On Friday, 22 May, Al-Haq, Union Juive Française Pour La Paix (UJFP), Attac-France, Stop Fuelling War (SFW) and Survie, filed a legal action against SIAE, the organiser of the Bourget Air Show in Paris. From 16 to 22 June 2025, the Le Bourget exhibition centre in Paris will host one of the world's largest civil and military aeronautics and space shows featuring 2,500 exhibitors, manufacturers and start-ups from 48 countries, who will present their latest products (including missiles, drones, bombers, etc.) and sign contracts with governments from all over the world.

According to information published on the website of SIAE, the show's organiser, eight Israeli arms companies will be exhibiting their products and activities at the event. There should be no doubt that these companies are supporting Israel's ongoing military onslaught in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), given the information available on their official websites and networks. Some even go so far as to promote their weapons as having been ‘tested in combat’ in Gaza. SIBAT, the Directorate for International Cooperation of the Israeli Ministry of Defence, is also on the official list of exhibitors. A number of arms companies of other nationalities, which allegedly continue to supply military equipment directly or indirectly to Israeli companies, delegations or intermediaries, are also listed among the exhibitors.

Al-Haq, UJFP, Attac-France, SFW, and Survie, have submitted a writ of summons to the Bobigny judicial court for summary proceedings against the SIAE for hosting these entities. The presence of the arms companies is especially problematic, given the fact that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has repeatedly affirmed and reiterated the plausibility of genocide in Gaza and the issuing of the International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrants for war crimes and crimes against humanity against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, for crimes including murder and starvation.

Despite acute food insecurity and repeated calls from numerous international bodies for Israel to stop committing the most serious crimes, the number of civilians killed in Palestine continues to rise every day. On Sunday 18 May, the Israeli army declared the launch of Operation Gideon's Chariots, the stated aim as declared by Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu, is to ‘attack Gaza with all its might’.

According to the United Nations, more than 53,655 Palestinians have been killed –– at least half of them women and children –– and more than 121,000 injured in Gaza. Gaza has the highest number of amputee children per capita in the world. The delivery of humanitarian aid is made more difficult every day, despite the fact that, as early as March 2024, the United Nations estimated that ‘100% of the population of Gaza [was] in a situation of serious food insecurity (or famine)’. This only reinforces the ICJ's conclusion that genocide in Gaza is plausible.

The summons requires SIAE to take all possible measures to stop a ‘manifestly unlawful disturbance’ and to prevent a risk of ‘imminent damage’, insofar as the exhibition could serve as a commercial platform strengthening the economic power of companies, delegations or intermediaries likely to participate directly or indirectly in the perpetuation of the international crimes in question. Without the arms and components sourced from multinationals around the world, these crimes could not be perpetrated with such intensity.

While denouncing the persistent inaction of the French authorities in the face of the serious risk of genocide in Gaza, as well as that of the international community, which has still not adopted economic sanctions against Israel –– although it has done so in the cases of Russia and Sudan –– the summons is a strong reminder of the need not to conceal the responsibility of private actors in supporting, sometimes even indirectly, the commission of serious international crimes.

The summons was drafted with the coordination, legal and strategic assistance of the Law and Social Movements coalition, and thanks to research by members of the collectives in support. They come against a backdrop of growing social mobilisation against France's and Europe's militarisation policies, against the impunity of those who profit from war, against the holding of the Paris Air Show under these conditions, and against the growing repression of defenders of the rights of the peoples targeted in these proceedings (as evidenced by the recent threat to dissolve Urgence Palestine). This mobilisation is being led in particular by the War-on-War coalition and the Stop Bourget movement, which are supporting this legal action.

Press contacts (we have included the press contacts of the people who have done the most work on the case and who would therefore be able to answer specific questions):

• Al-Haq, [email protected]
• Rights and Social Movements, [email protected]
• Survie, [email protected]
• Coalition Guerre à la guerre (which brings together around twenty collectives including Soulèvements de la Terre, Stop Arming Israel France, Urgence Palestine, la Marche des Solidarités)
• Dominique Cochain, lawyer and co-founder of Avocats pour la Justice au Proche Orient (AJPO) [email protected], who represents the associations, alongside Laura Monnier, Matteo Bonaglia, and Amélie Beauchemin