United Airlines Ships War Materiel to Israel Aboard Passenger Flights
· The Intercept
United Airlines is set to resume the shipment of military hardware to Israel aboard passenger flights, according to shipping data reviewed by The Intercept. The airline, one of the biggest in the world, had halted the practice more than six months ago amid the outbreak of the war on Iran.
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On Wednesday evening, United is scheduled to transport five shipments of military cargo onboard United Airlines flight 90, a passenger route from Newark Liberty International Airport, in New Jersey, to Tel Aviv, Israel, a day after resuming the route and another direct flight to Israel, records show.
The shipments, according to documents reviewed by The Intercept, include one transport to the “electro-optics” wing of the Israeli weapons giant Elbit Systems, in Rehovot, Israel, where the arms maker has a major campus. Another shipment is bound for Elbit Systems Land, a division of the company formerly known as IMI Systems, located in Ramat Hasharon, Israel. And a further three shipments are scheduled to go to an Elbit Systems facility in Karmiel, Israel.
At least one of the shipments to Karmiel was specifically labeled as “FMS,” or foreign military sales, the records show, though all the military hardware bound for Israel on the Wednesday flight is destined for defense firms under Elbit’s umbrella.
“United, consistently and on a regular basis, ships military materiel that is used by the Israeli military.”
The shipments appear to be a return to status quo for United, which had used civilian passenger flights to transport thousands of shipments of military cargo to Israel amid its wars in the occupied Gaza Strip and Lebanon and in the run-up to its joint attack on Iran alongside the U.S., according to a new report released this week by Movement Research Unit, Palestinian Youth Movement, People’s Embargo for Palestine, and the Democratic Socialists of America. (A spokesperson for United declined to comment. Representatives of Lockheed Martin, Elbit Systems, and the Israeli Ministry of Defense did not respond to requests for comment.)
The report, based on open-source data, found that United transported nearly 3,000 loads of military materiel over a seven-month period in 2025 and early 2026. The cargo ranged from critical components for fighter jets and tanks to helmet displays, electronics, and nuts and bolts. The transfers stopped only amid the outbreak of war with Iran.
“This report shows that United, consistently and on a regular basis, ships military materiel that is used by the Israeli military for its operations in Gaza, in Lebanon, and against Iran,” said Griffin Mahon, a co-chair of the national labor committee of the Democratic Socialists of America, one of the groups behind the report. “These parts are shipped on civilian passenger flights, and they represent one way that American companies enable the Israeli government’s war crimes.”
2,761 Shipments
Using open-source methods to find publicly accessible cargo documents, researchers with the Movement Research Unit — a group that provides investigative muscle for left-wing groups and causes — said they tracked 2,761 shipments to weapons manufacturers transported by United aboard 160 civilian passenger flights between July 24, 2025, and February 27, 2026.
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Due to the volume of data, the authors were only able to analyze a subset of the overall shipments, but after analyzing the product descriptions of a sample of 546 of those shipments, the group found 28 shipments of tank parts, 131 shipments of parts for weapons maker Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter jets, 67 shipments of components for other aircraft, and more than 100 other shipments of radio and communications equipment, nuts and bolts, and helmet-mounted display systems.
Many of those parts include key components to some of the most critical military vehicles in Israel’s arsenal, many of which have been documented in the commission of alleged war crimes on numerous occasions, according to Belal Elsiesy, a spokesperson for Palestinian Youth Movement.
“We’ve seen parts directly tied to the carrying out of the genocide, from armored tank sights and gunner display units to the bomb-release units of the F-35,” Elsiesy said. “We often have seen videos of Israeli occupation forces on social media recordings from inside of a tank, the demolition of schools, mosques, and other buildings, and often the screen that they are recording on is a gunner display unit — the same gunner display unit that is transported by United Airlines. It’s not an abstract connection.”
The report found no evidence that United transported any explicitly hazardous material aboard passenger flights. The use of civilian infrastructure to carry weapons components to a belligerent in the midst of open conflict, however, raised ethical questions for the researchers, according to Abdullah, an investigator with Movement Research who spoke with The Intercept on the condition that he be referred to by his first name only due to the sensitive nature of his work.
“There are ammunition handling systems and F-35 parts and tank sites that are being transported on these flights, without us actually knowing.”
“We all get on our flights and have to worry about taking too much water in our water bottles, and meanwhile, there are ammunition handling systems and F-35 parts and tank sites that are being transported on these flights, without us actually knowing,” Abdullah said. “Crimes are being committed in Gaza, so United needs to do a full and thorough review of their policy related to the transport of these components that might be violating international law.”
Weapons Parts on Domestic Flights
The cargo shipments were not just stowed away on flights bound for Israel, the report found.
While the majority of cargo documents for shipments did not reveal a domestic origin point other than Newark, 235 shipments were shown to have arrived at Newark on domestic flights from cities across the U.S., including flights from Dallas–Fort Worth International Airport, Houston International Airport, Atlanta International Airport, San Francisco International Airport, Los Angeles International Airport, along with Washington’s Dulles International Airport and Chicago O’Hare International Airport.
The domestic route with the most shipments in the period analyzed was a United flight from Dallas–Fort Worth to Houston, aboard which the airline transported 128 shipments, according to the report. That was followed by 90 domestic shipments onboard a United flight from Houston to Newark.
Most of the shipments going directly to Israel — 2,565 in total — appear to have been carried aboard United flights 84 and 90, passenger flights that travel directly from Newark to Tel Aviv. Data obtained by the report’s authors showed that Newark served as the primary hub for United’s shipments to Israel, with all but 45 of the shipments in the documented period arriving in Israel from there. Of the remaining 45 shipments, 36 left the U.S. from Chicago, and nine from Washington, the report found.
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Most of the shipments — 2,070 in total — were destined for Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer and a frequent target of Palestine solidarity activism, according to the report. A total of 78 shipments were transported to the Israeli headquarters of Lockheed Martin, while hundreds more were destined for the Israeli Ministry of Defense and to several military airbases in Israel, including the operational hub of the country’s fleet of F-35I jets, the Israeli version of Lockheed’s flagship stealth fighter, the report found.
While information on the senders of the shipments was only available in some cases, a portion of the transfers were shipped by Lockheed Martin and by Elbit System’s U.S. branch, according to the report’s authors.
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A New Report
The Intercept reviewed a portion of the underlying data in the report, including cargo documents that showed the transport of F-35 parts and weapons systems for armored personnel carriers, but has not independently corroborated every claim made by Movement Research Unit and its partners.
Movement Research investigators provided a detailed explanation of its methodology to The Intercept, which agreed to withhold some details to prevent a clampdown on the research that made the report possible. Previous work by the group has exposed a multi-ton shipment of explosive material out of New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport and a Portland drone company shipping hardware to Israel.
Work on the report began last summer, after an investigative story by the Irish publication The Ditch revealed several shipments of military hardware aboard passenger flights passing through Irish airspace.
Suspecting the practice might be more widespread than the limited samples in The Ditch report, Movement Research delved deeper into the airline’s shipments to Israel over the ensuing seven months.
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The shipments appear to have mostly stopped in February, when U.S. direct flights to Israel were suspended amid the U.S.–Israeli attack on Iran. With those flights set to resume this week, the report’s authors hope to pressure United to cease its practice of moving military cargo onboard, according to Abdullah, the investigator with Movement Research.
“This is very timely, because United needs to commit to not shipping military cargo on those passenger flights,” Abdullah said. “Not only on the ones that are going directly to Tel Aviv, but also on flights within the U.S.”
The post United Airlines Ships War Materiel to Israel Aboard Passenger Flights appeared first on The Intercept.