A coalition against genocidal complicity in the Romanian tech sector!

Cluj-Napoca and its Israeli ties 

The Israeli state has come to increasingly rely on strengthened ties with international tech companies to commit its genocide in Gaza and expand its apartheid regime in the West Bank over the past years. These collaborations involve the delivery of products and services to (illegal) Israeli activity across the Palestinian lands as well as the development of technologies and knowledge that facilitate oppression and violence against Palestinians. The French transport company Alstom, for example, is a major partner in the Jerusalem Light Rail project, which aims to connect West Jerusalem to illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, while German tech conglomerate Siemens has been awarded the contract to build subsea cables that will connect Israel and Europe’s electricity grids and allow illegal settlements to benefit from Israel-EU electricity trade.

Both tech companies, alongside Bosch and NTT Data, have offices in Cluj Napoca, Romania – frequently labeled the “Silicon Valley of Eastern Europe” for its twelve universities and fifteen percent of residents working in ICT. In line with a broader mobilization across the globe, tech workers and citizens at large in Cluj Napoca have called for the cessation of cooperation and investments in the Israeli military sector by the four present collaborative tech companies to prevent their work from being used to further violate human rights: No Tech for Apartheid and Genocide!

Direct action and a boycott campaign

The members behind the Palestine Solidarity Cluj-Napoca (PS.CJ) organization have been a crucial driver behind mobilization for the Palestinian cause in the Cluj-Napoca context since 2017. Founded by local organizers, following the Romanian government’s silence about Palestinian suffering at the hands of Israel in October 2023, the association has regularly initiated demonstrations, network building events and even hosted a Palestinian Film Festival.

Their 2024-2025 No Tech for Apartheid and Genocide campaign involved webinars, boycotts of local tech events and a series of demonstrations and other direct actions to disrupt business as usual in the city. With the support of Het Actiefonds, the protestors not only organized a ‘poster storming’ of the companies’ buildings to expose their complicity in Genocide and Apartheid in broad daylight, but also conducted engagement actions to confront unaware tech workers and convince them to support the cause.

Since the end of the campaign and the local media’s refusal to report on it, the PS.CJ has already launched a new initiative. This time at the national level, collaborating with twelve other collectives across five Romanian cities, the call to cut Israeli ties within the tech sector will be impossible to ignore. Het Actiefonds is proud to have supported this action and stands in solidarity with the Palestinian people.