The Italian port of Ravenna, which used to primarily handle cargoes of grain and foodstuffs, has gradually become a hub for illegally trafficking arms and explosives to Israel during its ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, as revealed by The Weapon Watch, a civil society initiative monitoring weapons production and logistics.
The Weapon Watch stated: “Dockworkers in Ravenna are seeing containers of munitions destined for the IDF pass through.”
These deadly goods are loaded onto container ships bound for Haifa and Ashdod, mostly handled by the Israeli shipping company ZIM.
One of the latest complaints by an anonymous dock worker dates back to June 30, when several containers labeled "explosives" class 1.4 (i.e. munitions) were loaded aboard the "ZIM New Zealand," which departed for Haifa, where it duly arrived on July 4.
On Tuesday, July 8, during a press conference in Rome (hosted in a room of the Italian Senate), journalists from the Italian financial magazine Altreconomia presented key findings, also involving the port of Ravenna.
Investigative journalist Linda Maggiori reported on the legal investigation into the trafficking of tank gun components, destined for Israel, that were passed off as civilian forgings and were seized on February 4, 2025, in the port of Ravenna, thanks to the report of a courageous worker from the shipping company.
“The initial investigation of a cargo of military components bound for Israel, disguised as cargo for civilian use, is uncovering a can of worms: not only via the port of Ravenna, the unauthorized transit of weapons to Israel is far more widespread than we thought,” said Linda Maggiori.
The recipient of these thirteen tons of forgings was IMI Systems, a major Israeli military company owned by Elbit Systems. This trafficking was aimed at circumventing the ban imposed by Italian Law 185/90 on new arms authorizations to Israel, which has been in place since October 7, 2023 as claimed by the Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
Given that they cannot obtain new export licenses, Italian companies have devised solutions to keep shipping these components illegally.
Valforge of Cortenova, a company that produces forged products for civilian purposes, acted as an intermediary for the shipment of cannon components manufactured by two other Italian companies (Stamperia Mazzetti and Riganti), which were authorized to produce and export military parts and are registered with the National Register of Companies (RNI) for armaments until the alleged halt by the government since October 2023.
Why send them through a civilian company? Presumably to avoid arousing suspicions about the cargo at customs.
What was discovered is just the tip of the iceberg. The investigation revealed four other previous shipments, which bypassed the controls of three customs offices (Milan 1, Milan 2, and Bologna) in 2024 and arrived in Israel. In this case, the customer was Ashot Ashkelon, another large Israeli military company, supplying the Israeli Army with parts for Merkava tanks and Namer armored vehicles – both of which are actively used in Israel’s genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza.
This illegal operation relied on the oversight by customs, which only checks goods on a random basis. The second investigation by journalist Elisa Brunelli concerns the trafficking of dual-use components to Israel, such as ammonium nitrate and tritium.
The former, used as an agricultural fertilizer, is a known explosives precursor, particularly sought after by the Israeli army to destroy homes in Gaza from below.
Italy became one of the leading exporters to Israel after October 2023. In the past year and a half, Italy has also increased exports of tritium, a radioactive isotope used in civilian sectors (medicine), but also in the production of nuclear weapons, as Altreconomia revealed.
Israel is the only country in the region that possesses nuclear weapons, and the only country in the world today in which a government minister threatened to use those nuclear weapons against a civilian population.
Leading legal and UN human rights experts agree: transferring military materiel, including dual-use items, to a state imposing a system of apartheid and unlawful occupation; plausibly committing genocide, as determined by the International Court of Justice; and carrying out wars of aggression against sovereign states in the region, is illegal under international law.
States and corporations that knowingly allow or engage in such transfers, or states that fail to act when corporations under their jurisdiction are involved, are themselves complicit.
The Palestinian BDS National Committee and BDS Italy call for pressure on Italian and all other relevant port authorities to take action now: halt the transfer of the illegal military supplies destined for use in Israel’s genocidal violence and investigate and prosecute ZIM and the Italian company Valforge for their complicity.
Last June, BDS Italy launched a petition calling for the end of arms transport via Italian ports and airports. The petition has already reached over 10 000 signatures since its launch.
We call for pressure on the Italian authorities and control agencies to immediately check all suspicious containers, refuse to issue a license, and block all ships that are part of the genocide fleet implicated in transferring and delivering military supplies to apartheid Israel to carry out war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide against Indigenous Palestinians.
We call for pressure on the Italian government to impose a comprehensive military embargo. As United Nations Human Rights experts affirm, all States have a legal obligation to comply with the ruling of the International Criminal Court (ICJ).
Among other actions, the experts call on states to “Impose a full arms embargo on Israel, halting all arms agreements, imports, exports and transfers, including of dual-use items that could be used against the Palestinian population under occupation.”