Short-circuiting international law 

Last amended on: 9 Sep 2025

It is the middle of the night on 18 March 2025(opens in new window) in the Abasan area, south-eastern Gaza Strip. Qasim (35) wakes up suddenly from the sound of explosions nearby. He runs outside, into the dark. Down the road, he finds that the four-story building where many of his relatives were staying has largely collapsed. Qasim and others look for survivors with the flashlight on his phone. They find his relative Anas (13), who, at that point, is still breathing, but Anas dies within the hour, while waiting for an ambulance. Anas’s sisters, Jana (11) and Leen (6), and his mother, Fulla (29), are also killed in the attack along with Qasim’s cousin Huda (19), aunt Asma (35), and uncle Mohammed (42). “We never thought such massive attacks would happen again,” says Qasim.

On that day, Israel ended(opens in new window) the fragile two-month ceasefire and resumed its attacks on Gaza in full force, launching widespread airstrikes on buildings and makeshift shelters across the Gaza Strip, killing 600 Palestinians in one day, including 400 children.

The attacks of 18 March are just one episode in Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza that began in October 2023 and is estimated to have killed more than 335,000 Palestinians so far. 1  

Documentation by human rights organisations, the United Nations, and media outlets has shown how the Israeli army systematically attacks civilians and civilian objects – homes, hospitals, schools, and bakeries – using fighter jets, drones, and military vehicles, in violation of international law. 

Four Israeli arms manufacturers that have long supplied the Israeli army with the means to carry out such attacks – including weapons, drones and parts for fighter jets, armoured vehicles and naval vessels – are Elbit Systems(opens in new window) , Rafael Advanced Defense Systems(opens in new window) , Israel Aerospace Industries(opens in new window) (state-owned), and its subsidiary Elta Systems(opens in new window) .

Drawing on hundreds of pages of customs information and company disclosures from India and the Netherlands, this long-read reveals Dutch business connections to an India-based electrical engineering company, SASMOS HET Technologies (SASMOS), supplying electronic components to these four arms manufacturers.  

SOMO discovered the links in the summer of 2024 while investigating Israeli arms supply chains. In this research, SASMOS – based in the city of Bangalore in India – emerged as a steady supplier of electronic components to Israel’s largest arms companies.

Between October 2023 and early April 2025, SASMOS sent components worth an estimated US$25 million to the four arms manufacturers listed above. 2

A review of SASMOS customs information, through Globalwits (a global trade database that gathers customs, export and other business data, including from the Indian Customs Electronic Declaration System), introduced SOMO to the names of Mr X, Mr Y, and Mr Z. SOMO dug through SASMOS’ corporate structure and history and found that the three men were linked to the Dutch company, Lumipol, and that a Lumipol company, Lumipol Invest BV, owned 45 per cent of SASMOS.

SASMOS provides the “central nervous system”

SASMOS manufactures and exports(opens in new window) electronic applications for the aerospace and defence industry. It produces a range of electronic components and systems for armoured vehicles, marine weapons systems, and manned and unmanned military aircraft. 3 SASMOS itself compares(opens in new window) the function of its electrical wiring solutions with the “circulatory and central nervous systems of the human body” in how they transmit information and connect separate body parts.  Drones, fighter jets, and tanks cannot be operated without these communication, navigation, and operation systems.

The four Israeli arms manufacturers that are being supplied with SASMOS’ electronic components provide the Israeli army with a range of weaponry, including parts for fighter jets(opens in new window) , surveillance and attack drones(opens in new window) , and military components such as displays(opens in new window) for fighter jet cockpits, radios for drones(opens in new window) , and other avionics systems(opens in new window) .

Many of the components that SASMOS sells to the Israeli arms manufacturers, such as sensors, video cables, and power supplies, can be used in different types of vehicles and aircraft. According to aviation technology experts who reviewed SASMOS customs information retrieved by SOMO – including dozens of different types of electrical components shipped to the Israeli arms manufacturers – some components appear to be more specific to aviation. 5 Examples of such products are ‘ground straps’ and ‘grounding cables’, which are used to ground planes and protect them against electrostatic build-up. Other examples are ‘vertical tail elect harnesses’ and ‘left wing tip harnesses’, electric cables that are part of an aircraft’s flight control systems.

In 2014, SASMOS established a joint venture with the Netherlands-based aerospace electronics manufacturer Fokker Elmo – now GKN Aerospace – by the name of Fokker Elmo Sasmos Interconnection Systems Limited (FESIL). 6 Based at the same address as SASMOS’ manufacturing unit, 7 FESIL functions like a business unit(opens in new window) within SASMOS and specialises(opens in new window) in producing wiring for fighter jets and other types of aircraft.

SASMOS: Israeli assaults on Gaza as a business opportunity

SASMOS has a long history of business relationships with the Israeli arms industry. One year after SASMOS’s founding in 2007, Israel Aerospace Industries became its first overseas client. 8 The company has benefited from Israel’s recent surge in demand for military equipment.  A review of customs information shows that Israel is SASMOS’s largest export market by value. According to this data, Israeli buyers were responsible for over half of SASMOS’s total export value between 2022 and 2024.

Between October 2023, when Israel began its current assault on Gaza, and early April 2025, the value of SASMOS exports to Israel exceeded US$ 38 million. Of this total, Israel Aerospace Industries and its subsidiary Elta Systems purchased 45 per cent, Elbit Systems 12 per cent, and Rafael Advanced Defense Industries 8 per cent. SASMOS’ supply to these companies has been – and apparently continues to be – steady and consistent. In March 2025 alone, the month Israel ended the ceasefire, SASMOS sent shipments on 20 different days, customs information shows.

Lumipol: investing in a booming business

SASMOS’s revenues for 2023 and 2024 are not publicly available, but a video on the company’s website suggests a spectacular boom in business in the past decade, from US$ 1 million in revenue in 2010 to over US$ 100 million in 2023. 9

Lumipol first invested(opens in new window) in SASMOS in 2011. Lumipol owns 45 per cent of SASMOS shares, via Lumipol Invest BV. Lumipol makes no secret of its business relationships with Israeli arms and aviation companies, noting on its website(opens in new window) that Israel is one of the main export markets for SASMOS products.

We identified that Lumipol’s CEO, Mr. X, was a director (non-executive) of SASMOS and on the board of its Dutch subsidiary, SASMOS International BV, a Dutch holding company. Mr. Z, whose name we also encountered in our research, was also a director (non-executive) at SASMOS. 10 SASMOS company records from India show that Mr. Z has no shares in SASMOS directly (as per March 2023), but held “significant influence” in Lumipol Invest BV. Mr. Y is reported to have been deregistered as an ultimate beneficial owner of Lumipol Invest BV as of 31 December 2022. Lumipol Invest BV is the Lumipol entity that holds 45 per cent of SASMOS.

Supplying Israeli arms manufacturers: a legal carte blanche? 

The moral issues associated with knowingly supplying arms manufacturers that provide weapons to an army widely considered to be committing war crimes are obvious, but what about the legal implications? Depending on the jurisdiction, national-level investigations and prosecutions will apply varying domestic standards for accomplice liability.

Under international criminal law(opens in new window) , to establish ‘accessory liability’ of companies or individual corporate leaders to (i.e. complicity in) Israel’s war crimes or genocide, several facts would have to be proven, namely that:

• The components supplied by SASMOS were used to commit the crimes;
• The material assistance to Israel’s international crimes by a company or businessperson, through the supply of components to the arms manufacturers, had a “substantial effect” on the commission of said crimes; 11 and
• The entities acted with knowledge of the substantial likelihood that the components will be used for the commission of these crimes. 12

Evidence that the components supplied by SASMOS were used in the planes and drones hovering over Gaza and the West Bank, and that the material assistance of SASMOS business persons provided to Israel through the supply of components to the arms manufacturers, had a “substantial effect” on the commission of Israel’s crimes, is hard, if not impossible, to gather – except possibly by prosecuting authorities. “This is all a matter of evidence, of course, but as far as the law is concerned, the facts about the SASMOS supply chain theoretically fit quite well in the legal framework for accessorial liability,” says Dr. Yanev, Associate Professor of International Criminal Law at the Faculty of Law of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He continues, “Which businesspersons within a company can incur individual criminal liability for a certain supply chain – e.g. series of specific shipments – will also depend on the decision-making power of the individual in relation to that supply chain.”

As for the required intent or knowledge under customary international law(opens in new window)
– i.e internationally binding rules that arise from consistent state practice, coupled with states’ belief that such practice is legally obligatory – Dr. Yanev explains, “It would have to be proven that the said individual businesspersons were aware of the substantial likelihood that their material assistance will be used for the commission of genocide or war crimes and that they accepted that”. He argues “that may not be exceptionally difficult to establish, given the widespread and authoritative reports we have received over the past year and a half of the possible commission of war crimes and genocide in Gaza”.

Indeed, it is difficult, in SOMO’s opinion, to imagine a scenario where individual corporate leaders within SASMOS can credibly claim they were unaware of the risks. Aside from credible reports about Israel’s crimes in Gaza, SOMO has informed SASMOS’s leadership twice, by letter, since November 2024. 13

In these letters, SOMO presented its findings and highlighted the risks. SOMO received no response to these letters.

Where are the Indian and Dutch states?

On 26 January 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague ruled that Israel is plausibly committing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza. Under the Genocide Convention, third states have a legal obligation to take all measures reasonably available to them to prevent genocide in Gaza. 14 Therefore, India and the Netherlands should at the very least ensure that its nationals and companies are not engaged in activities that constitute or assist in the commission of the crime of genocide.

Additionally, on 19 July 2024, the ICJ determined that the Israeli military occupation of the Gaza Strip and West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is unlawful. The ICJ specified that third states must “take steps to prevent trade or investment relations that assist in the maintenance of the illegal situation created by Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory”. As a result, there is a duty on India and the Netherlands to prevent their companies from undertaking or maintaining trade/investment relations that assist Israel’s unlawful presence in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. 

Towards urgent accountability

Third States, including India and the Netherlands, must prevent such business activity that assists Israel’s unlawful acts and prosecute where companies and individual corporate leaders within its jurisdiction provide material support, of which there is a serious risk that it will be used by the Israeli army in acts of genocide and war crimes. As Dr. Yanev concludes, “All States, including India and the Netherlands, should warn private businessmen in their jurisdiction who trade in (precursor) materials that can be used to develop weapons used by the Israeli army in Gaza to suspend such trade, and where appropriate undertake criminal investigation and prosecution.”

The Netherlands has, in the past, held Dutch citizens accountable for aiding international crimes. Notable examples are the case of Frans van Anraat (opens in new window) for supplying the chemicals used in Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons attacks, and Guus Kouwenhoven (opens in new window) for arms trafficking to Charles Taylor.