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.
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 th
