Staff at the Paris office of Israel’s EL AL airlines, arrived this morning to find that red paint had been sprayed across the front of the building by Palestine Action France. There were also some messages, including, ‘EL AL genocide airline’ and ‘Free Palestine’.
France’s Israeli ambassador visited the property, and proclaimed that the action was an “act of terrorism”, which had been carried out with the intention to “terrorize EL AL employees, terrorize Israeli citizens, scare them and try to make them feel that they are not welcome.” For their part, EL AL claimed that it “unequivocally condemns all forms of violence, particularly those driven by hatred.”
Typically keen to interfere in the legal system of another country was Israel’s Transport Minister Miri Regev, who said: “I condemn the barbaric and violent act against EL AL and expect the law enforcement authorities in France to locate the criminals and take strong action against them,” This echoes language used by Israel in relation to Palestine Action, and other pro-Palestine activists in Britain. Miri Regev was previously a Brigadier-General in the Israeli Army, and has called for the Zionist ‘resettlement’ of Gaza. Just a week ago, she said, “There is no famine. There is no humanitarian disaster. And according to the hostages’ testimonies – there are also no innocents or uninvolved people.”
The event in Paris took place nearly 2 years into Israel’s war against Gaza, which has been widely condemned as Genocide, with the Palestinian area reduced to rubble, almost all civilian infrastructure destroyed, with the population slaughtered en masse, and deliberately starved. Yesterday alone, Israel killed at least 135 Palestinian civilians, including 87 who were queuing for aid. 771 were injured. They have received no sympathy from either EL AL or the Israeli ambassador to France.
EL AL has been making record profits over the past 2 years, due to reduced competition, and a big increase in ticket sales, not least those sold to the 83,000 Israelis who emigrated in 2024. As Francesca Albanese noted in a recent United Nations report, a great many Israeli companies have been making record profits from the genocide, along with international ones.