Shipyard Linked to Lebanese Defense Minister Supplying Israeli Navy

It has emerged that a shipyard commissioned to build naval vessels for Israel is owned by close relatives of the Lebanese defense minister, even though his country is an enemy state, according to local media reports on Wednesday.

According to the reports, Lebanese defense minister and deputy prime minister Samir Moqbel’s siblings and daughter hold a 94 percent stake in the shipyard, Abu Dhabi MAR.

The ships in question were requisitioned for the defense of Israel’s vulnerable offshore gas fields. In a 2015 deal between Israel and the German company ThyssenKrupp, the work was subcontracted to the shipyard.

Zionist Camp MK Erel Margalit was the source of the story. He also alleged that a group of three Israeli businessmen — two of them former senior naval officers — pressured the shipyard to change its name to cover up its links to Abu Dhabi and Lebanon.

Margalit sent a letter to Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, urging an investigation.

“The fact that one of the owners of the company that’s building naval vessels for Israel is the defense minister of a country designated as an enemy state, and which, according to reports, cooperated with the Hezbollah organization and Iran, sets off a warning light,” he wrote.