SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
campaign against arms trade
Thousands Protest London Weapons Fair Over UK Complicity in Gaza Genocide
"The people who run these companies are war criminals," said one campaigner. "They should be investigated for crimes against humanity, not invited to profit from the unspeakable devastation they have caused."
Sep 09, 2025
Thousands of demonstrators rallied Tuesday outside a major London arms fair to protest what one campaigner called the United Kingdom's "peak complicity in genocide" in Gaza, where Israeli forces have killed more than 64,600 Palestinians—mostly women and children—and wounded over 163,000 others since October 2023.
The Independent reported at least three arrests for alleged assaults on police officers outside the the biennial Defense and Security Equipment International (DSEI) UK trade show, which is being held at Excel London at the Royal Victoria Dock. At least one person was also reportedly taken away in an ambulance.
Video posted to social media showed police officers shoving people to the ground, as well as DSEI attendees smirking and recording on their phones as they passed demonstrators.
Protesters chanted "shut it down," waved Palestinian flags, and held up signs with messages like "stop arming Israel," "only war criminals past this point," and "we hope that the screams of babies will haunt them in their sleep."
Ajahn Santamono, a Buddhist monk taking part in Tuesday's protest, lamented to Middle East Eye that "people who contribute to genocide and mass murder are protected and supported, while people of conscience who try to protest this are the ones who are arrested, criminalized, and treated with violence."
On Monday, members of the direct action group Shut the System sabotaged fiber optic internet cables and splashed red paint over portions of the DSEI venue.
"How can anyone with a shred of humanity build their fortune on mass slaughter?" the group asked. "Shut the System's answer—they are a symptom of a global financial system that prioritizes extreme, psychopathic profiteering for growth's sake alone, above solid healthcare and the natural support systems underpinning all life on Earth."
More than 50 Israeli arms manufacturers and US weapons giants including Lockheed Martin—which makes the F-35 fighter used by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to bomb Gaza—are among the approximately 1,600 exhibitors taking part in DSEI.
The United States is far and away the world's leading enabler of Israel's war on Gaza, which is the subject of an ongoing International Court of Justice genocide case and International Criminal Court arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
Some of the IDF's most powerful arms—including 1,000- and 2,000-pound bombs that have been repeatedly used to massacre Palestinian civilians—are provided by the United States and the tens of billions of dollars in armed aid it lavishes upon Israel.
"The US and Europe-backed slaughter of families in Palestine is the frontline of our struggle for climate and social justice globally," said Shut the System. "If we can't stop this genocide, power holders will use it as a blueprint to commit genocides elsewhere."
The advocacy group Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) said ahead of DSEI that the UK government "keeps insisting it is doing everything in its power to hold the Israeli government to account for its actions."
However, a report published by the group last week shows that "this is an outrageous and offensive lie."
The report notes that "the UK is deeply complicit in supporting Israel's genocide in Gaza: through arms sales, [Royal Air Force] reconnaissance flights over Gaza, from which it is suspected intelligence is shared with Israel, training of Israeli soldiers, and other forms of military cooperation."
According to the report:
Despite the government's decision on September 2, 2024 to suspend arms export licenses to Israel... they are still allowing the supply of crucial components for Israel's 45 F-35 combat aircraft, so long as they are supplied indirectly via the US or other countries, rather than directly to Israel. These are used to bomb Gaza, at an extraordinary level of intensity, requiring a constant supply of spare parts. By its own admission at the time of the decision, the government accepts that these UK-supplied components may well be used by Israel to violate international humanitarian law in Gaza.
CAAT media coordinator Emily Apple said that the UK has "reached peak complicity in genocide in allowing 51 Israeli arms companies to exhibit at DSEI."
"It is allowing companies to market their genocide tested weapons to human rights abusing countries around the world," Apple added. "The people who run these companies are war criminals. They should be investigated for crimes against humanity, not invited to profit from the unspeakable devastation they have caused in Gaza."
Other actions Tuesday included a Quaker meeting at Waterloo Station attended by around 200 people, part of No Faith in War Day.
As part of the No Faith in War day, 200 people joined our Meeting for Worship, creating a grounded space in the face of the violence embodied by the DSEI arms fair.Tomorrow, join us to hand in a demand to stop DSEI. Meeting Waterloo train station, 11am: tinyurl.com/stop-dsei📸 Michael Preston
[image or embed]
— Quakers in Britain (@quaker.org.uk) September 9, 2025 at 8:02 AM
Anti-DSEI protests are set to continue Wednesday, when the Palestine Solidarity Campaign is planning a 5:00 pm "pots and pans protest" meant to "greet the arms traders with a wall of noise."
The protests against DSEI follow last weekend's arrest of nearly 900 supporters of the banned UK-based group Palestine Action in London's Parliament Square.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Admission of Guilt': UK Suspends Some Arms Export Licenses to Israel Over Gaza
"Finally—but this is both too little and too late," said the International Center of Justice for Palestinians.
Sep 02, 2024
As governments enabling Israel's devastating war on the Gaza Strip face growing global demands to impose arms embargoes, a U.K. minister on Monday announced the suspension of approximately 30 of 350 weapons export licenses.
"This is not a blanket ban. This is not an arms embargo," stressed U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy, part of Prime Minister Keir Starmer's Labour Party, which took control of the government after voters ended 14 years of Conservative rule in July.
While describing himself as a "friend of Israel" and "a liberal, progressive Zionist," Lammy said that "it is this government's legal duty to review export licenses" and "the assessment I have received leaves me unable to conclude anything other than that for certain U.K. arms exports to Israel, there does exist a clear risk that they might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law."
The targeted licenses are for "equipment that we assess is for use in the current conflict in Gaza, such as important components which go into military aircraft, including fighter aircraft, helicopters, and drones, as well as items which facilitate ground targeting," Lammy told the U.K. Parliament. The remaining exports "will continue" and "the government will keep our position under review."
According to the Financial Times:
The move will not affect components for the multinational F-35 joint striker fighter program, except regarding parts sent directly to Israel.
U.K. officials determined that suspending critical components within a global pool of spare parts could harm the maintenance and operations of F-35s in other nations.
"When Israel is carrying out a genocidal assault in Gaza, we shouldn't just ban a small fraction of arms licenses to Israel,"
said Zarah Sultana, a Labour Party member who represents Coventry South in Parliament. "This ban still allows the U.K. to sell parts for F-35 fighter jets, known as 'the most lethal' in the world. The government needs to ban ALL arms sales."
Stop the War Coalition
called the suspension "an admission of guilt" and similarly stressed that "we need a full, comprehensive ban on arms sales to apartheid Israel—not this half-hearted approach."
Lammy's announcement came as the Danish news outlet
Information and NGO Danwatch connected Israel's use of an F-35 stealth fighter to a July 13 attack on an Israeli-designated "safe zone" in southern Gaza, which killed scores of Palestinians and injured hundreds more.
In a statement responding to both developments, Sam Perlo-Freeman, research coordinator for the Campaign Against Arms Trade,
said:
The government's statement today that it is suspending 30 arms export licenses to Israel is a belated, but welcome move, finally acting upon the overwhelming evidence of Israeli war crimes in Gaza. But exempting parts for Israel's F-35 is utterly outrageous and unjustifiable.
These are by far the U.K.'s most significant arms supplies to the Israeli military, and just today we have confirmation that they have been used in one of the most egregious attacks in recent months. The government has admitted that there is a 'clear risk' that Israel is using fighter aircraft among other weapons to violate international humanitarian law. How can this 'clear risk' not apply to the F-35s? The only right and legal course of action is to end the supply of F-35 parts to Israel, along with the rest of U.K. arms sales.
Although the suspension is not as bold as critics of Israel's bombardment have called for, it was still seen as another positive step under Starmer, whose government has also recently resumed funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East and dropped a challenge to the International Criminal Court prosecutor's request for arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant as well as Hamas leaders.
While Gallant said he was "deeply disheartened" by the U.K.'s latest move, Dearbhla Minogue, senior lawyer for the Global Legal Action Network (GLAN), declared that "this momentous decision vindicates everything Palestinians have been saying for months."
GLAN and Al-Haq on Saturday had threatened the U.K. government with new legal action if it failed to engage the suspension mechanism following revelations in The Guardian and The Telegraph regarding communications between Attorney General Richard Hermer and the Foreign Office about weapons sales to Israel.
"The U.K. government was backed into a corner," Minogue said Monday. "Our most recent letter showed that a suspension was the only right and legal thing to do. This is a truly historic victory for Al-Haq and for Palestinians. The exhaustive evidence we filed in mid-August showed that there was only one legally sound decision available to the government—that it is against the law to supply Israel with weapons for use against Palestinians in Gaza."
Both groups are now considering their next actions. Fellow GLAN lawyer Charlotte Andrews-Briscoe emphasized, "Now that the government has taken this important step, it must do much, much more, and abide by its obligations under international law to do everything in its power to prevent the commission of genocide."
Israel faces an ongoing South Africa-led genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its nearly 11-month assault on Gaza, which has killed at least 40,786 Palestinians, injured another 94,224, and forcibly displaced most of the enclave's 2.3 million residents, who are struggling to find food, water, shelter, and adequate medical care.
The Associated Press reported that "British firms sell a relatively small amount of weapons and components to Israel compared to major suppliers such as the U.S. and Germany. Earlier this year, the government said military exports to Israel amounted to £42 million ($53 million) in 2022."
Still, the suspension could increase pressure on other allies of Israel to take similar action and
strain relations with the U.S. government—which, under President Joe Biden, has showered Israel with weapons and diplomatic support since the current escalation of the decadeslong conflict began in October.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'War Is Good for Business,' Declares Executive at London's Global Arms Fair
"Deals done at DSEI will cause misery across the world, causing global instability, and devastate people's lives," one peace activist lamented.
Sep 15, 2023
Military-industrial complex players big and small gathered in London this week, hawking everything from long-range missiles to gold-plated pistols to arms fair attendees—including representatives of horrific human rights violators—as weapon-makers and other merchants of the machinery of death reap record profits.
"War is good for business," one defense executive attending the biennial Defense and Security Equipment International (DSEI) conference at ExCel London flat-out told Reuters. "We are extremely busy," Michael Elmore, head of sales at the U.K.-based armored steelmaker MTL Advanced, told the media agency.
Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine and the West's scramble to arm Ukrainian homeland defenders have been a bonanza for arms-makers.
"Ukraine is a very interesting combination of First and Second World War technologies and very modern technology," Kuldar Vaarsi, CEO of the Estonian unmanned ground vehicle firm MILREM, told Reuters.
Saber-rattling and fearmongering by government, media, and business figures amid rising tensions between the U.S. and its allies on one side, and a fast-rising China on the other, have also spurred military spending, including Japan's $320 billion buildup announced last December.
"We think this is a longer-term essentially 'sea change' in national defense strategy for the U.S. and for our Western allies," Jim Taiclet, CEO of U.S. arms giant Lockheed Martin, told investors during a call earlier this summer announcing higher-than-expected sales and profit outlooks.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the United States, Russia, France, China, and Germany were the world's top arms exporters from 2018-22, with the five nations accounting for 76% of all weapons exports during that period. The U.S. accounted for nearly 40% of such exports during those five years, while increasing its dominance in the arms trade. The U.S. also remains by far the world's biggest military spender.
In addition to major corporations, middlemen like Marc Morales have also been profiting handsomely from wars in countries including Ukraine. Morales happened to have a warehouse full of ammunition in Bulgaria that the Pentagon originally intended for Afghanistan when Russia invaded its neighbor, and he has been richly rewarded as the U.S. spends tens of billions of dollars arming Ukrainian forces. He named his new $10 million yacht Trigger Happy.
Outside the sprawling ExCel convention center in London's Docklands, anti-war protesters rallied against the global arms trade and the death and destruction it fuels. The Guardian reported that at least a dozen demonstrators were arrested during the course of the conference, including nine on Thursday for blocking a road outside the venue.
Sam Perlo-Freeman, a researcher at the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), told The Guardian that "a lot of countries that are being talked about as new arms export markets are ones we would be concerned about."
"Egypt is a repressive regime and Vietnam an absolute dictatorship," Perlo-Freeman added. "Indonesia is involved in brutality in West Papua."
Emily Apple, also of CAAT, told People's World that "the companies exhibiting read as a who's-who of the world's worst arms dealers."
"Israel is an apartheid state, and it is disgusting that the U.K. is not only selling weapons to Israel but encouraging Israeli arms companies to sell their weapons in London," she continued. "Representatives from regimes such as Saudi Arabia, who have used U.K.-made weapons to commit war crimes in Yemen, will be wined and dined and encouraged to buy yet more arms."
"Deals done at DSEI will cause misery across the world, causing global instability, and devastate people's lives," Apple added.
Inside ExCel, it was business as usual. Pressed by Declassified U.K. chief reporter Phil Miller on why Britain's right-wing government supports "selling arms to the Saudi dictatorship that sentences someone to death for tweeting," Minister of State for the Armed Forces James Heappey deflected.
Private sector leaders, however, have been more forthcoming. As Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes opined during a 2021 investor call touting the company's "solid" growth: "Peace is not going to break out in the Middle East anytime soon."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular