Does DJI support Israel?

We have not yet found publicly recorded donations from DJI. Absence of records does not confirm absence of support.

Filed under: Tech companies · Household & consumer goods brands · Companies that support Israel

Background

DJI is a privately held Chinese drone manufacturer based in Shenzhen. It has no subsidiary, factory or research site in Israel; its products reach the Israeli market through independent local importers and resellers, and Who Profits' own company profile states plainly that the Israeli Defence Ministry cannot buy DJI drones directly from the company, precisely because it is a Chinese company, and can only obtain them through local distributors — it names Hobbiz Ltd. as DJI's official representative in Israel and lists three further registered resellers (LOOL TV, Bug Multisystem Ltd., Benda Magnetic); the DJI-branded Israeli online store is run by the local firm Benda. Who Profits also reports that Israeli military and police units use off-the-shelf DJI drones, including Mavic and Matrice models, for surveillance and crowd control, and that in 2018 the Israeli company Ispra built a tear-gas-dispersal attachment (using a release mechanism from the Canadian firm Actuonix) that clips onto a DJI Matrice. Those are claims about how buyers and third parties use and modify mass-market consumer hardware obtained through ordinary distribution channels; Who Profits' own account documents no direct sale, distribution contract or supply arrangement between DJI and the Israeli state, only third-party purchase and third-party modification. Use of a drone by any army, police force or armed group is not corporate support by its manufacturer, and DJI has publicly said its products are made for civilian use and that it does not design or sell them for military purposes. No donation, aid shipment, investment, contract or political statement by DJI concerning Israel was found in this research pass. Hebrew coverage read in this pass keeps the actors apart. Globes reported on 8 October 2024 that the IDF had stopped accepting donated drones after a huge order for thousands of Chinese-made DJI and Autel machines, and quoted Amit Ben-Nun of the Israeli association Paratroopers for Democracy saying his group had donated drones, mainly DJI Avatar models, to the Paratroopers Brigade and five reserve paratrooper brigades in the first months of the war: the buyer there is the Israeli army and the donors are Israeli volunteers, neither of them DJI. The Israeli business site ice went the other way on 9 March 2024, asserting under a headline calling DJI "the drone giant that gave aid to Hamas on 7 October" that its products had helped the Nukhba gunmen's assault on the communities around Gaza; that is the outlet's own characterisation of how attackers used retail hardware, the piece describes no act by DJI, and it records that DJI denies the parallel Ukrainian accusations over Russian use of the Mavic 3. The same piece quotes Rotem Mi-Tal, chief executive of the Israeli innovation firm Asgard Systems, telling Globes that the IDF equipped itself with a range of DJI devices in the past but has moved in recent years to advanced Israeli-made equipment.

DJI Israel online store (operated by Benda) Who Profits (advocacy research — DJI profile) Globes (archived 2025-02-12) ice

What we checked

• News & official statements — 2026-07-30
• Nonprofit tax filings (Form 990) — 2026-07-30
  DJI is a Chinese company with no United States charitable foundation; a ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer query for the name returns no matching organisation at all. There is no 990 grant record in which Israel-linked recipients could be checked.
• SEC filings — 2026-07-30
  SZ DJI Technology is privately held in China and is not an SEC registrant, so it has no CIK and no EDGAR filings; a full-text search returns nothing for the company. Primary-document verification is therefore limited to DJI's own statements and press reporting.
• Federal election records (FEC) — 2026-07-30
  An OpenFEC committee search for DJI returns no committee. As a Chinese-owned company DJI cannot lawfully make US federal political contributions and operates no corporate PAC, so there is no political money to attribute.
• Independent fact-checkers — 2026-07-30
• whoprofits — 2026-09-24
• usaspending — 2026-09-24
  Queried the USAspending.gov award API on 2026-09-24 for US federal contracts, grants and other awards to this company whose award text mentions Israel. It returned no awards.
• lobbying — 2026-09-24
  Searched the US Lobbying Disclosure Act database at lda.gov on 2026-09-24 for filings naming this company as the client whose reported lobbying issues mention Israel. No filings matched.
• ohchr — 2026-09-24
  Checked the UN OHCHR database of business enterprises involved in activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, report A/HRC/60/19, on 2026-09-24. This company is not listed in it.
• hebrew-arabic-press — 2026-09-26
  Read all seven scored Hebrew leads at the outlets themselves (Globes, ice, Israel Hayom, Bhol, Israel Defense, one Facebook post; the Kan live item was unreachable). Each is another actor's act: the IDF buying DJI-made drones, an Israeli group donating them, Elbit's Serbian plant, India's DJI ban.

Frequently asked questions

Sources & citations

Record last updated: 2026-09-26

• DJI Israel online store (operated by Benda) djistore.benda.co.il
• Who Profits (advocacy research — DJI profile) whoprofits.org
• Globes (archived 2025-02-12) web.archive.org
• ice ice.co.il