UK Arms Dealers Cash In on Arab Spring

The Times of London (paywall) reports that UK arms sales to the Mideast -- primarily to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Libya…

By August 29, 2011

The Times of London (paywall) reports that UK arms sales to the Mideast — primarily to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Libya (!?) — jumped 30 percent during the Arab Spring. We’re talking about £30.5 million worth of weapons sold between February and June:

Weapons exported include those capable of being used for internal repression, such as small-arms ammunition, sniper rifles, shotguns and submachineguns. The revelation has prompted fierce criticism of the Government, which has been accused of having “no coherence” to its arms policy . . .

As details continue to emerge of atrocities committed by supporters of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, defence companies will meet British diplomats attached to other unstable regimes, such as Yemen and Eritrea, next month, to pitch “export opportunities”.

Despite the atrocities, care to guess which country the British BDS movement prefers to stop arms sales to?

© Divuach Ne’eman R”A, 2025

Pesach Benson

Pesach Benson

A Baltimore native, Pesach was with HonestReporting from 2011 to 2020. He edited the Israel Daily News Stream and authored the e-book, Red Lines: HonestReporting’s 8 Categories of Media Bias. Before moving to Israel in 1995, he worked as a reporter for the Baltimore Jewish Times. Pesach has a B.A. in political science from the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, where he was executive editor of the campus newspaper.

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