France says no to Israeli-made drones after BDS pressure

The French military has decided to not buy Israeli-made drones after coming under pressure from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement [BDS] - a pro-Palestinian group.

France was widely expected to buy the Watchkeeper drone, which is produced by Israel's biggest arms maker Elbit Systems and the UK subsidiary of France's Thales, but has instead gone with the Patroller drone made by domestic consortium Sagem.

The Watchkeeper drone is based on a model Israel has used to carry out hundreds of lethal attacks on Palestinian civilians - more than 800 Palestinians were killed by Israeli drones between 2006 and 2011.

"[We] acknowledge French army's decision to not choose the Watchkeeper after a tender was given to Sagem," BDS France said in a statement.

"Although the choice of Sagem does not represent total independence from Israel, dropping the Thales-Elbit drone is a success for the BDS campaign," the activist group said.

The group added, however, that it could not celebrate the military buying drones, which could be used to kill civilians "as the Israeli army has done in Gaza".

More than 8,000 people had signed an online petition launched by BDS France in September calling on the defence ministry not to pick the Israeli drone.

Last year, activists staged a "die-in" protest outside the Elbit Systems pavilion at the Paris Air Show, one of the world's biggest annual events for military and civilian aircraft sales.

Drones are increasingly being used for surveillance and extra-judicial execution in parts of the Middle East, especially by the US, but in nowhere more than Gaza has the drone become a permanent fixture of life.

More than 1.7 million Palestinians, confined by Israel to a small territory in one of the most densely populated areas in the world, are subject to intermittent death raining down from the sky.

During the 2014 Israeli aggression against Gaza, Israel deliberately targeted children with drone attacks.

The BDS movement tries to persuade businesses, artists, governments and academic institutions to boycott Israel over its decades long occupation of the Palestinian territories.

https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/news/2016/2/8/france-says-no-to-israeli-made-drones-after-bds-pressure


 

And another brick in the wall comes down.

They will still by the brilliant drones from somewhere.

Yep, but not Israel, so it won't get the profits.

What the fuck do you have against Israel? day after day after day the same hate. It's eating you up lady.

nicko wrote:What the fuck do you have against Israel?   day after day after day the same hate.   It's eating you up lady.

In one word its called


Antisemitism

Two of the people going on about this are two of the most far right neo-conservatives, on the really  dark side of Zionism and the Islamophobia network than you could possibly get, Daniel Pipes and Martin Kramer. 


Robert Fisk explains:

How to shut up your critics with a single word


http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-how-to-shut-up-your-critics-with-a-single-word-140657.html

Our own John Pilger made a programme for Carlton Television called Palestine Is Still The Issue. I have watched it three times. It is accurate in every historical detail; indeed its historical adviser was a left-wing Israeli academic. But Carlton's own chairman, Michael Green – in one of the most gutless statements in recent British journalism – announced that it was "a tragedy for Israel so far as accuracy is concerned". Why Mr Green should want to utter such trash is beyond me. But what does he mean by "tragedy"? Is he comparing Pilger to a suicide bomber? And so it goes on. It is left, of course, to the likes of Uri Avneri in Israel to state that "the Sharon government is a giant laboratory for the growing of the anti-Semitism virus". He rightly says that by smearing those who detest the persecution of the Palestinians as anti-Semites, "the sting is taken out of this word, giving it something approaching respectability". But we can take comfort that 28 brave academics have signed a petition condemning President George Bush's build-up to war and Israel's support for it and warning that the Israeli government may be contemplating crimes against humanity on the Palestinians, including ethnic cleansing. Have Mr Pipes and his chums put the names of these good men and women on their hate list? You bet they haven't. Because all of them are Israeli scholars at Israeli universities. I wonder why we weren't told about this.

Zionism is just a belief to want a historical homeland
Most Jews are then zionists and thus the hate is directed at jews

Wanting to single out Israel ignoring real abusers of human rights is fundamentally racist and making all israelis, including Arab Israelis accountable for the wrongs of a Government

Robert Fisk is yet another left wing regressive.

Robert Fisk (born 12 July 1946) is an English writer and journalist from Maidstone, Kent. He has been Middle East correspondent of The Independent for more than twenty years, primarily based in Beirut.^[1] Fisk holds more British and international journalism awards than any other foreign correspondent and has been voted British International Journalist of the Year award seven times. He has published a number of books and reported on several wars and armed conflicts.
An Arabic speaker,^[2] he is one of a few Western journalists to have interviewed Osama bin Laden, which he did on three occasions between 1993 and 1997.^[3][4]

Yes we had you post this already

He has no military experience/understanding or it seems an understanding of racism