Slogans such as “Israel murders, Europe sponsors” and “if Horizon does not stop, the Intifada will return” accompanied the closure this afternoon of the Spanish office of the European Parliament in Madrid. About a hundred people demonstrated at number 46 Paseo de la Castellana to demand that Israel be excluded from Horizon Europe, an investment program that distributes hundreds of millions of euros, among other things, to technological development projects. Called by Camp for Palestine in the capital, the same mobilization was reproduced at the European level in cities like Dublin, Lisbon, Paris, Athens, The Hague, Stockholm, Vienna, Luzembourg, Barcelona, Krakow, Copenhagen and Hamburg.
Ricci Galiano, spokesperson for Acampada por Palestine Madrid, explained to elDiario.es that Israel participates in Horizon Europe as a non-EU member, although it has the same rights as a member state. This program distributed some 95.5 billion euros between 2021 and 2027. According to figures processed by the pro-Palestinian collective, Israel took 3 billion euros over the last ten years, and 1.1 billion euros during the last distribution cycle, 2021-2024.
“Given the context after October 7, 2023, we consider that Israel must be excluded from the distribution of these funds because at the moment we are paying for a genocide with public money,” denounced the spokesperson.
Such a sum of money goes to universities, research centers and even the Israeli Ministry of Defense, criticizes Camp for Palestine, which takes as an example to follow what happened with Russia, expelled from Horizon Europe after the start of the invasion of Ukraine.
The money that supports the genocide
Galiano emphasized that this research funding is not only intended for projects related to Israel’s security and defense: “We found something very special, which is dual-use. A lot of research is presented as for civilian use, but we have no guarantee that their results and materials will not be used in a military context.”
In this sense, Camped for Palestine highlights that European public money finances Israeli-sponsored programs related to drone technology, weapons, with companies like Elbit or Israel Aerospace Industries, surveillance systems, AI censorship and interrogation techniques. “Even if this funding is not always received directly by the institutions involved in the architecture of the genocide, it allows their support,” defended the spokesperson for the anti-Zionist collective.
So far, the groups have not formally approached the EU to express their demands. Galiano says they haven’t done so because, in part, they know it’s an issue they’ve left aside. “There were discussions at parliamentary level during the bloodiest moments of the genocide, but Israel was never removed from Horizon Europe,” he said. Furthermore, he considers that in a context of war rearmament and militarization, “it is clear that the EU does not want to break its relations with Israel, a key arms supplier.”
During the demonstration, various banners were also seen, highlighting the collusion of Madrid universities with Israel. According to these messages, the Complutense University continues with 10 collaboration contracts with Israeli entities, as does the Polytechnic University, with 12 contracts, the Autonomous University, with 5 contracts, and the Carlos III University (UC3M), with 7 open collaborations.
The EU and the whitewashing of Zionism
Jaime Pérez, a CSIC employee, decided to support the protest: “Citizens cannot remain silent and Israel must take responsibility for the massacres it has committed,” he declared a few minutes before two activists performed a small performance. Dressed in a mask of Netanyahu and Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, they simulated the good harmony between the two leaders.
Nearby was Carlos Muela, who demanded the exclusion of Israel from European funding programs. This high school teacher assures, on the other hand, that “sometimes it is easier to talk about human rights with children than with certain adults” and that “the problem does not come from the new generations, but from the manipulation of the media”. Meanwhile, around them, people chanted slogans such as “Horizon covers up war crimes” and “This embassy better be closed”, in reference to the US embassy, located near the site of the mobilization.
He was followed in his remarks by Beatriz Payo, student at UC3M, who stressed that “the European Union is one of the great entities that whitewashes Zionism, and it has done so historically.” This is why he considers it essential that European citizens demand accountability from their institutions. “Today we are few in number, but we are still active and we will be until Palestine is free,” he concluded.
Going beyond the limits of the European Union
Encamped for Palestine was born at the dawn of protests led by university students after the start of genocide by Israel from October 7, 2023. Among its main demands is the complete severance of relations with Israel in the field of academic collaboration and research. Today, the movement is trying to articulate itself more broadly. “We saw that our limits and our goals point towards the EU, and that is why we mobilized here today,” Galiano said as hundreds of cars passed behind him along the six main lanes of Paseo de la Castellana.
Today there are around forty similar groups organized together at European level, established in around thirty cities. They are the ones who provoked this international protest which took place in 21 of the largest cities on the continent. For example, in Spain this was repeated in Barcelona and Girona, and the Brussels rally took place in front of the European Parliament.
Their objective is that this campaign undertaken against the EU and the “complicity” it maintains, according to what they denounce, with the Israeli genocide, is long-term. “This concentration was a first step in international coordination that will allow us to achieve our objectives,” comments the spokesperson for Acampada por Palestine.
A research project complicit in the genocide
Around 6:40 p.m., Galiano himself read the press release ending the mobilization. As he shared surrounded by smoke from flares lit by other activists, “Europe funds ‘anti-terrorism’ projects, that is, those that develop technologies to monitor and weaken the resistance in Palestine and our social movements here.”
According to the group, Europe designs the drones used in the massacre of the Palestinian people and invests millions in projects which, under the guise of promoting the well-being of European citizens and their fellow Israeli citizens, finance the academic and economic network which develops energy projects in the occupied territories to supply illegal settlements.
Camp Palestine demanded that Israel be expelled from Horizon Europe “because any European research project that includes Israel is automatically complicit in genocide, directly or indirectly”, and stressed that “there are no innocent Israeli companies or institutions”, since “every Israeli company or institution is openly dedicated to the colonial cause of Zionism, to the genocide of the Palestinian people.”
As they have demonstrated, Israeli agricultural companies carry out research in Horizon-funded projects, while at the same time manufacturing herbicides with which the Israeli army sprays and poisons Palestinian olive trees every year.
“There is no intermediate point,” assured the spokesperson. He then stressed that “supporting the Palestinian people today necessarily implies isolating Israel on all fronts.” After criticizing the government led by Pedro Sánchez for its “symbolic gestures” towards the Palestinian cause, Acampada por Palestine added that “we know that youth can resist this imperialist and genocidal framework if we organize.”
It had been more than half an hour since the sun had said goodbye to this major economic and institutional artery of the capital when the protest ended. “We demand to isolate the genocidaires to see in our lives the fall of Israel and the victory of the Palestinian people and their resistance from the river to the sea”, they demanded before closing the call with the cry of “long live free Palestine”.
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