On 13 July 2024, 14-year-old Tala Mahmoud was waiting in a food distribution line in the Israel-designated “safe zone” of al-Mawasi, Khan Younis, when Israeli warplanes dropped several 2,000-pound bombs on the area.

Her mother, Naglaa recounted the horrors she witnessed. “I found pieces of my daughter’s body on a tree,” she told The Electronic Intifada. “I started screaming in terror.”

At least 90 Palestinians were killed in the al-Mawasi attack, and an additional 300 injured.

The day after the massacre, Yoav Gallant, then Israel’s defense minister, visited the Nevatim air base in southern Israel to personally thank the pilots involved in the attack. The Israeli military confirmed in written response to the Danish group Danwatch and newspaper Dagblabet Information that F-35 fighter jets had been used in the strike.

For the past 20 months, Israel has relied on its air force to carry out its genocidal bombardment campaign against Palestinians in Gaza. This air force, in turn, depends on a global supply chain that is responsible for delivering a steady stream of new munitions and fighter jets to Israel, as well as providing the spare parts needed to maintain its current fleet.

The F-35, a fifth generation stealth fighter jet, is advertised as one the most expensive and advanced aerial combat machines in the world today. For the Israeli defense establishment, the F-35 is the “crown jewel” of military air superiority, and symbolizes the strength of US-Israeli security cooperation.

Israel is the only country within the F-35 program with its own unique version of the fighter jet, the F-35I Adir. Using its fleet of F-35s, in addition to its other fighter jets, the Israeli air force has carried out an unprecedented number of air strikes in Gaza, and last month, in Iran.

Israel claimed that the airstrike on al-Mawasi in July 2024, carried out by F-35s, had killed Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif.

A recent report released by the Palestinian Youth Movement sheds new light on the extent of global complicity with the F-35 fighter jet program. The report identifies the Danish corporation Maersk, one of the largest shipping and logistics companies in the world, as playing a central role in the manufacturing and maintenance of F-35 jets, including those destined for Israel.

Maersk’s central role

The report analyzes export and import records between 2019 and 2025, during which Maersk facilitated over 1,000 shipments, totaling nearly 15 million pounds of military goods, tied to global F-35 supply chains. This includes enough wings for about half of all known F-35s delivered during this period, according to the report’s analysis.

Nearly all maritime shipments of fighter jet components to F-35 production hubs in California and Texas have been transported by Maersk, PYM’s research found. These shipments connect suppliers from Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Turkey, Canada, France and the United Kingdom to Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, the two US-based defense contractors that run the most critical F-35 production hubs on behalf of the US Department of Defense.

In some cases, these shipments violate several of these countries’ own export regulations against contributing to violations of international humanitarian law.

Maersk has also shipped F-35 components directly to the Israeli military and its key contractors. This includes two shipments of BL-1 munitions loaders – which are used to arm F-35s with bombs – directly to Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, as well as Israel Military Industries, which is owned by Elbit.

The report highlights the urgent need to end corporate complicity with Israel’s genocide through coordinated, transnational arms embargo efforts such as the Mask Off Maersk campaign.

The report also highlights how the governments of Britain, Spain, Italy, Morocco and Egypt have each played a role in the F-35 supply chain by enabling the shipment of military components through their ports.

The F-35 and the machinery of massacre

Israel’s deadly air campaign, and the fleet of fighter jets used to wage it, has resulted in a level of destruction that has “not been seen in any other conflict in the 21st century,” according to Amnesty International. In the first three weeks of the genocide alone, Israeli war planes dropped 25,000 tons of explosives on Gaza, targeting hospitals, municipal infrastructure and residential homes.

The unprecedented brutality of this air war, combined with the Israeli military’s ground invasion, has killed more than 57,000 Palestinians – though this number, based on reporting from Gaza’s health ministry, is almost certainly a massive undercount.

Israel’s air force includes 45 American-produced F-35 fighter jets. Three of these fighter jets were delivered in April of this year.

Since the start of the genocide, Israel’s F-35 squadron has logged over 15,000 flight hours, a level of use that requires constant maintenance in the form of replacement parts and servicing. In addition to the upkeep of its current fleet, Israel has billions of dollars worth of new F-35s on order from Lockheed Martin.

Without this air force, sustained by a constant flow of new fighter jets, spare parts and explosive munitions from countries across the world, the Israeli military would not be capable of carrying out its campaign of annihilation in Gaza.

Key vulnerability

The F-35 fighter jet program is a global enterprise. While the US Department of Defense and American defense contractors are responsible for the final assembly and delivery of F-35s to US allies, each jet contains components from over 1,400 suppliers across the United States and from more than 100 international suppliers.

This vast, multinational effort generates economic and political buy-in for the US military industrial complex abroad. But it also highlights a key vulnerability of the F-35 supply chain.

Because of its dependency on a complex, globe-spanning network of suppliers in different countries, the disruption of which can cause critical delays to the production of fighter jets, the F-35 program faces unique exposure to supply chain disruptions.

As a result, corporations like Maersk, which play an essential role in connecting suppliers to the points of final assembly and providing replacement parts for fighter jets, are susceptible to pressure from activists across the globe, in addition to government intervention from various countries.

Earlier this year, over 230 organizations across the world called on all F-35 program partner countries to halt arms transfers to Israel.

A people’s arms embargo

The Mask Off Maersk campaign, launched in May 2024, seeks to overcome international inaction in the face of Israel’s genocide by enacting a “people’s arms embargo” – building a bottom-up, grassroots campaign to pressure the logistics giant Maersk to cut ties with the supply chain the sustains and enables the genocide in Gaza.

Since the launch of the campaign, organizations around the world have led disruptions, published reports and pursued legal action to pressure Maersk to cut its ties with the US and Israel’s militaries.

The Mask Off Maersk campaign published a report in May that uncovered how the UK is continuing to export arms and ammunition to Israel, including F-35 parts, despite the British government’s September 2024 ban on direct F-35 component exports to Israel.

Following the publication of this evidence, over 40 members of Britain’s Parliament signed a letter urging Foreign Secretary David Lammy to explain why the government misled the public and his fellow lawmakers by continuing to participate in the deadly F-35 program, in violation of the UK’s obligations under international law.

In April, communities around the world swiftly mobilized in port cities in the United States, France and Morocco in an effort to stop the Nexoe Maersk – a cargo ship operated by Maersk – from delivering a shipment of F-35 equipment to Israel’s Nevatim air base, according to bill of lading data.

Mass mobilizations erupted throughout Morocco to prevent the docking of the ship, resulting in expensive multi-day delays for Maersk and the resignation of multiple Moroccan port workers. Local dockworkers of the CGT union in France also refused to handle Maersk’s cargo at the Port of Fos Sur Mer in Marseille.

Amid growing calls for investigations of Maersk vessels, Maersk removed the Fos Sur Mer port from one of their Mediterranean service lines to the port of Haifa.

Maersk also halted the use of the Algeciras port in Spain for Israel-bound shipments two months earlier, after Spain denied harbor to Maersk ships suspected to be carrying military goods destined for Israel. In May, a Barcelona court opened preliminary proceedings to investigate Maersk in Spain based on the campaign’s findings.

Maersk rerouted these shipments when the Spanish government blocked two Maersk ships suspected to be carrying military cargo to Israel from docking in the Algeciras port in November last year.

As Israeli war planes continue to target and bombard Gaza’s homes, hospitals and refugee camps, campaigns like Mask Off Maersk offer a path towards ending global complicity with Israel’s genocide by severing the flow of weapons, fighter jets and military components to Israel.

Only a transnational campaign, capable of raising the legal, financial and political costs of enabling a genocide, can extract real accountability from states and corporations that profit off the traffic of weapons raining down death on the people of Gaza.

The relationship between Maersk and the F-35 program provides the international movement for a people’s arms embargo with a clear mandate: to stop Israel’s F-35 bombers, Maersk must be stopped first.

Voulette Mansour and Nasreen Abd Elal are both members of Palestinian Youth Movement working on the Mask off Maersk campaign.

• Facebook
• Twitter

• Donate Now