Our Letter

To the KIT executive board,
To the members of the KIT senate,
To the members of the KIT ethics commission,

The Guidelines for Ethical Principles of KIT set out the obligations of every member of KIT, and also define the basis of cooperation with partners of KIT¹. Within the ethical principles it reads:

"We assume responsibility for our acting and for the consequences of our actions. Our work shall serve the gaining of knowledge, the sustainable benefit of mankind, and the protection of the environment and shall pursue peaceful purposes. "

In addition, the Principle of Action also requires KIT members:

"to minimize... the risk of misuse by an adequate selection of our... cooperation partners ..." and "...to ultimately abstain from research activities that are associated with risks that cannot be restricted."

This letter highlights evidence demonstrating that cooperation agreements with Israeli universities violate these fundamental ethical principles due to their complicity in Israel’s long-standing violation of Palestinian human rights. Our demands for KIT to act in accordance with its own ethical principles are outlined at the end of this letter and are based on the provided evidence.

The Context

On request for Advisory Opinion to the United Nations (UN) General Assembly, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) overwhelmingly ruled on the 19th July 2024 that Israel is committing the crime of racial segregation and apartheid and that its occupation of Palestinian territory is illegal under international law. Israel must end its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as quickly as possible². Importantly, the ICJ ruling also sets out the legal obligation to end complicity in Israel’s illegal occupation and segregation policies. Ending decades of illegal occupation of Palestinian lands remains central to stopping the cycle of recurrent violence, according to international human rights experts mandated by the UN Human Rights Council³. The historic denial of Palestinian self-determination further forms the background against which current atrocities in Gaza are unfolding⁴.

Israel’s latest military operation in the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip started in response to an attack committed by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups on October 7th 2023, which included the killing of more than 1,105 Israeli citizens and foreign nationals, as well as the abduction of 250 people as hostages⁵⁶. Within days, the Israeli military response was internationally criticized by human rights experts for its disproportionate retaliatory nature and mass killing of Palestinian civilians⁷⁸⁹¹⁰¹¹. More than a year into the military operation, a further 512 Israelis have been killed by Hamas and Hezbollah⁶. Meanwhile the onslaught on Gaza by the Israeli military has killed at least 40,738 Palestinians, displaced 1.9 million people and led to an imminent risk of famine, where 95% of the population in the Gaza Strip are facing high acute food insecurity⁵¹². Over a year of bombing has almost entirely eradicated the infrastructure of the Gaza Strip, with at least 92% of roads and 84% of health facilities damaged or destroyed¹³. The Israeli offensive has also led to a systematic assault on academic institutions, where today all higher education facilities in Gaza are either severely damaged as a result of Israeli bombing or have been obliterated by the Israeli military¹⁴¹⁵¹⁶¹⁷¹⁸¹⁹.

Alongside the attacks on universities and the killing of at least 94 university employees²⁰, the Israeli military has so far damaged over 524 schools: more than 90% of all schools in Gaza¹². Collectively, the targeted destruction of university and school buildings, and the killing of its faculty and staff, have severely impaired the entire educational sector in Gaza²¹²². In reaction to the scale of destruction of Palestinian life and culture, the heads of 15 Palestinian universities underlined the complicity of Israeli universities in Israel’s crimes against Palestinians and called for them to “face international isolation”²³. Together with human rights experts of the UN²⁴, the Palestinian university administrations have warned that the assault on the educational sector is part of a larger campaign intending to destroy the foundations of continued Palestinian life in Gaza. A warning that is mirrored in South Africa’s genocide case against Israel before the ICJ²⁵. In response to South Africa’s allegations²⁶, the ICJ has found already in January 2024 a plausible risk that Israel is committing Genocide in Gaza²⁷. Since then, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese, concluded in her latest report that the threshold indicating Israel's commission of a Genocide in Gaza has been met⁴.

In light of these catastrophic developments, it is our obligation to call out the complicity of Israeli Universities in Israel’s ongoing violation of Palestinian rights and international law by actively supporting the Israeli government and its military.

It is further our responsibility to remind KIT of its legal responsibility, as a state institution, to avoid aiding and assisting in the commission of Israel’s serious international law breaches, including via institutional cooperation with complicit Israeli universities³⁹.

The involvement of Israeli universities in Israel’s systematic oppression of Palestinians, long documented by Palestinian scholars and human rights organizations, is increasingly a topic of scholarly research²⁸²⁹. All public universities in Israel offer specialized military degree-granting programs²⁸, educating and training Israeli soldiers before or even during their active military service, where they are mainly deployed to maintain the illegal occupation of Palestinian lands, in military offensives that violate international law²³⁰. These programs are run and financed by the Israeli military and the Ministry of Defense, dissolving the boundaries between military training bases and Israeli university campuses²⁸. Some notable examples include the Atuda (academic reserve) program running across many universities, developed to offer the military a highly educated and specialized cadre of soldiers, Ben-Gurion University’s accelerated bachelor program for fighter pilots designed to complement their professional training, the Alonium program at Technion training soldiers in data science, the Talpiot program at Hebrew university for technological research on weapons systems of the Israeli military, and the Havatzalot and Gamla programs at Hebrew University for training officers in the Israeli Intelligence services²⁸.

Israeli universities not only train active soldiers and security state personnel as students, but offer their campuses, resources, students, and faculty to aid in the development of technology and weaponry deployed against Palestinians²⁸³¹. Israeli universities have always closely cooperated with Israel’s military industries, which serve the Israeli military as their primary client. Further, university research is heavily funded and advanced by the Israeli security state and Israeli weapons corporations³². KIT’s official partner university in Israel, Technion³³, maintains close ties with multiple Israeli weapons corporations via joint research and development programs²⁸³⁴. Israeli universities also operate technological parks, where the application of their research is translated into innovations for the Israeli military industry. One such park, Kiryat Weizmann, operated by the Weizmann Institute, houses facilities of Israel’s weapons companies Rafael and Elbit among others²⁸. Some examples of military technologies used in past offensives on the Gaza strip include Elbit and IAI drones carrying Rafael missiles, Elbit military aircraft display systems integrated into F-16 fighter jets and Apache helicopters, and Merkava Tanks designed and fitted by Elbit and Rafael in cooperation with the Israeli Ministry of Defense²⁸.

Even before October 7th, 2023, Israel was found by the UN Human Rights Council and international human rights organizations to have committed war crimes in all its recent major offensives on the Gaza Strip in 2008–9³⁵, 2012³⁶, 2014³⁷, and 2021³⁸. The soldiers and state personnel that committed these crimes obtained specialized education at Israeli universities. Many of the weapons and technologies that were deployed to commit these crimes were designed and manufactured by Israeli corporations. Yet, the continuous illegal occupation of Palestinian territory and violation of Palestinian human rights has not affected the cooperation of Israeli universities with the military, nor has the use of Israeli military industries’ technology against Palestinian civilians interrupted the collaborations and partnerships with Israel's weapons manufacturers.

Our demands

We call on the KIT executive board, the KIT senate and the KIT ethics commission to act in accordance with KIT’s own principles, based on the evidence presented above:

We demand the suspension of all collaboration agreements with Israeli universities, research centers, and associated research groups that in some form provide specialized education and training for Israeli military personnel, maintain cooperation with Israeli weapons manufacturers and/or their subsidiaries, or are in some other form directly implicated in the illegal occupation of Palestinian territory. The necessary proceedings for determining suspension of collaboration are outlined in point 2.
We demand the immediate initiation of a review process into all Israeli Universities that KIT and its members have ongoing or planned collaboration agreements with, including partnerships within HorizonEU and other national or international research funding programs. This review process must identify whether causes for suspension outlined in point 1 apply. The review process must be open to the public, include the engagement with student initiatives⁴⁰, and be accompanied by a broader discourse across the university on the conditions for future collaborations with Israeli universities and the future policy on ethical academic ties more generally.
We demand to temporarily halt all planned research collaborations with Israeli universities immediately until the review process has been completed.
As a member of the Helmholtz association, we further see it as KIT’s responsibility, that the same ethical principles that guide its own conduct, are also demanded to apply for its Helmholtz partners. KIT should therefore openly call for suspending research collaborations between Helmholtz and Israeli universities that violate its own ethical principles.

Universities should above all focus on the evidence and take seriously the reports and findings of international institutions such as the UN. Researchers across KIT support and acknowledge the findings of UN bodies that relate to climate change or the safeguarding of biodiversity, the same acknowledgement should necessarily apply to the UN’s findings regarding human rights violations and crimes against humanity. It is in light of the facts documented by an institution like the UN, and with the imperative to uphold international law, that we sign this letter and urge KIT to act according to its own principles.

22 October, 2024

Written by the members of the Initiative for Ethical Academic Ties at KIT

Signatures

In addition to these 57 signatures, 91 verified employees have additionally signed, but wish their signatures to stay anonymous to the public. Signatures last updated on 17 March 2025.

Dr. Maximilian Tschol
Dr. Conor Simpson
Ehmedi Al Omar
Luca Rettenberger
Flavia Digiacomo
Anna Reeves MSc
Dr. Martinez Dominguez
Sarah Ho
Franziska Schmaltz
Dr.-Ing. Andre Delavault
Dr. Wallyson Thomas Alves da Silva
Nathan Ray
Razan Alsharqawi
Knispel de Acosta
Prof. Dr.-Ing Marwan Younis
Malki Maliha
Giorgia Savettiere
Michele Mesiti
Tobias Weingärtner
Ali Abou-Sena
Dr. Louis Garenaux
Romain Maure
Dr. Dima El Khechen
Sarah Makarem
Prof. Dr. Ing., Dr. h.c., Dr. ing. E. h. mult. Werner Wiesbeck
Enrico Sireci MSc
Fritzi Ziebell
Dr. Hans Agurto-Detzel
Lorenzo Del Puppo MSc
Falk Rohloff
Fatima Azahra Bensalah
Paul Erhardt
Ritika Dhundhwal
Domenico Riggio MSc
Rebecca Wiegels
Hadeer El Ashhab
Dr. Francisco Arco
Joanna Raymond
Dipl.Ing. Muhamet Spahiu
Shadi Al-Tobul
Dr. Rafaela Debastiani
Nasrin Mostafavipak
Dr. Michal Kaminski
Tobias Laimer
Dr. Adrien Damseaux
Sabrina Bittencourt Medeiros Drummond MSc
Luna Labenz
Ingo Laubenthal
Pauline Leys
Yannik Woordes
Franziska Meinherz
Tim Kurtz
Beatriz Lista Lema
Falastine Abusaif
Saleh Gholam Zadeh
Carmen Pérez León
MD Shojib