Take childhood leukaemia. Just last month, Technion researchers working with Schneider Children’s Medical Centre announced research into a highly sensitive blood test that could potentially detect the recurrence of childhood leukaemia earlier than existing methods.
The researchers are looking for the unique genetic fingerprint left by leukaemia cells, with the hope that doctors could identify a relapse sooner and therefore have more opportunity to intervene. Would anyone seriously want that research stopped at Israel’s borders? Or decide they didn’t want their child benefiting from it because of where it was developed?
Then there are wildfires. For years we have watched them tear through California, Greece and Australia and thought of them as something that happens somewhere else. Not any more. Wildfires are now a real problem here in Britain too.
This year firefighters have already responded to more than 1,000 wildfires across England and Wales. July was the busiest month on record, and this summer the threat became serious enough for the government to convene an emergency response and send an emergency alert to people across England and Wales.
At almost exactly the same time, researchers at the Technion were working with Israel Aerospace Industries and others on an AI-powered drone system designed to detect and locate fires within minutes of ignition.
The system completed its first flight test this summer. Using cameras, infrared sensors and AI, it is designed to identify fire hotspots, including through smoke and darkness, and send their precise location to emergency services.
Suddenly this isn’t an Israeli solution to somebody else’s problem. It is technology addressing something we are experiencing here in Britain too. And I’m not sure anyone whose home is in the path of a wildfire is going to ask whether the algorithm that spotted it was developed in Haifa before allowing the fire brigade to use it.
While we’re on AI, Technion-led research published in Nature Biotechnology in August has developed a new way of predicting the structure of proteins.
This may not sound particularly exciting unless you happen to be a scientist, but proteins are fundamental to understanding disease and developing medicines. Being able to understand the different forms they can take could ultimately help researchers understand disease and develop better drugs.
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This is happening at a university which this summer was ranked first in Israel, fourth in Europe and 25th in the world for AI production, taking into account research, education, entrepreneurship and links with industry.
So where exactly do we draw the boycott line? Of course people can criticise Israel. Israelis themselves do it rather well. But deciding that Israeli academics should be excluded, research collaborations abandoned or universities treated as beyond the pale is something quite different. Universities, of all places, should know better.
At the Technion, Jewish and Arab students study alongside one another every day. They sit in the same lecture theatres and work in the same laboratories. Researchers collaborate with scientists around the world. That reality is rather different from the picture of Israeli academia sometimes presented on campuses thousands of miles away.
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And there is an irony in all of this. Many of those campaigning most loudly against Israel also care passionately about climate change, healthcare, sustainability and making the world a better place. So do the people they are trying to boycott. Except some of them are sitting in laboratories in Haifa actually trying to do something about it.
Cancer doesn’t distinguish between nationalities. Neither does a wildfire. And if a new drug saves your life, I suspect the last thing you are going to ask is whether an Israeli scientist had a hand in developing it.
For almost three years, Israel has faced war, trauma and growing hostility around the world. Yet its scientists haven’t stopped researching, its students haven’t stopped studying and its entrepreneurs haven’t stopped inventing.
People can boycott Israeli avocados if they really want to. Israeli ideas may prove rather more difficult.
Alan Aziz is CEO of Technion UK
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