Elbit Systems is apartheid Israel’s largest arms company. It is privately owned, and provides 80% of the weapons and equipment for Israel’s land forces and 85% of the combat drones used by the airforce.
Elbit Systems claims a double-digit growth across all sectors but is trying hard to hide the full picture of its financial decline from its investors. The company is flooded by orders from the Israeli war ministry for weapons, which Israel needs to continue its ongoing genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, as well as to fight at more fronts which Israel is opening through aggression and massacres. But the company’s long-term existence depends on its export contracts, which have made up 80% of its revenue and are shrinking rapidly, reaching 58% of its revenue in the fourth quarter of 2024.
Elbit Systems published its financial reports for 2024 on March 18th of 2025, as it held a short shareholder conference in Hebrew and only gave partial answers to a few questions from the audience. President and CEO Bezalel Machlis tried to convince the shareholders that Elbit Systems is prospering, but kept the company’s earnings projections unchanged. He brushed aside concerns about the company’s growing backlog of orders which it has failed to fulfill, and explained the slowdown in new orders by a “financial event” which he refused to disclose.
Elbit Systems did demonstrate with a presentation and videos how its weapons are used extensively by Israel’s genocidal army, tested on Palestinians in Gaza.
Not a good year for Elbit Systems’ international business
According to Elbit System’s own reports, the company lost more than 35% of the contracts in the Global South in 2024. Some highlights of Elbit’s lost opportunities, largely due to grassroots and civil society pressure, led by the BDS movement:
- In February, two giant Japanese corporations, Itochu and NAS, canceled in February a memorandum of understanding for a joint project with Elbit Systems.
- In May, Elbit Systems Brazil froze a massive contract for ATMOS artillery, the same kind of artillery which Israel has used during the genocide to bomb civilians in Gaza with 155mm shells causing terrible devastation. Brazil finally canceled the deal with Elbit Systems at the start of 2025, after months of public protest. News leaked that Brazil will not enter into any new deals with Israeli military companies until a “peace deal” is reached.
- Also in May 2024, Elbit Systems was disqualified from a contract worth tens of millions of dollars for hand-held laser rangefinders for the Canadian Armed Forces, ostensibly because it didn’t meet “mandatory industrial and technological benefits.”
- In November, the British Ministry of Defense scrapped the Watchkeeper program with Elbit Systems, a flagship project of Elbit Systems, because of the drones “unfortunate tendency to crash.”
Aside from its persistent involvement in war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, a pattern of professional failure is by now part of Elbit System’s trademark. Only over the last months, Elbit Systems faced technical failures and was linked to scandals of corruption allegations from India to Switzerland:
- In January 2025 a Drishti 10 Starliner UAV produced by Adani Defence and Aerospace, the defense arm of the Adani conglomerate, as a local version of Elbit Systems’ Hermes 900 crashed while it was undergoing pre-acceptance trials before delivery to the navy. The crash raised questions about the reliability of the product.
- In Denmark, a political fight is ongoing over possible corruption and misleading information given by the Defense Ministry to the parliamentary committee. Also in discussion is Elbit’s Systems technical failure to provide a military-grade GPS guiding system to the artillery, offering instead only a civilian GPS system which is vulnerable to hacking and jamming.
- In December 2024, the Swiss federal parliamentary finance committee wrote to Swiss Minister of Defense Viola Amherd warning that commissioning the Elbit Systems UAVs was not progressing, and that Swiss defense contractor Ruag, which is now also embattled in large scale corruption allegations, needed to fix the problem. The delivery of the six UAVs was already 10 years delayed, when the Swiss Air Force was surprised to discover that the aircraft lacked a critical component for operating in the country’s airspace. In order to fly, they would have to be accompanied by a helicopter.
Technical failures, security concerns and business misconduct are nothing new in Elbit Systems deals and equipment. Already in 2021 an officer of the Australian army explained the reason why Australia decided to stop using the Battle Management System (BMS) as “People are getting fed up with Elbit exploiting their monopoly to impose huge premiums. [...] And there are definite concerns that the Israelis are backdooring the system for information.”
In the meanwhile, one of Elbit Systems best clients, former president of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte, was arrested with an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court for charges of crimes against humanity, which were perpetrated partially with Elbit Systems weapons. Elbit Systems provided his regime with battle tanks for the purpose of dispersing demonstrations. In Latin America, Elbit Systems’ armored vehicles and its military drones have become ubiquitous tools of oppression against Indigenous communities, the poor, and minorities in general.
Now is the time to step up the BDS pressure campaign against Elbit Systems
Ever since the Norwegian Pension Fund divested from Elbit Systems in 2009, the ongoing global campaign to Stop Elbit Systems has made it clear that Elbit Systems is such an integral part of Israel’s system of apartheid, occupation and settler colonialism, and now also of genocide, that dealing with the company is immoral, illegal and shortsighted.
Action against Elbit Systems is the most direct way of depriving Israel’s genocidal military of the weapons it uses to massacre, maim, and forcibly displace Palestinians.
Now is the time to step up pressure globally:
- Target Elbit Systems supply chain
Elbit Systems can only manufacture its weapons if it has the necessary technology and raw materials. In its 2024 annual report, Elbit Systems admits that “supply chain disruption due in part to limitations on export to Israel as well as more limited transportation by air and sea to the region.” It further states that “[s]uch restrictions have caused a material increase in recent years in the Company's costs of procurement and shipping, leading in some cases to delays and limitations in our production and development. With respect to certain materials, our dependency on single sources of supply has increased.” Elbit also admits that “Some components are available from a small number of suppliers, and in a few cases a single source.”
Peacefully disrupting this supply chain is fundamental.
- The Japanese company, FANUC, however, continues to provide Elbit Systems with industrial robots which are necessary to make precision weapons, even though FANUC claims that its policy guidelines prevent it from selling products to Israeli arms companies.
- In 2024, activists were able to pressure governments to delay for at least 2 months the delivery of 8 containers of RDX military explosives to Elbit Systems. They blocked the MV Kathrin, which carried the explosives from Vietnam to Elbit Systems, from docking and unloading at several ports.
Let’s step up the efforts to block the illegal transfer of all military and dual use supplies to Israel.
- Divest from Elbit Systems
Since 2009, dozens of financial institutions, pension funds and banks have divested from Elbit Systems. There are far too many investors still banking on the genocide and apartheid powered by Elbit Systems:
- Campaigners are calling to Boycott Barclays Bank as it is bankrolling Israel’s attack on the Palestinian people.
- Scotiabank reduced its investment in Elbit Systems after it was targeted by a powerful BDS campaign.
- Stop the contracts with Elbit Systems
The Israeli government is in the process of rapidly signing contracts with Elbit Systems to produce the weapons Israel needs to continue its atrocity crimes because the growing military embargo against Israel is making it more and more difficult for Israel to import some weapons. Yet, this cannot offset the loss of global markets.
- It is crucial to ensure that Europe’s rush for a €800 billion rearmament will not be the lifeline for criminal Israeli arms companies, especially Elbit Systems, which is beleaguered by economic constraints and technical failures. This money should go to social welfare not to Israel’s warfare.
- Stop Elbit’s subsidiaries
Despite increasing protests across the globe against Elbit Systems, the criminal corporation still has a global presence from Australia to Brazil. Spain is in the process of establishing an Elbit Systems artillery factory in Cartagena.