34.41 Million Declared by Israel: a Single Rare Gas, a Single Customs Line — and 2.75 Billion for the Emirates

Isabelle Bonvin — Genève, Suisse — 2026-09-11

Note on method, and it is decisive here. We queried the United Nations UN Comtrade database, then went down to the raw monthly customs files published by the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics. This detail changes everything: an aggregate total can hide a single commodity. We give the exact identifiers — reporter, partner, flow, product code, quantity — so that anyone can redo our verifications. And at the end of the article we flag the four claims we had to withdraw along the way, including two that favored us.

📌 What the post says

On September 11, 2026, at 5:31 a.m., an X account displaying the flag of the United Arab Emirates published, in Arabic: “Slogans are one thing, figures are another. Algeria's trade with Israel has not stopped; according to UN data — UN Comtrade, it reached 34.41 million dollars in 2025. The figures speak… the rest is noise.”

One detail we note without comment: the link presented as the “source” in the post does not lead to the UN database, but to the image of the post itself.

🔍 The figure is exact. We verified it, and not only at the UN.

First verification — the United Nations database.

Second verification — and it is stronger. We went all the way to the raw monthly customs files published by the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics. These are line-by-line customs declaration files. We downloaded, opened and aggregated them ourselves:

What these files demonstrate, and it is damning: the flow does exist in the Israeli customs declaration. The post's figure is not an invention, nor a methodological artifact.

And they demonstrate something else, which is the heart of our rebuttal: in a customs file covering an entire month, Algeria comes down to ONE SINGLE LINE. A single product code. Nothing else.

A negative control confirms that this is not a methodological accident: in these same files, Sudan shows zero lines and zero dollars. A country's absence is therefore a true zero there. Algeria's presence, by contrast, is real — and minuscule.

⚗️ What those 34 million actually contain: a single gas

The entire amount corresponds to customs code 2804 29 — “rare gases other than argon.” In plain terms: helium.

We tested the other leads: not an ounce of oil, not a cubic meter of natural gas, no LPG, no hydrogen, no precious metals, no radioactive isotopes. It is all there, in a single code.

So the word “trade” used by the post covers a single product: one rare gas. And the explanation for this oddity is simple, we have just given it: there is literally only one customs line.

🏛️ What the UN itself says about its own database — and which settles the debate

The post asserts “Algeria's trade with Israel.” Yet the database it cites publishes a methodological warning, placed at the head of its user guide, under the heading “Read me first.” We quote it:

“Almost all countries report, as partner country for their imports, the country of origin. […] Consequently, the term "partner country," in the case of imports, does not necessarily imply a direct commercial relationship.”

It is the United Nations itself saying so, in the document of its own database, for its own users.

And the normative manual of international trade statistics describes exactly this mechanism. Goods produced in country A, sold and shipped to country B, then resold to country C: the statistics of country C, the manual writes, “will not attribute those imports to country B; they will indicate that the goods were imported from country A — the country of origin.”

Here we impose a precision on ourselves, and it matters: we do not assert that this flow does not exist. The database records the declared origin — and that origin, Israel writes it: Algeria. We do not deny the flow. We contest its characterization. It is not a commercial relationship between Algeria and Israel: it is a product of Algerian origin that reached the Israeli market, by a route the declaration does not state.

**We add, out of honesty, that we found no academic, institutional or NGO work demonstrating that countries without relations with Israel appear as its partners solely because of a statistical mechanism. So we will not support that thesis. We stick to the UN quotation — which is enough.**

📊 The discovery that changes the meaning of the attack

We tracked this same product code, year after year, and looked at which country Israel attributes it to:

Read this table slowly, because it says something abnormal.

Same product. Same volume, to within 3.3% — 1,344,360 cubic meters attributed to Algeria in 2023, 1,300,550 attributed to France in 2024. And never the two countries in the same year: when Algeria appears, France disappears; when France appears, Algeria disappears.

A real business flow does not behave like this. A supplier does not cease to exist for a year and reappear the next with exactly the same volume, while its replacement does the same in reverse. What this table describes looks like a reattribution — a change of declaration — not a commercial reality that comes and goes.

We will not rule on the cause. We do not have access to the Israeli customs services. But we can say this, and it is verifiable by anyone: the figure the post brandishes changed country without changing volume.

⚖️ What we must say, even if it does not suit us

Our rule is to publish also what bothers us. There are three unpleasant things for us here.

First, Algerian helium is produced by a State company. The subsidiary Hélios, created in 1991 within the Sonatrach group, specializes in the liquefaction and export of helium. So one cannot hide behind the “uncontrolled private channels” argument: the producer is public.

Second, in 2023, Algeria supplied 76.7% of the rare gases imported by Israel — it was the leading supplier. That is a fact, and we do not hide it.

Third, we found no Algerian text specifically prohibiting trade with Israel. The official Algerian list of customs prohibitions mentions no country, and parliamentary initiatives to criminalize normalization have never succeeded. So we cannot write that this trade would be illegal: that would be false.

That is what we know, and that is what we do not know. What we can assert: our country maintains no diplomatic relations with Israel, appears on no Israeli list authorizing imports from countries without relations, and has never signed the slightest normalization.

🔄 And now, the figures of the one doing the talking

The account displays the flag of the United Arab Emirates. Since it likes figures, let us look at its own — obtained in exactly the same way, year after year.

Look at the first line, because it is the most important of this entire article. In 2019, the Emirates' trade with Israel was exactly nil — zero. It was legally prohibited, until the repeal of the Emirati boycott on August 29, 2020, followed by the signing of the Abraham Accords in September 2020.

In five years, the Emirates went from zero to 2.75 billion dollars. They have an embassy in Tel Aviv, trade agreements, direct flights, declared technological cooperation — and they alone account for about 70% of all Arab trade with Israel in 2025.

The ratio to the amount attributed to Algeria never falls below thirty, whatever combination of years is chosen. On total 2025 trade, it reaches about fifty-one to one.

And there is a calendar coincidence that we merely point out: the post was published on September 11, 2026, at 5:31 in the morning — that is, the day after the rupture of relations between Algeria and the United Arab Emirates.

🇲🇦 And the gap argument backfires: the Moroccan case

The attacker might answer: “Israel declares this trade, Algeria declares nothing — therefore Algeria is hiding something.” That reasoning does not hold, and Morocco proves it.

Morocco and Israel have had full diplomatic relations since December 2020 — embassies, agreements, direct flights — and yet they show a gap of 265 million dollars between what one declares and what the other declares.

So a gap between two national declarations is neither proof of hidden relations nor proof of their absence. It is a perfectly well-known statistical reality: the United Nations manual of international trade statisticians designates it as “the most frequent and most important cause of asymmetries” between countries' data.

The gap argument therefore collapses — and it collapses for everyone, including for the one using it.

⚖️ The angle that bothers us, and that we publish anyway

It would have been dishonest to show only the comparison with the Emirates. Here is the one unfavorable to us.

Let us read this table without cheating: on this single angle, Algeria is above Morocco, but 3.2 times below Bahrain. That is the argument an opponent will raise against us, and we prefer to write it ourselves.

A useful precision, in passing: several press articles present Algeria as the “fourth Arab exporter to Israel.” That ranking is false: it omits Bahrain. On 2024 data, Algeria is fifth. We will not repeat that ranking.

🔁 The precedent that says it all: what happened to Turkey

Turkey announced in May 2024 the suspension of all trade with Israel. Israeli exports to Turkey collapsed from 2,206.4 to 37.6 million shekels, a fall of 98.3%.

But cars manufactured in Turkey kept arriving on the Israeli market after that date — passing through third countries.

Keep this mechanism in mind, because it illuminates everything else: a State breaks off, and the merchandise goes around. That is not an excuse: it is a customs reality, and it holds for every country that refuses a direct relationship. Export control does not control what the buyer does afterward.

🧾 The four claims we withdrew along the way

A newspaper that hides its own corrections is not credible. Here are ours, and two of them favored us.

1. “The figure is an estimate, not a declaration.” False, and we withdrew it. The record is indeed declared data, and we even found it in the raw Israeli customs files.

2. “Algeria declares nothing, therefore…” Misleading, and withdrawn. Algeria does not declare its trade with other partners either. An absence is not a confession.

3. “We will not write that the figure is confirmed by Israel.” Also withdrawn: we had feared a denial, but the Israeli monthly customs files confirm the flow. So we write it, because it is true.

4. “Algeria is absent from Israeli statistics, which would prove the absence of any legal basis for this trade.” Withdrawn, and this is the most important correction. Algeria does not appear in the annual summary table of the Israeli bureau, but it does appear in its detailed files. So this is a choice of statistical presentation, not a prohibition. We withdrew that argument: it was false.

🌍 The precedent that silences everyone: China and the United States

If a gap between two declarations were proof of covert trafficking, then the world's two largest economies should be accusing each other.

China and the United States jointly publish, through their joint trade commission, reports analyzing their statistical gaps. Here is what they write there, in 2009 and then in 2012:

“Trade through third parties is a major source of the gaps […] even though China and the United States follow the same UN rules for attributing the partner country.”

Indirect trade alone explains half of the gap. And the total gap reached 47.9% in 2000.

Two of the world's largest economies, applying the same United Nations rules, thus show a gap of nearly half — and no one concludes from it that they trade through covert channels.

And the easy objection — “it is transport and insurance costs” — is not enough. The World Bank cites a range of 10 to 20%, but the International Monetary Fund retains 6% and the OECD about 5%. On Chinese and American data from 2015 to 2024, the valuation gap accounts for only 4.3 to 5.1%. In other words: valuation explains only a quarter to a third of the observed gaps. The rest comes from elsewhere.

✅ Three facts, verifiable, that support us

First fact. The State of Israel publishes a list of countries without diplomatic relations that it authorizes to supply it with goods. This list, dated December 31, 2025, counts fifteen countries. Algeria does not appear on it. Tunisia does.

Second fact. We searched for any trace of Algerian hydrocarbons delivered to Israel. An academic trade data database, covering thirty years, lists only seven records between Algeria and Israel — five of which concern rare gases. No oil, no natural gas, no fertilizer, no cement, no agricultural products. And an international inventory of sixty-five cargoes delivered to Israel never mentions Algeria.

Third fact, and it is heavy. Algeria supplied in 2023 76.7% of the rare gases imported by Israel. We write it because it is true, and because it is the figure that bothers us most in this entire file.

⚖️ And two elements that bother us, which we publish anyway

An Israeli business outlet established that an Israeli operator had classified Algeria among the “prohibited countries” it intended to approach through a Swiss shell company. Essential precision: no project in Algeria is named — the country appeared on a list of target markets, nothing more. We will not go beyond what the source says.

And a 2006 American diplomatic cable reports that Algerian companies “easily” buy rebranded Israeli products, passing through Cyprus, Greece and Turkey. We cite this document because it exists — and because it illustrates exactly the mechanism we describe: it is not States that trade, it is merchandise that circulates, whatever the States decide.

⚠️ An inconsistency we do not resolve — and we say so

There remains a gap we cannot explain. In the Israeli summary table for 2023, the African countries named explicitly total 722.9 million dollars, and the residual grouping unnamed countries shows 24.2 million — a total of 747.1 million, which matches the continent's total. So the residual is too small to contain 33.5 million.

And yet the detailed files do show flows. The summary table and the detailed files do not agree. We did not find the Israeli bureau's detailed publications explaining why, and we will not choose the version that suits us. We flag the inconsistency. It is on Israel's side, not ours.

🕵️ What we verified about the account, without insinuating anything

Here are the only elements we can establish: account created on March 5, 2011, around 10,091 followers, 115,656 posts, self-declared location “United Arab Emirates, Ras Al Khaimah,” biography stating “personal account.”

A point of accuracy: the account is not verified by the platform. The blue mark it displays corresponds to a paid subscription, which any user can buy. So we will not write “verified.”

And we will go no further. We found no public element establishing a link between this account and a State, a media outlet or a party. We accuse no one of being an instrument: we do not have the proof, and we do not write what we cannot prove.

🎯 The conclusion, in three sentences

The figure is exact, and we verified it down to the Israeli customs files. But its characterization is false: this is not “Algeria's trade with Israel,” it is a single product — helium — exported to some forty countries, of which France buys eight times more than Israel.

And this same product, at almost identical volumes, is attributed sometimes to Algeria, sometimes to France, depending on the year — never to both at once.

Finally: the account giving this lesson displays the flag of a State whose trade with Israel was prohibited and nil in 2019, and reaches 2.75 billion dollars today.

🔗 The sources, directly accessible — click and check for yourself

• The official warning of the United Nations database — this is the decisive document: “the term "partner country," in the case of imports, does not necessarily imply a direct commercial relationship”: https://uncomtrade.org/docs/read-me-first-disclaimer/
• The database itself, where you can redo our queries: https://comtradeplus.un.org/
• The post we are examining: https://x.com/t_almahri/status/2098283190645555525

📚 All the sources — so that everyone can check

Database — United Nations Statistics Division, UN Comtrade database, and the raw monthly customs files of the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics (impexpfiles), queried and downloaded on September 11, 2026: reporter 376 (Israel), partner 12 (Algeria), flow M; product code 280429; $34,414,000 (2025); $33,524,000 and 1,344,360 m³ (2023); French equivalents on the same code: $10,500,000 (2020), $17,300,000 (2021), $23,700,000 (2022), $34,728,000 and 1,300,550 m³ (2024). Two technical precisions: the public interface of this database sometimes returns empty responses, which must not be confused with an absence of data; and the World Bank's WITS platform renders THE SAME Comtrade database — it is not an independent source, only a different rendering. United Arab Emirates (reporter 784) to Israel (partner 376): $1,016,581,620 (2021), $1,651,159,721 (2023); Israeli imports from the Emirates: $0.0 M (2019), $2,753.3 M (2024); total 2025 trade: $1,747,545,000. Turkey: Israeli exports from 2,206.4 to 37.6 M₪ (−98.3%) after May 2024.

Israeli customs files cited — imports December 2024 (Algeria: $2,320 k, one line, code 2804290000); imports December 2025 (Algeria: $3,119 k, two lines); exports September 2024 to Algeria (no line); negative control on Sudan, same files.

The post at issue — publication by the X account @t_almahri, September 11, 2026, 05:31 UTC. The link it presents as “source” leads to the image of the post itself and not to the United Nations database.

Producer — Hélios, a subsidiary of the Sonatrach group created in 1991, specializing in the liquefaction and export of helium.

Final note on method. The amounts are given in United States dollars, as published, without rounding, except where we write “about.” The technical identifiers (reporter, partner, flow, product codes) are those of the sources: they allow any reader to redo our verifications identically. The image attached to the post is not described here: its content is not established. We did not find the detailed publications of the Israeli bureau of statistics at the time of writing: some findings will have to be re-verified. We found no public element linking this account to a State, a media outlet or a party, and we do not assert it.