The government of the United Kingdom, under Prime Minister Keir Starmer, has banned Israel from participating in DSEI UK 2025, a convention of defense industry companies from around the world.
DSEI UK describes itself as “a pivotal event for the global defence industry,” and “the flagship defence event for the UK, which “promotes the UK’s defence ethos, agenda and leadership while encouraging opportunity and cooperation with our global allies.”
“The world’s leading defence organisations and most influential stakeholders rely on DSEI UK’s unique ability to bring the right people together, at the same time,” the website says.
Evidently, Israel is no longer among “the right people,” despite world-leading technology and ongoing, recent experience in the fight against terror.
The Israeli Ministry of Defense issued a statement in response:
The British government has recently imposed unilateral restrictions on the official participation of Israeli government and military representatives in the DSEI UK 2025 exhibition, scheduled to take place in London from 9 to 12 September.
These restrictions amount to a deliberate and regrettable act of discrimination against Israel’s representatives. Accordingly, the Israel Ministry of Defense (IMOD) will withdraw from the exhibition and will not establish a national pavilion.
Israeli industries that choose to participate will, however, receive the Ministry’s full support.
At a time when Israel is engaged on multiple fronts against Islamist extremists and terrorist organisations – forces that also threaten the West and international shipping lanes – this decision by Britain plays into the hands of extremists, grants legitimacy to terrorism, and introduces political considerations wholly inappropriate for a professional defence industry exhibition.
Starmer recently announced that the UK would recognize a Palestinian state at the United Nations General Assembly in September — despite the fact that Palestinian terrorists still hold Israeli hostages and that the Palestinian Authority remains an authoritarian dictatorship.
The putative state has no boundaries, no firm capital, no constitution, and no prospect of peace with its neighbor, against which it incites constant hatred.
Last year, the new government suspended 30 of 350 export licenses of military equipment to Israel, while insisting that it was not imposing an arms embargo on an ally in the midst of a war against terrorists.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Zionist Conspiracy Wants You, now available on Amazon. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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