Servicemember Quality of Life Improvement and National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025

Floor Speech

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Mr. OGLES. Madam Chair, Eurosatory is France's biggest defense exposition, and it is also the largest international expo for land and air-land defense and security.

If it attracts the attendance it did in 2022, over 60,000 professional visitors and over 250 official delegations from 96 countries will be represented.

More than 70 Israeli companies were scheduled to participate in this year's expo, including large Israeli defense firms like Israel Aerospace Industries and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, which worked together to make Iron Dome, and which have extensive partnerships with American defense firms. Another would-be participant, Elbit Systems, has an American subsidiary that has provided our military with aviator integrated helmets and night vision equipment.

Events like Eurosatory are especially beneficial to smaller Israeli firms that benefit from the massive exposure provided.

However, just last week, the event organizers announced that at the request of French authorities, Israeli firms were no longer welcome.

The French Armed Forces Ministry said that conditions are no longer suited to welcome Israeli companies to the French show in a context where their president is calling for Israeli operations in Rafah to stop.

The exposition, it is worth pointing out, welcomes firms from such bastions of humanitarianism like China, Pakistan, Turkiye, and Saudi Arabia. In China's case, it is richly ironic, given Beijing's ongoing genocide of the Uyghur Muslim population. It is predictable and unfortunate, Madam Chair, that we are unable to find any condemnation from the international community for such genocide.

France is attempting to use the defense expo to bully Israel from protecting its own national security against some of the world's most heinous terrorists. It is widely immoral, and the French Government should apologize for embracing anti-Semitism.

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Mr. OGLES. Madam Chair, I thank my colleague for his kind words.

While American defense firms can continue to participate in this exhibition, maybe it would help if Federal agencies did not lend any U.S. support for France's outrageous behavior by participating as exhibitors. I don't think that would be something that France would want. I think U.S. participation is important. I also think that Israeli participation is important.

Madam Chair, I ask for adoption of my amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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