As nearly a dozen countries announced plans to recognize a Palestinian state in the last week, the European Union debated exerting an additional form of leverage on Israel, in the form of suspending its participation in Brussels’ flagship scientific research and innovation program.

Earlier last week, the European Commission proposed a partial suspension of Israel’s participation in Horizon Europe — a 95.5 billion Euro ($109.2 billion) program that covers all areas of science and technology and has contributed significantly to Israeli academia and its tech sector — in response to what Brussels called a “severe” humanitarian situation in Gaza, which it views as having been insufficiently addressed by the daily humanitarian pauses this week. 

The commission proposed to no longer allow Israeli entities to work with the European Innovation Council’s accelerator, which an Israeli diplomatic source estimated would lead to damages of about 10 million Euros ($11.4 mn.) to Israeli startups in the program, but none to research projects. 

The motion did not receive the qualified majority in the European Union Council, and therefore Israel remains a full partner in Horizon Europe. Germany and Italy reportedly blocked the suspension, and Tuesday’s meeting on the matter ended without a decision. The European Council presidency said after the meeting that it plans to continue talks about the matter. The Israeli diplomatic source said some countries wanted to continue monitoring the humanitarian situation in Gaza before reaching a decision.

The scare from Brussels came at a difficult time for Israeli academia, which has been facing overt and more subtle forms of boycotts, Emmanuel Nahshon, the coordinator for combatting academic boycotts on behalf of the Israeli Association of Universities, told Jewish Insider in an interview on Wednesday. 

Nahshon, a former ambassador and deputy director of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, who resigned last year in protest against the government, spoke about the challenges Israeli academia is facing in the shadow of the war in Gaza.

The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Jewish Insider: What did you think about the outcome of the European Council’s discussion on partially suspending Israel from Horizon Europe?

Emmanuel Nahshon: They decided not to decide at the EU level, because we still have Germany and Italy blocking a possible majority against Israel, but even the Germans are telling us that this cannot go on. It’s an expression of the increasing isolation of Israel, given the unending war in Gaza, which has become more and more difficult to explain … It creates a bleak picture.

I’m very happy that sanctions on Israel in Horizon Europe did not work out this time, but unfortunately, it will happen next time.

JI: Can you explain why Horizon Europe is so important?

EN: It’s a fund budgeted by the EU and its member states, a multi-year fund for six to seven years, and its purpose is to fund joint research and development projects. Israel is one of the few non-EU countries that have been invited to participate … starting in the mid-1990s. It has been extremely successful.

European funds are extremely important because they create partnerships and networks and this is part of what has made Israel the innovation hub that it is.

Israel has one of the highest rates of return on investment and are welcome partners in top-level projects of the EU. By cutting us out of those projects, it will really punish Israeli innovation and the Israeli economy. 

It’s not only about academic cooperation — it goes way beyond that. These are projects that are translated into concrete innovations for the welfare of humanity. 

JI: What kinds of challenges is Israeli academia facing from anti-Israel elements abroad?

EN: Immediately after Oct. 7 [2023 Hamas attacks on Israel], there were mostly student protests, encampments, violent protests – those are almost non-existent now. It has shifted in the last year to something else, institutional boycotts.

Universities have decided to cut ties with Israel, as have professional associations – medical, psychology, historians, mathematicians. It’s much more dangerous. We now have countries in which the majority of universities have no contact with Israel. In Belgium and the Netherlands over 80% of universities have severed all contacts with Israeli universities, as have most in Spain and Italy. It’s beginning in Switzerland, in Geneva and Lausanne. 

It’s a slippery slope. The more it happens, the more it is bound to happen. Universities copy one another.

On top of that, we have the silent, covert boycott. It’s like Voldemort [from Harry Potter], no one is saying its name, but it is there and we feel it all the bloody time. Israeli lecturers are not invited to international events anymore; articles are rejected; Israelis are not invited to take part in science and research consortia, etc.

If it continues for a year or two, we may face dire consequences.

JI: What would those consequences be?

EN: It’s the slow strangling of the Israeli academic world. We cannot function without contact with the outside world. Israel is too small a country to be able to have its own, internal academic world. We need contact with …the Ivy League and Western European universities.

On top of it, there is a phenomenon that began before the war, because of the so-called judicial reform, and that is Israeli academics leaving Israel. This is a brain drain that is noticeable and catastrophic. We are talking about tens of thousands of Israeli academics choosing to make their lives elsewhere. It began in early 2023 and the war made it worse.

JI: The Israeli Association of Universities (known in Israel by the Hebrew acronym VERA) hired you about a year ago to combat the academic boycott. What have you been doing?

EN: We have been working very hard on two levels. The first was to create internal coordination between different Israeli universities so we can speak the same language in the fight together. We did one thing that has been extremely useful, which is to create a common database. Now, on a regular basis, we have information coming from all the Israeli universities regarding boycott attempts and events. This is super useful, because now we know how many took place.

JI: How many? 

EN: By last count there were over 800 boycott events since last summer. Some are smaller, some are bigger.

[Nahshon provided JI with a presentation given by VERA to the Knesset Education Committee in May, which said that this year they received an average of 50 boycott reports per month — double that of the previous year. Broken down by country, the number of reports about the U.S., Canada and Holland more than doubled, Spain went up 125% and England increased by 55%. A third of the complaints from North America were about the suspension of individual collaborations between Israeli scientists and their colleagues, while 18% were about difficulty in publishing, and 18% were about not being invited to lecture or participate in conferences. In Europe, nearly a third of the complaints were about institutions ending their cooperation with Israelis.]

Boycotts are complex. It’s a bit like sexual harassment. People do not always want to say they’ve been the victim, so we have to encourage people. Now, more and more [academics] are reporting and we have a fuller picture of the situation.

JI: What do you do after receiving the reports?

EN: We do work all over the world on the legal, political and public relations fronts. We emply the services of a law firm in Brussels that is helping us tremendously, because a lot of institutional boycott cases violate European laws.

For example, if universities want to kick Israeli researchers out of Horizon Europe [grantee] projects, that is against European law … We have had many successes in which they immediately stop the boycott.

Politically, we want to encourage our friends to pass legislation against boycotts, like the ones that exist in the U.S. 

There are so many lies directed at Israeli universities that have nothing to do with reality, such as calling them apartheid or saying that Israeli academia teaches the military how to occupy or how to kill.

This effort is very new, very young. We need more budgets to function; it’s challenging. I have addressed the government without much success. We are looking for partners and funds, and we do the best we can with the limited means we have.

JI: The Weizmann Institute, one of Israel’s leading scientific institutions, was hit by an Iranian missile last month, which destroyed 45 labs. Are they going to have a hard time recovering because of international boycotts?

EN: I don’t think it will be a problem [raising funds for the recovery] because so many have expressed solidarity with the Weizmann Institute. They have so many friends around the world.

The problem is that the government is not fulfilling its mission. It should be the role of the Israeli government to commit to financing it, instead of fundraising … Israeli academia is not a priority for this government because it is identified with the more liberal wing of Israeli politics. 

Weizmann will be fine, but the problem is of a more general nature. I quote the head of VERA Daniel Chamovitz, who said that “you can see that the Iranians put higher education and Israeli research at the center of their launch map” — apparently the Iranians understand better than the Israeli government that academia is a top priority. They aimed at Weizmann and the Soroka Hospital [in Beersheba, a teaching hospital] for exactly that reason.

When the leaders of Georgetown University, the City University of New York and the University of California, Berkeley sat down on Tuesday morning to testify at a congressional hearing about antisemitism, they clearly came prepared, having learned the lessons of the now-infamous December 2023 hearing with the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and MIT, each of whom refused to outright say that calls for genocide violated their schools’ codes of conduct. 

Georgetown interim President Robert Groves, CUNY Chancellor Felix Matos Rodriguez and UC Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lyons were all quick to denounce antisemitism and even anti-Zionism at Tuesday’s House Education and Workforce Committee hearing examining the role of faculty, funding and ideology in campus antisemitism. 

But while the university administrators readily criticized antisemitism broadly, they struggled to apply that commitment directly to their field of academia. 

Lyons in particular offered a revealing look at the gulf between a university’s stated values and its difficulty in carrying them out. 

He was asked to account for the promotion of Ussama Makdisi, a Berkeley history professor who described the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks as “resistance” and later wrote on X that he “could have been one of those who broke the siege on October 7.” Why, Lyons was asked by Reps. Randy Fine (R-FL) and Lisa McClain (R-MI), did Berkeley announce last September that Makdisi had been named the university’s inaugural chair of Palestinian and Arab studies? 

Lyons first defended Makdisi: “Ussama Makdisi, Professor Makdisi, is a fine scholar. He was awarded that position from his colleagues based on academic standards,” Lyons said.  

Later, when McClain followed Fine’s line of questioning, Lyons went to great lengths to avoid criticizing Makdisi. 

“I want to separate the phrase from the person. If I heard some other person —” he said, before McClain cut him off. What, McClain asked, did Lyons think Makdisi meant with his tweet?

For five seconds, Lyons sat in silence. 

“I believe it was a celebration of the terrorist attack on Oct. 7,” he replied slowly. 

He shared that he had spoken to Makdisi about the social media post. Pressed to share what the conversation was like, Lyons returned to an earlier line: “He’s a fine scholar,” Lyons said. 

Lyons, like Matos Rodriguez and Groves, acknowledged that antisemitism exists at his campus. But they all struggled to reckon with what Republican lawmakers alleged was an explosion in antisemitism at each of the three schools after Oct. 7. 

“I believe that most Jewish students feel safe on our campus,” Lyons said, though he also said that he knows some do not feel safe. When asked why they may not feel safe, he demurred. 

“Well, I think there are Jewish people that don’t feel safe in lots of parts —” he said, cut off again by McClain, who asked him to speak specifically about UC Berkeley. 

“I think there is antisemitism in society,” Lyons said, before he was cut off again. 

Lyons repeatedly attempted to make the same point: “I do believe that public universities are reflections of society, and I believe the antisemitism in society is present on our campus,” Lyons said. Asked whether the actions that he takes or that his faculty take can influence the campus environment, he said yes. McClain accused him of “avoiding the question,” and asked: Would he commit to act to make sure all Jewish students and all students feel safe?

“I’m committing to striving to reach that goal,” said Lyons.

Each of the university leaders was asked, at different occasions, to account for faculty members who had shared antisemitic or pro-Hamas rhetoric. Matos Rodriguez, the CUNY chancellor, did not deny that the New York City university system employs antisemitic faculty, though he did not specify whether any action would be taken against them.

“We have faculty that might conduct themselves in antisemitic behavior, and we have no tolerance for it, and we’re clear about the expectations to follow all our rules and policies,” Matos Rodriguez said. “If any individual breaks those rules, they will be investigated, and the appropriate disciplinary action will be taken if warranted.” 

Presented with the cases of two faculty members who had shared pro-Hamas content on social media, Matos Rodriguez condemned Hamas, but did not say specifically if their rhetoric violated codes of conduct or led to any consequences.

“I have been very clear that Hamas is a horrible terrorist organization, and we have no tolerance at the City University of New York for anyone who would embrace that support of Hamas,” said Matos Rodriguez. “I clearly condemn the statements, and it’s been my testimony here, and our practice, that if any member of the City University community violates our policies and our code of conduct, we will conduct an investigation, and if discipline is warranted, we will take it, and we will not hesitate to do that, and we have done so.”

Groves, Georgetown’s president, shared early in the hearing that the university had taken action against Jonathan Brown, a tenured professor who faced criticism last month for a tweet calling for Iran to conduct a “symbolic strike” on a U.S. military base after Washington struck Iranian nuclear sites. Brown is no longer the chair of the university’s Arabic and Islamic studies program, Groves said, and he has been placed on leave pending an investigation. 

Groves, who faced several questions about Georgetown’s ties to Qatar, pledged to commit to disclosing every dollar that Georgetown receives from foreign sources. 

At the same time, he stood by Georgetown’s decision to award Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, the mother of the Qatari emir, with the university’s president’s medal in April. Sheikha Moza has a history of incendiary anti-Israel commentary on social media, including several posts praising the Oct. 7 attacks and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who orchestrated the violence. Rep. Mark Harris (R-NC) asked Groves why Georgetown gave her a medal, given those posts.

The medal was awarded because of her “decades-long work for educating, getting access to education, to the poorest children around the world,” Groves said. 

“I don’t support that tweet,” he added, when asked if Georgetown’s values include calls for the destruction of Israel. “That tweet is not consistent with Georgetown policy. We honored her for her decades of work in access to education to the poorest children of the world.” Georgetown would not consider revoking the award, he added.

Groves’ stated commitment to transparency about its sources of foreign funding — the university’s 20-year relationship with Qatar is well-documented and oft-criticized — stood in contrast to Lyons’ response to questions about whether he would disclose all foreign funding to Berkeley. 

“As a public university, I am not ready to commit to that on the fly. There are different donors to the university who request anonymity,” Lyons said. “What I’d be very, very happy to be very transparent about is exactly what is our process for vetting those things. We say no to a lot of foreign money. I promise you that.”

He would not give an example of foreign money he had rejected. 

Democrats at the hearing mostly used their time to criticize President Donald Trump’s approach to higher education, and his funding cuts that are affecting scientific and medical research at top universities. They highlighted his administration’s massive cuts to the Education Department, including at the Office for Civil Rights, the division tasked with investigating civil rights violations — including antisemitism — at American schools and universities.

Zoom has denied its services to San Francisco State University for a university-sponsored event scheduled for Wednesday featuring Palestinian terrorist Leila Khaled.

The event, titled “Whose Narratives? Gender, Justice & Resistance,” was cosponsored by the university’s Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies Program and the Women and Gender Studies Department. The webinar listed SFSU professors Rabab Abdulhadi and Tomomi Kinukawa as the moderators.

Khaled was involved in two plane hijackings in 1969 and 1970 as a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which is designated by the U.S. and several other Western counties, as well as the European Union, as a terrorist organization. She was arrested in London after the second hijacking, but was released by U.K. officials in exchange for hostages taken in a similar plane hijacking.

A statement provided by Zoom to the Lawfare Project, which had warned the technology company and the university that by hosting Khaled they may violate a federal law prohibiting assisting foreign terrorist organizations, read: 

“Zoom is committed to supporting the open exchange of ideas and conversations, subject to certain limitations contained in our Terms of Service, including those related to user compliance with applicable U.S. export control, sanctions, and anti-terrorism laws. In light of the speaker’s reported affiliation or membership in a U.S. designated foreign terrorist organization, and SFSU’s inability to confirm otherwise, we determined the meeting is in violation of Zoom’s Terms of Service and told SFSU they may not use Zoom for this particular event.”

The announcement comes 18 months after SFSU settled a claim filed by the Lawfare Project alleging discrimination against two students.

Benjamin Ryberg, COO and director of research at The Lawfare Project, told JI that Zoom deserves some credit for its decision. “We applaud Zoom for enforcing its own terms of service and complying with U.S. law, which clearly prohibits the provision of technological services to members of designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations.”