Millions in Israeli military funding
.....flow to US universities: DSN
August 26, 12:07pm
(Al Mayadeen English)
An investigation found more than $15 million in Israeli Ministry of
War and defense industry funding tied to US university research
that was unreported or inconsistently disclosed.
The Israeli Ministry of War --- and Israeli weapons companies have
directed millions of dollars in unreported funding to US university
research programs for weapons development, either sponsoring
research directly or serving as a pass-through entity for the
funding, according to a Drop Site investigation.
A review of state and university audits, foreign-funding disclosures,
and other institutional records ---- identified millions of dollars in
financial ties over the last two decades between the Israeli
Ministry of War, Israeli weapons manufacturers, and US
universities, much of which does not appear
consistently..... in national databases
intended to track foreign funding
into US universities.
An analysis of audit records, building on findings compiled by the
Antiwar Initiative, an academic research group - that documents
connections between universities and the global arms industry,
found more than $15 million in unreported or inconsistently
reported entries for funding tied to the Israeli Ministry of
War, or Israeli defense manufacturers.
Israeli Ministry of War funding
........reaches US universities
According to DSN, the true scale of Israeli support is difficult to
determine because entries for such funding were often not
reported in public filings mandating disclosure of foreign
gifts, but were discovered by manually cross-
referencing public and internal databases,
audit records, and acknowledgments
in academic papers.
Some projects listed in university materials as being sponsored
by the Israeli Ministry of War or weapons companies also did
not include the amounts of funding provided -- or contained
inconsistent or contradictory records in audit databases.
Drop Site reviewed and verified public records --- showing research
grants, tuition payments, and gifts ...totalling millions of dollars to
dozens of colleges and universities across the country. The data
shows examples of financial support and sponsorship for US
researchers from the Israeli Ministry of War, plus Israeli
weapons manufacturers - such as Elbit Systems.
Records dating from 2004 to 2025 - point to a large number of
schools that have had financial relationships with the Israeli
Ministry of War or Israeli weapons manufacturers, including
Columbia, Cornell, Princeton, Harvard, Northwestern,
Georgia Tech, Texas Tech, the University of
Connecticut, the University of Tennessee,
the University of Maryland, the University
of Florida, the University of California, at
Berkeley, the University of Rhode Island,
the University of New Mexico -- as well
as Washington University, in St. Louis,
and the State University of New York.
The recorded financial relationships include time-bound research
contracts --- and do not indicate whether relationships with the
ministry are still ongoing. Previous reporting has documented
ministry funding of programs at MIT, and student protests
there... over the relationship.
In addition to financial support from the ministry and Elbit, records
also showed sponsorship of individual research projects related
to military technologies by the Israeli defense manufacturers
Rafael and Israel Aerospace Industries.
Taken together, the records reveal.... an opaque defense-
research pipeline spread across some of the country's
most prominent universities.
Defense research ties ----
span major US campuses
In one example that illustrates the typical nature of these ties, a War
Ministry-sponsored project at the University of Connecticut was
listed in public audit records under the title, “Impact
Prediction Research for Short & Medium Range
Thrusting Projectiles.”
Connecticut's annual federal-award schedules --- record $668,456 in
funding under that title across nine fiscal years between 2013 and
2023, with the funder listed as "Israel's" Ministry of War. Another
Israeli Ministry of War-linked research project at the school ----
titled "High Sensitivity SQUIDs for Magnetic Field Detection"
received $251,336 in funding across the same period.
Federal law requires colleges and universities receiving federal
assistance to disclose gifts and contracts totalling at least
$250,000 in a calendar year from a foreign source, though
transactions below that threshold may remain outside
the public reporting system. But these multi-year
contributions do not consistently appear in
federal databases - intended to help the
public track foreign money flowing
into US universities.
The Education Department's latest public disclosure of foreign gifts
and funding contains no "Israel"-attributed entry for the University
of Connecticut, even as entries for ministry funding appear in
other databases and audit documentation.
The Israeli occupation government --- and its allies in Congress --- are
now seeking to transform relationships like these.. from a scattered
research pipeline ---- into formal US defense policy. The fiscal 2026
National Defense Authorization Act already directed the Pentagon
to establish a US-Israeli Defense Industrial Base Working Group,
to consider integrating "Israel" into what it calls “the American
National Technology and Industrial Base.”
A proposal --- advanced by the House Armed Services Committee
for the fiscal 2027 NDAA would go further, creating a US-"Israel"
Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative charged with
expanding bilateral research, development, testing,
weapons production, and industrial cooperation.
If these measures become law, the scattered funding connections
documented in US university audit trails.... and research papers....
will become part of the US military-industrial base's architecture.
Israeli weapons companies
---- fund military research
Israeli forces have used drones, automated intelligence tools,
persistent aerial surveillance, precision-guided projectiles,
and large-scale data analysis throughout the genocide in
the Gaza Strip, as well as wars on Lebanon, Iran, Syria,
and Yemen.
Those operations draw upon technologies originating in the same
research fields that the Israeli government and weapons
manufacturers have paid US academics to advance,
including video surveillance, human-activity
recognition, autonomous flight, network
analysis, target identification,
magnetic sensing, and
projectile impact
''modeling''.
At the University of Central Florida, researchers... have received
funding from Elbit Systems to develop algorithms to recognize
human activity and detect objects in video.
Records from the University of Tennessee show that a US subsidiary
of Elbit also provided $514,500 in payments to the school between
2023, 2024, and 2025. The available public documentation does
not identify what programs or researchers the contributions
were intended to support, with the description listing the
purpose of the funding simply as “tuition payments for
various students.”
“For relatively small sums, like the price of funding a single PhD—
Israel has gained major new capabilities that have bolstered its
capacity to commit genocide in Gaza, carry out a brutal
occupation of Lebanon, and spark a war with Iran that
has escalated to a region wide conflict,” said William
Hartung, a political scientist, and expert on the US
arms industry and Pentagon budgetary practices.
Many awards from the Israeli Ministry of War are classified as
US Department of War expenditures, with the Israeli ministry
identified as the pass-through entity that administers the
grants. MIT, for example, has stated that the money for
its projects funded by the Israeli ministry.. originated
with the US Department of War.
The US provides an estimated $3.8 billion in annual military
aid to "Israel" on top of other forms of assistance.
Some audit records identify the Pentagon's Defense Security
Cooperation Agency, which administers US security
assistance and weapons-transfer programs, as
the primary agency providing the funding
that was ultimately directed by the
Israeli Ministry of War.
The public documents do not establish whether every dollar for
particular research support at a school came from "Israel's"
treasury, from US military assistance placed under Israeli
procurement authority, or from some combination of
the two.
Audit trail reveals actual numbers
In the summer of 2025, MIT professor Markus Buehler withdrew from
an Israeli Ministry of War grant - after a student-led campaign
publicized the project. The decision followed more than a
year of protests over MIT's defense relationships with
"Israel", which the university says amounted to $4
million for individual ministry-linked projects
between fiscal 2015 and fiscal 2024,
plus $290,000 in fiscal 2025.
A trail of open-source records traces similar financial and research
relationships between the Israeli defense establishment and
schools in Connecticut, New York, Maryland, Florida,
New Jersey, Texas, California, and Virginia.
At Columbia University, annual audits name two ministry-linked
projects and record $799,190 in grants. One Ministry of War-
funded project for “Direct 3D Printing of Integrated Electro
Mechanical Systems” accounted for $469,999 from 2016
through 2021, while another.... for “Optimizing Micro
Resonators Based Sensor” accounted for another
$329,191 from 2021 --- through to 2024.
Columbia's fiscal 2024 audit lists the latter project under the US
Department of War, with the “Israeli Ministry of Defense” as
the “pass-through name,” and records $25,327 in funding.
The Research Foundation for the State University of New York
shows audit entries for five Israeli Ministry of War-linked
projects totaling $949,915 from 2010 through 2021.
Florida's statewide audits record $1,195,795 in expenditures
passed through the Ministry of War from 2012 through 2021,
while not identifying the schools that received all of
this funding.
Campus records ......connect at least some of the awards to the
University of Central Florida and the University of Florida. One
University of Florida engineering publication names an Israeli
Ministry of War-sponsored project, “Coupled Size and Rate
Effects in Ultra-High-Performance Concrete,” beginning
in 2012. While listing the project under “Sponsored
Research,” the newsletter did not identify the
amount the school received from the
ministry for the study.
In response to a request for comment about another $150,000
contract beginning in March 2015 that named the Israeli
Ministry of War at UC Berkeley, a spokesperson said
that, “UC Berkeley complies with all of the statues
and regulations that apply to contracts and gifts
from foreign sources,” noting that the school
is only involved in fundamental research
and adding that, “every government,
every researcher, every person in
the world can read the results of
our research in freely available
scientific publications.”
UC Berkeley did not respond to additional questions about the
purpose of the ministry funding. Other schools contacted by
Drop Site did not respond to requests for comment, or
stated that they could not provide information
about the cited funding.
In addition to records from audits, public information from
individual researchers, provides more hints of the scope
of Israeli military research funding.
In February, The Nation reported that computer-vision researchers
Mubarak Shah and Abhijit Mahalanobis received a $200,000 Elbit
Systems of America grant in 2020 to develop... “human activity
recognition” technology, while Mahalanobis received another
$60,000 .....for algorithms involving object detection and
human-activity recognition.
At the University of Maryland.... aerospace engineering professor
Inderjit Chopra's research page lists two Israeli ministry grants:
$150,000 for “Autonomous Operation of Micro-Helicopters,”
from 2011 to 2012, and $300,000 for “Aeromechanics of
Rotorcraft in High Speed Flight,” from 2014 to 2016.
A curriculum vitae filed by another researcher in a separate US
Patent and Trademark Office proceeding lists Israeli Ministry
of War funding of $150,000 - for “Functional Targeting of
Terror Networks: A Big Data Approach,” from February
2017 through December 2018, and $153,520 for “Fast
Algorithms for Group Between-ness Centrality in
Massive Social Networks.”
Princeton University records identify physicist Michael Romalis on a
$600,000 contract called “Pulsed Scalar Atomic Magnetometer.”
The university's fiscal 2018 sponsored-awards report names
the Government of "Israel's" Ministry of War --- and the
Defense Security Cooperation Agency as sponsors
and gives a contract period from July 2015
through to June 2019.
Texas Tech University's engineering newsletters list another award
for $400,000 from the Israeli Ministry of War to research a “Sealed
Vircator HPM System,” naming James Dickens, John Mankowski,
and Andreas Neuber, as researchers.
The vircator technology has a clear military application: Texas
Tech's Centre for Pulsed Power and Power Electronics
describes vircators as compact, high-power micro-
wave sources and says its work includes
coordinating vehicle-mounted emitters
with GPS timing to place a microwave
“hot spot” at a desired location, an
application potentially useful for
combating drone swarms.
The purpose of a separate Israeli Ministry of War-linked funding
stream at the University of Texas at Austin is less clear from
the public records. UT Austin's fiscal 2013 financial report..
identifies $58,992 in expenditures under an Israeli Ministry
of War purchase order. Statewide audit schedules record
expenditures under the same purchase order,
reappearing in public audit records from
2010 through to 2014, for $299,952.
The audit archive contains still more Israeli military-named
expenditures, including recorded contributions to North-
western University and Washington University in St.
Louis, and repeated entries for the Ministry of War
in audits for the state of Virginia.
But the opaque nature of some support that turned up in
public records means that financial and in-kind support
to universities, may not even be recorded in any audit
trail at all.
At the University of Texas at Dallas, Haoran Wei and Nasser
Kehtarnavaz produced a video-surveillance system in a
study that the published paper indicated was “funded
by Elbit Systems of America through a contract with
the University of Texas at Dallas” --------- without
mentioning the amount of financial support.
The report also noted..... that the company had provided “far-field
video clips” to help conduct their research on target recognition.
Federal disclosures leave
gaps in funding records
Section 117 of the Higher Education Act generally requires a
federally assisted university to report covered gifts and
contracts from a foreign source when they meet or
exceed $250,000, including multi-year contracts
meeting that threshold.... over their duration.
Under the Education Department's example, a five-year research
contract worth $50,000 a year is reportable at signing because
its lifetime value is $250,000.
The Education Department's inspector general warned in February
2025 that oversight of the system was weak, with insufficient
controls to ensure reporting requirements were being met.
The current disclosure thresholds also make it easier for foreign
countries to contribute amounts below that number to avoid
triggering reporting requirements while still providing
significant sums for individual research projects.
That lack of oversight contributes to a situation in which millions
of dollars from a foreign military under increasing scrutiny in the
US for human rights abuses and facing genocide charges from
international courts have been used to fund military research
at US universities.
These relationships are now coming under greater scrutiny at a time
when public opinion on "Israel" has soured in the US ------ due to the
genocide in Gaza and the Israeli aggression in other regional wars.
“No self-respecting university should accept funding from Israel,
given its destabilizing, destructive, and inhumane use of U.S.
weapons,” said Hartung.
Source: Drop Site News
