Photo: Julian Herzog / CC BY 4.0
On 9 December 2025, after two years of Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza, and with an independent UN Commission of Inquiry confirming that the State of Israel is 'committing genocide', Al-Haq, Lawyers for Justice in the Middle East (AJPO), the French Jewish Union for Peace (UJFP), Survie, and NIDAL, supported in their legal strategy by Droit et Mouvements Sociaux (DMS), have filed a new civil lawsuit against the organisers of the Paris Air Show (SIAE).
Our organisations believe that the SIAE has executed contracts that are illegal and contrary to public order by promoting and hosting companies and delegations that directly or indirectly supply arms to Israel, thereby promoting the sale of their weapons for economic gains.
Last June, initial summary proceedings initiated by Al-Haq, the UJFP, Attac, Stop Fuelling War (SFW) and Survie, coordinated by Droit et Mouvements Sociaux (DMS), led the company organising the Paris Air Show (SIAE) to answer for the same charges before the Bobigny court. Another summary proceedings case further accused SIAE of welcoming companies suspected of circumventing international sanctions against Russia and Sudan.
Although the Paris Court of Appeal rejected their claims, the combination of this action and protests –– such as those organised by the Coalitions partner Guerre à la guerre (War on War Coalition) against the Paris Air Show from 20 to 22 June 2025, which brought together 4,000 people at the demonstration in Bobigny –– prompted the State and the SIAE to take measures on the eve of the show to prevent the exhibition of certain Israeli weapons.
However, covering certain Israeli company stands with black sheets does not exempt the SIAE from its responsibility for international crimes.
Now the associations are taking a new step: they are bringing an unprecedented civil liability action to have SIAE recognised as having committed a fault by executing illegal contracts consisting of hosting entities directly or indirectly involved in genocide at the exhibition. Friends of the Earth France is also supporting as a party to the summary proceedings.
From 16 to 22 June 2025, the town of Le Bourget hosted one of the world's largest aerospace trade shows, bringing together nearly 2,500 manufacturers and start-ups from the civil and military sectors across the globe. SIAE enabled them to sign arms contracts with Israeli arms companies worth $150 billion.
At a time when the death toll in Gaza stood at a minimum 64,700 dead and 164,000 wounded, the applicants consider that promoting and hosting arms companies (Israeli and other nationalities) and delegations involved in genocide is contrary to the public policy provisions of the French Criminal Code on complicity in and concealment of war crimes and genocide, and on human dignity.
Our organisations rely on the landmark ruling in the Lafarge case, which recognised the responsibility of a French company for complicity in crimes against humanity in Syria. Indeed, this decision affirms that ‘from the moment you commit an act, whatever it may be, even by omission, which you know contributes to a crime, you can be prosecuted for complicity in that crime,’ emphasises the coordinator of DMS, who drafted the complaint against Lafarge.
Each year, the Paris Air Show facilitates the trade in arms and components from multinationals around the world. At the Forum ‘Who arms international crimes?’ the complainants explained that:
"Without the active complicity of Israeli and Western arms dealers, their relays and intermediaries—such as arms fairs—and the states that support them, these crimes could not have such intensity or persistence."
Israeli arms exports reached a historic high of $14.7 billion in 2024, up 13 percent from 2023 and double the figure five years ago. More than half of these contracts are worth over $100 million and are concluded with European countries. Israel’s Minister of Defence, Israel Katz applauded the increased arms exports stating as ‘an exceptional achievement in a year marked by war’ which he suggested was ‘a direct result of the IDF's successes against Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and the Iranian regime . . . The world recognizes Israel's strength and wants to be associated with it’.
In light of this, ‘it is urgent to advance civil law to prevent impunity for the thousands of economic and state actors involved in international crimes,’ concludes the coordinator of the action at DMS. This new legal action is part of a broader movement, which is gaining momentum in France and around the world, to denounce the arms race and militarisation, and to end the impunity of the arms industry, which profits from the ongoing war and genocide in Gaza.
The Guerre à la guerre coalition is part of this movement and also supports this new legal action. According to the coalition, the weapons used by the West to colonise or exterminate peoples such as the Palestinian people come from the same repressive system as those used for the internal repression of activists, human rights defenders and migrants fighting for their rights.
The legal action is a further step towards giving citizens a say in the arms trade and ending this system which is used to maintain Israel’s settler colonial apartheid regime, unlawful occupation, and genocide.