Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) visited the Israeli pavilion at the Paris Air Show earlier this week to express support for the Jewish state after the French government blocked off part of the Israeli display.
“I am proud to stand strongly with Israel,” Britt, who attended the event as part of a congressional delegation, told JNS. “She is in a fight for her very existence against the forces of evil who openly wish to wipe the Jewish people off the face of the planet.”
“The Air Show should be a place where Israel and Israeli companies are welcome and free to do business,” the senator said.
Acting on behalf of the French government, organizers of the event ordered that offensive weapons systems—that is, those used to attack, although they evidently “offended” the French government as well—be removed, breaking with understandings that had been reached about Israel’s participation.
When the Israeli delegation refused to remove the objects, organizers erected “a black wall that blocks the Israeli pavilions and creates segregation between the Israeli industry pavilions and dozens of other pavilions—Turkish, Chinese and others,” the Israeli Defense Ministry said.
In a statement, the ministry said the French government’s action “comes at a time when Israel is fighting a necessary and just war to eliminate the nuclear and ballistic threat facing the Middle East, Europe and the entire world.”
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a Republican whose father, Mike Huckabee, is the U.S. ambassador to Israel, also attended the event as a part of a trade mission to France and Switzerland, where she hopes to drum up investment in her state.
“When I called my dad on Father’s Day, he was in a bunker, like thousands of Israelis,” Huckabee Sanders stated. “Unfortunately, I was shocked to learn that Israeli companies were banned at the last minute from the Paris Air Show.”
“That’s unacceptable,” she said. “It’s time for moral clarity and for us all to stand with Israel against the forces of evil.”
Huckabee Sanders also posted a video, which appeared to be her speaking at an Aerospace Industries Association panel at the exhibition. In the video, she said “one of those companies has a pretty significant presence in our state,” apparently in reference to Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, an Israeli company which partnered with Raytheon and broke ground last year on a new facility in East Camden, Ark.
The international Paris Air Show told FranceInfo that it set up the barrier around the Israeli display.
That followed “instruction from the competent French authorities prior to the opening of the show, relating to the withdrawal of certain equipment presented on Israeli pavilions,” organizers told the broadcaster. “Dialogue is underway so that the various parties can find a favorable outcome to the situation,” they added.
Maj. Gen. (Res.) Amir Baram, director general of the Israeli Defense Ministry, called the move “absolutely, bluntly antisemitic” and accused France of “commercial exclusion to prevent successful Israeli industries from competing with French ones.”
The annual show is organized by the French Aerospace Industries Association, an umbrella group representing several aviation giants, including Airbus, Astrium and Dassault Aviation.
Under French President Emmanuel Macron, the country imposed a weapons embargo on Israel amid its war against Hamas in Gaza.
Last year, a Paris court struck down restrictions requested by the French Defense Ministry on Israeli companies regarding the Eurosatory 2024 defense show. It ruled that the restrictions compromise principles of equality.
“The French are hiding behind supposedly political considerations to exclude Israeli offensive weapons from an international exhibition—weapons that compete with French industries,” the Israel Defense Ministry stated.