew University [22]

Student life is also affected by Hebrew University’s policies. The university worked with the security agencies to establish a penalty and reward system for Palestinian students which rewarded students for “good behavior” including dissipating dissent among the Palestinian student body or participating in Israeli propaganda with benefits such as travel passes, money, and job recommendations. On the other hand, Palestinian students which were found to have engaged in activism have often been investigated and faced disciplinary measures. The Hebrew University Medical School maintained hard caps on the number of Palestinian students (no more then 2-3 per cohort) until the late 1960s. Today no formal cap exists, but subjective tests and interviews are used to informally limit the number of Palestinian students, with university administrators openly stating they intend to prevent “undesirable” demographic changes to the student body [22].

The Weizmann Institute of Science is the crown jewel of Israeli academia and produces cutting edge research across a wide range of scientific fields. However, its origins are interconnected with those of the Israeli military industrial complex and the institute has remained inextricably linked with the defense and nuclear sectors since its inception. It was founded in 1934 in Rehovot during the British mandate, a decade before the establishment of the state of Israel. David Ben-Gurion, the head of the Jewish agency who went on to become the first leader of Israel, determined that the development of a local arms industry was critical to the establishment of an independent Israeli state. In 1947 Ben-Gurion ordered the creation of the IDF’s Science Corps. (HEMED) and enlisted the nation’s scientists, primarily from Technion and the Weizmann Institute. The new unit was based at the Weizmann Institute and was tasked with designing and building explosives and weapons [42], including anti-tank munitions, heavy mortars, mortar rounds, landmines, and aerial bombs [43]. After the war, members of the HEMED stayed at the institute and joined various positions in its departments. Israeli leadership came to believe that progress in the development of military technology would derive from civilian industry which led to the Science Corps. being disbanded in 1951 and reconstituted as the arms manufacturer Rafael Advanced Defense Systems [42,43]. The infrastructure developed at the Weizmann Institute also went on to establish the defense firm Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) [22].

“A large part of Israel's military success in the War of Independence can be credited to the Science Corps., which developed and manufactured armaments and laid the foundations for Israel's defense industry… The best evidence for the power of Ben-Gurion's vision was that the organizations that originated in the Science Corps., including Rafael, the Negev Nuclear Research Center, and the Israel Institute for Biological Research, are responsible for the most crucial elements of Israel's defense system” - Ettay Nevo, Editor in Chief of the Davidson Institute of Science Education at the Weizmann Institute of Science [43]

In addition to laying the groundwork for the Israeli military industrial complex, the Weizmann Institute offered critical support to the Israeli nuclear program. In 1948 Israel Dostrovsky, a major in the IDF Science Corps., founded the Department of Isotope Research at the Weizmann Institute and the HEMED Gimmel unit. The unit was tasked with searching the territory for useful ores and located small amounts of uranium in the Negev [43,44]. Researchers under his leadership developed methods for uranium extraction and enrichment at the Institute. Weizmann’s nuclear physicists also advised the Israeli military on the nuclear program [44]. Ties to the nuclear program could be found at all levels in the institute. Physicist Isidor I. Rabi, who had worked on the Manhattan Project during WWII was later placed on the Weizmann Institute’s board of directors [45]. In 1958 Abraham Feinberg, a Democratic Party fundraiser in the United States, was assigned by Ben-Gurion to fundraising efforts for Israel’s covert nuclear weapons program. 11 years later, he was made the president of the American and Israeli branches of the Weizmann Institute [46]. By the late 1980s, studies commissioned by the U.S. Department of Defense determined that the Weizmann Institute had been actively engaged in nuclear weapons research and the Internal Revenue Service was asked to examine the tax-exempt status of the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science. The studies found that Weizmann scientists had developed high energy physics and hydrodynamics programs which were needed for nuclear bomb design as well as advanced methods of uranium enrichment, and had started working on supercomputing capabilities necessary for reducing the size of the warheads enough that they could be equipped on Israel’s long range missiles. Supercomputer export licenses were denied to Technion after it was found that their scientists were working at one of Israel’s nuclear facilities and it was debated whether this should extend to the Weizmann Institute as well [46]. Weizmann scientists also helped pinpoint possible sites for nuclear waste disposal [47].

“CI-3B believes that the Weizmann Institute is an academic organization which conducts research in high-technology issue areas, including theoretical aspects of nuclear and conventional weapons development. The Weizmann Institute is believed to be a private institution. However, a review of numerous newspaper articles suggests that the Weizmann Institute employs former Israeli government officials, is consulted by the Israeli government regarding specialized research areas, and often serves as a revolving door for Israeli nationals to move between the private sector and government positions.” - Memorandum from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1993 [47]

Close collaboration between the Israeli military and the Weizmann Institute contributes to this day. We list some examples here, though the list of projects is far from exhaustive. Scientists at the Weizmann Institute have partnered with Elbit Systems on vehicle camouflage [48] and bio-materials [49] research. A project with the U.S. Air Force resulted in the publication of methods for the geo-localization of vehicles using drone imagery [50]. The Weizmann Institute also continues to maintain deep research ties to Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. Though the company does not publicly comment on most of its operations, it has confirmed that it is interested in developing quantum sensors for GPS-denied environments which can be used in submarines, aircraft, drones, and by commando units during raids. Rafael and the Weizmann Institute are currently collaborating on the development of quantum sensors for these applications [51]. Another significant research effort between the two entities is in the field of quantum computing where researchers are developing trapped-ion quantum processors as well as the software necessary to run them [52, 53]. There are also examples of collaborations on nanomaterials [54].  The university recently awarded Elbit Systems and IAI a contract to supply a space telescope and delivery system with $16 million going directly to Elbit [55, 56]. Additionally the Weizmann Institute runs Kiryat Weizmann, a high-tech science park which aims to foster collaboration and joint research between the institute and corporations. Rafael, Elbit, and its subsidiary Elbit Systems Electro-Optics all operate facilities inside the park. The National Laboratory for the Development of Space Cameras was inaugurated by the Ministry of Defense at the park and works on technology for detecting targets illicitly photographed by drones [22].

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