Protesters slam war profiteering, Israel at French air fair

BOBIGNY: Thousands marched on Saturday outside a French trade fair, calling for an end to war profiteering and Israel’s offensive in Gaza in the latest demonstration to hit the event.

The long-planned protest at the Paris Air Show outside the French capital also comes as Israel’s war with Iran drags on into a ninth day, with Tehran threatening to hit back in force at Israel’s offensive against its arch-rival.

The presence of Israeli defence firms at the show has already become a bone of contention, with the French government on Monday sealing off the booths of five Israeli firms on the grounds that they were displaying offensive weapons that could be used in Gaza.

“Their wars, their profits, our deaths, stop the genocide in Palestine,“ read the banner at the head of the march, which organisers claimed drew more than 4,000 protesters.

“As we speak, people are dying and our governments are not doing anything to stop it,“ Nora, 29, told AFP at the protest.

Draped in a Palestinian flag, the project leader in the pharmaceutical industry said that she felt “rage” at the footage coming out of Gaza, including that of “mothers kissing their dead children” in the besieged Palestinian territory.

Police have arrested seven people aiming to disrupt the trade fair, the Paris public prosecutor office said, with officers discovering a helium canister and nearly 200 balloons during the searches.

Six of the arrests were made on Friday and the other on Saturday, the prosecutor’s office added.

Drawing some 100,000 visitors a day, the Paris Air Show at the Le Bourget airfield, nine kilometres (five miles) to the north of the capital, is usually dominated by displays of the aerospace industry’s latest cutting-edge planes.

But Monday’s shuttering of the stands of Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), Rafael, UVision and Elbit, as well as Aeronautics, which make drones and guided bombs and missiles, sparked a row with Israel.

Israel’s President Isaac Herzog branded Paris’s closure of the Israeli firms’ booths “outrageous”, comparing it to “creating an Israeli ghetto”.

It came days after Israel, claiming Iran was on the verge of obtaining a nuclear bomb, launched a surprise barrage on June 13 which killed top Iranian commanders and nuclear scientists.

Tehran immediately hit back with a flurry of missiles, with the two countries trading wave after wave of devastating strikes since.