Le Bourget, Paris Air Show, June 2025

Israel was at war. Israeli operations against Iran had just concluded. France was under intense political pressure. And at Le Bourget – one of the most important defense and aerospace exhibitions in the world – organizers erected black walls around the Israeli pavilions overnight, hours before the show opened.

The stated reason: Rafael, Elbit, Israel Aerospace Industries, and others had refused a demand to display only defensive systems. So France tried to make them invisible.

It didn’t work.

By the time the doors opened, the black walls were the most photographed thing at the show. Journalists who might have walked straight past the booth filed international stories. The Israeli defense ministry CEO stood at the entrance and invited visitors through the gaps. Staff wrote messages on the black surface until security stopped them. A French court rejected the appeal to remove the walls – which kept the story alive for another news cycle.

No activation budget buys that.

The marketing lesson has nothing to do with politics. It’s about what happens when someone tries to erase your presence: the act of erasure becomes the loudest signal in the room. The Streisand Effect applied to trade show marketing.

The booth was blocked. The brand was not.

For Israeli companies operating on the global stage, friction, exclusion, and political headwinds are real. The question is never whether you’ll face them. The question is whether your team has a response ready, with the chutzpah to execute it when every camera is watc