UK´s Complicity In Israeli Field Testing Of Drones On Palestinians in Gaza

Bringing drone use out of the shadows and into the transparent light of the international community isn’t in the interest of those who make, sell and use drone technologies. In a report released this week, the U.K. was found guilty of buying technology tested on Palestinian refugees in Gaza. 

The War on Want report cites a deal between the U.K. and Israeli governments to develop the new surveillance drone through a joint venture with Israeli arms contractor Elbit Systems and its partner company, Thales UK. The Watchkeeper, War on Want asserts, is built on “the Israeli Hermes 450, described as the ‘workhorse’ of Israel’s military in its operations in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Israeli companies such as Elbit will often boast of their competitive advantage in the global arms market due to their extensive ‘testing’ of their weaponry in ‘real life’ situations.” Those “‘real life’ situations” have affected the lives of more than one million Palestinians in Gaza. 

John Hilary, executive director of War on Want, wrote in the report’s preface that “the British government is, in effect, buying technology that has been ‘field tested’ on Palestinians. By continuing to license arms exports to and imports from Israel, the British government is giving material support to Israel’s aggression against the Palestinian people, and sending a clear message of approval for its actions.”

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The term “boycott” has its origins in Ireland.

It entered the English language during the Land War of the 1880s — the struggle across the Irish countryside between impoverished tenant farmers and their often absentee landlords.

To their shame, some Irish universities are involved in research partnerships with Israel’s arms industry and its academic supporters. Trinity College Dublin, for example, has participated in a surveillance technology project alongside Elbit, one of two main suppliers of drones used by Israel to attack civilians in Gaza.

University College Cork has teamed up with the Technion, a Haifa-based institution that has developed bulldozers specifically designed for demolishing Palestinian homes.

These projects are financed by the European Union.

Israel has taken part in the EU’s scientific research activities since 1997. Since then, its universities and enterprises have coordinated no fewer than 1,070 EU research projects and participated in 3,000 more. A veteran Irish politician Máire Geoghegan-Quinn is currently overseeing the EU’s research program.

Despite a row last year over “guidelines” reiterating EU policy that work undertaken in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank should not be eligible for research funding, Geoghegan-Quinn has taken no action to prevent Israeli weapons-producers from receiving subsidies. As a result, companies that make Israel’s tools of occupation and apartheid will be able to benefit from Horizon 2020, the Union’s new multi-annual research scheme.

Read full article Ireland-invented-boycotts-so-lets-use-them-demand-justice-palestine