PARIS (Dispatches) – A new report has rebuked France of “regularly and continuously” delivering military equipment to the Zionist regime since the start of its war on Gaza.
According to the study by a coalition of NGOs released on Tuesday, deliveries have been continuous, both by sea and by air, since October 2023.
They include more than 15 million “bombs, grenades, torpedoes, mines, missiles and other munitions of war” worth more than $8mn, as well as 1,868 “parts and accessories for rocket launchers, grenades, flamethrowers, artillery, military rifles and hunting rifles” worth more than $2mn.
The report was produced by the activist network Progressive International (PI) in cooperation with a coalition of NGOs including the Palestinian Youth Movement, the French Jewish Union for Peace, BDS France and Stop Arming Israel France.
To compile the report, the organizations say they relied on data from the Israel Tax Authority, verifying imports that corresponded to French-made military equipment.
By comparing these imports with French exports, they found “no fewer than 14 freight flights” as well as “at least 16 shipments destined for the Israeli ports of Haifa or Ashdod.”
At a press conference to launch the report at the National Assembly in Paris, David Adler of Progressive International said that the document “reveals a very stunning hypocrisy at the heart of President Macron’s foreign policy and the sustained violation of international humanitarian law.”
Denouncing “very hollow promises about Palestinian liberation” and the positioning of France “as a champion of human rights”, he said the report confirmed “what many people in this country have long suspected to be true: that France has played and continues to play a central role in the traffic of arms to Israel not for defensive purposes but to be deployed against the people of Gaza and the occupied territories of the West Bank.”
Adler said the report also identified shipments of F-35 fighter jet components, artillery systems and machine gun ammunition, weapons that have been documented in use during the mass killing of Palestinian civilians attempting to access humanitarian aid in recent days.