Finally Some Decency: France shuts Israeli weapons booths at Paris Air Show

Mathieu RABECHAULT
Mon, June 16, 2025


Israel condemned the decision to seal off Israeli defence industry stands at the Paris Air Show (ALAIN JOCARD) (ALAIN JOCARD/AFP/AFP)

Geopolitical tensions roiled the opening of the Paris Air Show on Monday as French authorities sealed off Israeli weapons industry booths amid the conflicts in Iran and Gaza, a move that Israel condemned as "outrageous".

The decision added drama to the major aerospace industry event, which was already being held under the shadow of last week's deadly crash of Air India's Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

Black walls were installed around the stands of five Israeli defence firms at the trade fair in Le Bourget, an airfield on the outskirts of Paris.

The booths displayed "offensive weapons" that could be used in Gaza -- in violation of agreements with Israeli authorities, a French government source told AFP.

The companies -- Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), Rafael Uvision, Elbit and Aeronautics -- make drones and guided bombs and missiles.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog said he was shocked by the "outrageous" closure of the pavilions and said the situation should be "immediately corrected".

"Israeli companies have signed contracts with the organizers... it's like creating an Israeli ghetto," he said on French television channel LCI [somehow ignoring that he is perpetrating a genocide in occupied Palestine against a Palestinian ghetto called Gaza]

The Israeli defence ministry said in a statement that the "outrageous and unprecedented decision reeks of policy-driven and commercial considerations". "The French are hiding behind supposedly political considerations to exclude Israeli offensive weapons from an international exhibition -- weapons that compete with French industries," it said.

The presence of Israeli firms at Le Bourget, though smaller than in the past, was already a source of tension before the start of the Paris Air Show, because of the conflict in Gaza.

Local lawmakers from the Seine-Saint-Denis department hosting the event were absent during French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou's visit to the opening of the air show in protest over the Israeli presence. "Never has the world been so disrupted and destabilised," Bayrou said at a roundtable event, urging nations to tackle challenges "together, not against each other".