Ireland’s Betrayal

Ireland’s agriculture ministry is among the participants in a major European Union-backed scheme with the stated aim of reducing farming’s environmental impact and helping it adapt to climate change.

Those goals may look laudable. Yet the involvement of the Israel Innovation Authority in the project raises fundamental questions.

The Israel Innovation Authority is working in tandem with Israel’s military on artificial intelligence at a time when the same military is still obliterating Gaza. The authority also enables Israel’s weapons industry to expand its reach and drones have long been a tool of oppression against Palestinians.

With the authority’s assistance, Israel’s drone makers have been hyping up the surveillance potential of their products with less than subtle messages about how they can be used to monitor protests and quell dissent.

Ireland and Spain were the first countries in the EU to recommend any steps towards accountability for Israel after the war against Gaza began. So why is Ireland heavily represented in the EU’s new project on making farming greener?

Titled Agriculture of Data, the project has an overall budget of almost $115 million. The EU is providing $34 million of that sum.

Asked for a comment, Ireland’s agriculture ministry said it “cannot dictate which organizations are allowed to be participants” in Horizon Europe, the EU’s scientific research program.

The reply is misleading. The ministry is fully entitled to withdraw from the Agriculture of Data scheme in protest at Israel’s involvement.

Together with the Irish agriculture ministry, the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation and the state agency Research Ireland are all taking part in the aforementioned project. As Ireland has experienced a famine and many other hardships inflicted on it by an occupying power, its people tend to identify strongly with Palestinians. The affinity of ordinary folk is at variance with the cowardice and duplicity displayed by the Dublin establishment.

Source: First published by The Electronic Intifada, 5 November 2025.