Sahar Vardi writes:

Walking around the exhibition [Defense Tech Expo in Tel Aviv], one could easily notice far fewer attendees and official delegations from foreign states, and generally much less English spoken. The overwhelming majority of attendees were Israelis — from companies hoping to sell their latest wares, or to scout out the competition from other companies — but not the foreign state procurement delegations that were once the core of these exhibitions.

So how does this square with the uptick in arms sales over the past two years?

On the one hand, some two dozen countries have announced that they will halt or restrict arms trade with Israel. In the past year, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the Philippines have all canceled deals already signed with Israeli companies, apparently due to political pressure. On the other hand, Israeli defense exports rose from $12.5 billion in 2022 to $14.7 billion in 2024 — and although figures for 2025 have not yet been published, this number is expected to continue rising.

According to The Database of Israeli Military and Security Exports (DIMSE), a project by the Israeli anti-militarism movement New Profile, the majority of these exports (accounting for 54 percent of the total) are to European countries; in the past year alone, Germany signed procurement agreements for Israeli weapons systems worth €7 billion.

In other words, while major arms exhibitions are shrinking and foreign guests are not arriving, sales of weapons systems used in the genocide in Gaza are skyrocketing. While Israel is increasingly seen as a pariah and boycotted around the world, the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange recently launched a new index of Israeli defense companies. How do we make sense of this?

An American accountant who works with defense companies, standing next to me in the line at the exhibition entrance, inadvertently provided a clue. “It’s just disappointing that Elbit and Rafael aren’t here at all,” he said. Indeed, two of Israel’s three largest weapons companies didn’t have displays at the largest arms exhibition held in the country in nearly four years.

This is the crux: Israeli weapons companies do not need public arms exhibitions to sell their technology, and their main buyers are not interested in being seen at them. Arms trade with Israel has neither ceased nor diminished; it has simply gone underground.

This is reflected not only in the absence of major sellers and buyers from arms exhibitions, but also in the establishment of more subsidiaries and partnerships in Europe that allow countries to purchase Israeli weapons systems on European soil — while still claiming to their voters that arms deals with Israel have been canceled. [Continue reading…]