David Cronin
The Electronic Intifada / April 16, 2026
A firm owned by the Israeli weapons giant Elbit Systems is benefiting from a European Union fund set up to stimulate the growth of the arms industry.
Elbit’s Belgian subsidiary OIP is part of the consortium behind an artificial intelligence project focused on “threat detection” for satellites.
Known as Bodyguard, the project was launched in December 2024 – more than a year after Israel’s genocidal war against Gaza began. Bodyguard has been allocated approximately $7.5 million from the European Defence Fund (EDF).
The involvement of a firm owned by Israel’s biggest weapons maker in this EU-financed scheme does not appear to have attracted any scrutiny until now. That is despite how Elbit Systems has played a central role in the genocidal war against Gaza.
Some of Elbit’s divisions have freely admitted that they operated on a 24/7 basis during the early stages of the war. Elbit is also known to have embedded staff in Israel’s defense ministry – the ministry overseeing the genocide.
Elbit has supplied weapons used both in the routine massacres of Palestinians, as well as incidents that were regarded as excessive by world leaders. An Elbit drone, for example, carried the missiles with which seven workers from the World Central Kitchen were killed in April 2024.
Formed as part of a push toward greater militarization, the European Defence Fund is supposedly reserved for arms makers owned by European companies. Yet the rules covering the EDF contain loopholes that Israel’s weapons industry has been able to exploit.
Ruse
Despite being completely owned by Elbit, OIP has long masqueraded as a Belgian firm. Its stalls at trade shows tend to be located in the sections designated for businesses representing Belgium rather than Israel.
The ruse has so far been effective.
Last year, Belgium announced a ban on arms transfers to Israel. In recent weeks, the Belgian authorities have seized two shipments of weapons components that were being transported from Britain to Israel.
Belgium is not going far enough. The Belgian government has raised no objections – at least not in public – to how Elbit’s OIP makes weapons on Belgian soil.
Asked for a comment, Thomas Regnier, the defense spokesperson for the EU’s executive, the European Commission, said that “safeguards have been provided by Belgium” concerning OIP’s participation in the Bodyguard project.
According to Regnier, entities based in the European Union but controlled by firms outside it may join EDF projects “under very strict conditions.” Those conditions include a “restriction on the transfer of sensitive information” to countries beyond the EU’s borders.
“The [European] Commission does not fund any military projects that support the conflict in Gaza,” he said.
“Conflict” is, of course, a strange word with which to describe a genocidal situation.
And despite what EU mouthpieces such as Regnier may claim, allowing OIP to take part in projects like Bodyguard confers an unmerited legitimacy on Elbit, its parent company. That is tantamount to providing support for a genocide profiteer.
For its part, OIP tries to play the victim. It has filed at least two lawsuits against activists who have sounded the alarm about its undeniable connections to Israel’s arms industry.
One lawsuit targets seven activists who took part in a March 2024 protest at the firm’s plant in Oudenaarde, a Flemish town.
Last month, an Oudenaarde court deemed OIP’s complaint against five of the seven as well-founded. The activists face a fine – the amount of which still has to be determined – for disrupting OIP’s activities.
A separate case was taken by OIP against the prominent campaigner Anuna De Wever, who had sprayed graffiti at an OIP site in the francophone city of Tournai during December 2023. De Wever received a suspended sentence but was acquitted of a conspiracy charge in October last.
Along with recording ever higher profits, Elbit brags that it is “at the forefront of space technology.”
Like its parent company in Israel, OIP is eyeing opportunities beyond the confines of this planet.
“We’re going to the moon,” OIP gushed in a recent social media post.
The firm expressed delight at how its “landing camera” has now been “officially integrated” on Griffin-1 – a forthcoming mission to the lunar South Pole.
A trip to the moon offers no more than a temporary escape from the voluminous evidence that Elbit is contributing to a genocide here on earth.
Bodyguard is not the first European Defence Fund project that OIP has joined.
The firm has previously taken part in Odin’s Eye – a space project focused on ballistic missile threats. The project was allocated around $9 million by the EU several years ago.
Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) – another maker of weapons used to commit genocide in Gaza – has benefited, too, from the European Defence Fund.
Intracom Defense – IAI’s Greek subsidiary – is participating in a number of EDF projects. Investigate Europe – a team of journalists – reported last year on how at least seven EDF projects involving Intracom Defense had been approved since Israel’s ongoing war against Gaza began in October 2023.
Inveterate warmongers like Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission’s chief, are very much asserting their authority in Brussels at the moment. Because of its global activities, Israel’s weapons industry finds rich pickings from the agenda being pursued.
David Cronin is an associate editor of The Electronic Intifada; his books include Balfour’s Shadow: A Century of British Support for Zionism and Israel and Europe’s Alliance with Israel: Aiding the Occupation
