We call on the University of Ljubljana Faculty of Mechanical Engineering to withdraw all support from the ICAMPP conference, co-organized together with the Technion, a deeply complicit Israeli technical institute.
The ICAMPP conference, set to take place September 7-9, is part of the Horizon Europe-funded SEAMAC project, in which Technion is a participant and the University of Ljubljana is coordinator.
Technion is directly complicit in Israel’s genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza and its underlying decades long regime of military occupation and apartheid against all Palestinians.
Technion is tightly embedded with and played an instrumental role in developing Israel’s arms industry, which battle tests its weapons systems on Palestinians living under Israel’s illegal military occupation. Technion spearheaded the creation of major state owned Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, both of which have supplied the Israeli military with weapons used in its Gaza genocide.
In addition, during Israel’s Gaza genocide, Technion’s Advanced Defense Research Institute boasted of rapidly turning “academic concepts into operational solutions for the battlefield,” including “advancements in swarm drone technology, cyber defense, and battlefield robotics.”
We welcome the University of Ljubljana’s recent vote to end ties with complicit Israeli institutions over its Gaza genocide, including calling on the EU to suspend Israel’s participation in EU research programs and pledging not to enter into new projects with such institutions until the EU does.
We have also welcomed the previous unanimous vote by the University of Ljubljana not to join new projects that include Israeli universities with “possible connections to military structures.”
This project with Technion, while not new, could not be more in contrast with the intention of the motions voted.
Thanks to the work of principled students and faculty members, the University of Ljubljana clearly recognizes how continued participation of complicit Israeli institutions in EU research programs furthers Israel’s impunity and allows it to continue to commit these heinous crimes with impunity. It further puts the EU and complicit project participants in breach of the legal obligations emanating from ICJ rulings and violates the regulations of those programs and the EU Israel Association Agreement.
We fully agree with the University of Ljubljana that it must be the EU to take steps to exclude Israel from its research programs. In the meantime, Israel is being excluded from below. Thanks to the mobilizations of students and years-long campaigning by progressive university staff and trade unions, Israel has been pushed to the margins of Horizon, with 2025 approval rates for research projects with one or more Israeli partners dropping drastically by 68.5%.
However, until the EU takes action, the very least the University of Ljubljana could do is not to participate in any way in the events of the complicit project, which is due to end in less than four months, and to withdraw support from this conference.
This is the most effective way to help stop Israel’s “genocidal acts” and “serious violations of international law” as denounced by the University of Ljubljana.