Groundbreaking research doesn't offset the breaking of international law. 
An exhibition of the Dead Sea Scrolls in Toronto. (John Kannenberg/Flickr)
The European Union constantly finds innovative ways to abet Israel’s acts of theft.
A project focused on using new technology to study ancient manuscripts known as the Dead Sea Scrolls provides a case in point. As those manuscripts were removed by Israel from East Jerusalem after that territory came under military occupation in 1967, they can only be viewed as stolen artifacts.
Questions must, therefore, be asked about why the EU recently approved a $2.8 million research initiative involving the Israel Antiquities Authority, which has these stolen artifacts in its possession.
Named Tracingscribes, the EU-funded project aims to examine the Dead Sea Scrolls with help from chemical analysis and artificial intelligence.
Ground-breaking methods of scientific inquiry do not offset the breaking of international law.
Within the past few weeks, the Israeli military has seized several sites in the Tulkarm area of the West Bank. With the sites designated as archaeological, the Israel Antiquities Authority has been given responsibility for administering them.
Such designations mean that the Israel Antiquities Authority is playing an increasingly direct role in an occupation that has been deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice.
They follow many years during which the Israel Antiquities Authority has managed digs in the West Bank city of Hebron and the Silwan area of East Jerusalem. The excavations are inseparable from Israel’s broader settlement activities, all of which are designed to wrest Palestine from Palestinians.
Despite objecting to those activities, the EU has kept on enabling them.
Repulsive
It is particularly repulsive that the Brussels bureaucracy is financing the Israel Antiquities Authority at a time when Amichai Eliyahu, the far-right heritage minister, is overseeing that body.
Eliyahu achieved notoriety in November 2023 when he blurted out that dropping a nuclear weapon on Gaza was “one of the possibilities.” Although Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, reprimanded him then, Eliyahu still holds the heritage portfolio today.
An ally of Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister who brags of starving Palestinian prisoners, Eliyahu may not be publicly embraced by the EU. By awarding grants to projects that include the Israel Antiquities Authority, the Brussels bureaucracy is nonetheless accommodating his extremism.
That said, Eliyahu’s display of bloodlust was far from unique.
The rationale cited by Eliyahu when declaring that dropping a nuclear bomb was an option was that – according to him – there are no non-combatants in Gaza. Isaac Herzog, Israel’s nominally liberal president, had made essentially the same argument during October 2023 when he dismissed what he called “rhetoric” about innocent civilians.
Herzog’s comments were subsequently quoted in a January 2024 preliminary ruling by the International Court of Justice. That ruling found South Africa’s case that Israel was committing a genocide in Gaza to be plausible.
Rather than being ostracized for exhibiting a genocidal intent, Herzog continues to be on good terms with the West.
Through a freedom of information request, I have obtained speaking notes prepared for Michael Mann, the EU’s Tel Aviv envoy, when he visited Herzog last month. The document omits any reference to Herzog’s genocidal remarks or how they were cited in a preliminary ruling from the International Court of Justice.
Mann was attending a ceremony at Herzog’s “beautiful residence” (as the speaking notes describe it) so that they could “pay tribute” to Israeli participants in Horizon Europe, the EU’s research program.
Assuming that he did not deviate from his prepared script, the closest that Mann came to admitting that anything could be amiss was when he said that “the relationship between the EU and Israel develops within a complex and deeply contested geopolitical context.”
In that “geopolitical context,” some European universities have “terminated their collaboration” with Israeli partners, Mann acknowledged. Those decisions were taken by certain universities “at their own discretion,” he added.
Mann then underscored that, “at the same time…the EU attaches great significance to pursuing a positive agenda in its longstanding research and innovation cooperation with Israel.” The cooperation would “build on fundamental R&I values, such as academic freedom, gender equality, diversity, research ethics, open science and evidence-based policymaking.”
The boilerplate language contained in his speaking notes should not distract from the obscenity of the message he was conveying.
Israel destroyed or severely damaged every university in Gaza during the initial stages of the genocide. So much for academic freedom.
Israel’s biggest contribution to “gender equality,” meanwhile, has involved killing a far higher proportion of women and girls since October 2023 than during previous attacks on Gaza. Opportunities for women to die a violent death have been maximized.
The EU’s connivance in the theft of the Dead Sea Scrolls is not an aberration. It fits neatly into a bigger pattern whereby Israel’s crimes are either excused or overlooked so that the illusion of a “positive agenda” can be maintained.
•First published by The Electronic Intifada, 8 October 2026.