In Swords, protestors target company that’s helped ship US military gear to Israeli air force base

On Monday about 11.30am nine protestors were set up in front of the offices of ASL Airlines Ireland, just off Main Street in Swords.

A man with a megaphone chanted “Free! Free!”, and the rest – some holding Palestinian flags – responded “Palestine!”

A man driving a lorry for a paper shredding company drove by, honked, and gave them a thumbs up.

Protestors have been coming to this spot since 20 October, says Barry O’Mahony, a volunteer with the group Swords for Palestine.

That was after The Ditch reported that the Irish company was helping FedEx transport packages containing F-35 components from the US – via Cologne, Germany – to Israel. Those fall under the International Traffic of Arms Regulations (ITAR).

“Our motivation here is to have a company like this be held to account,” O’Mahony said at Monday’s protest.

On 21 October, ASL Airlines Ireland published a “clarification” saying it “has had no contract with any party, Government or otherwise, to carry munitions or weapons of war since recent hostilities began in the Middle East a year ago”.

The Ditch continued its reporting, and the protestors kept showing up. On Friday, 8 November, ASL published another statement. “ASL Airlines Ireland has not … carried any weapons or munitions of war to Israel since this conflict began,” it said.

However, the company has “made the business decision not to carry certain goods on ASL Airlines Ireland’s Middle East operations including prohibiting freight such as ITAR shipments that could be interpreted as munitions or weapons of war,” it said.

O’Mahony said on Monday that Swords for Palestine is sceptical of ASL Ireland’s carefully worded statements.

“Our position is that [the 8 November statement] fails to distance themselves from the acts they have done,” O’Mahony says. “We want them to stop and to prove they have stopped.”

ASL Airlines Ireland has not responded to queries sent Friday. Nor has its owner, London-based private equity firm STAR Capital Partnership. Nor has FedEx.

Also, the German government has not responded to a query sent Monday asking whether it has conducted a risk assessment of these trans-shipments of ITAR goods through Cologne, under the EU Common Position on exports of military technology and equipment.

The Common Position says EU member states should deny an export licence of items on the EU Common Military List “if there is a clear risk that the military technology or equipment to be exported might be used in the commission of serious violations of international humanitarian law”.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military’s war crimes and crimes against humanity continue, with the help of US military equipment.

Swords and Gaza

There are a lot of different companies connected to ASL Airlines Ireland.

London-based STAR Capital Partnership has a broad portfolio, including German bike-share company nextbike, GSLS, which does cash pick-ups and deliveries around Dublin, and ASL Aviation Holdings DAC.

ASL Aviation Holdings, with an address at 3 Malahide Road, Swords, has several cargo airlines: ASL Airlines Ireland, ASL Airlines Belgium, ASL Airlines France, ASL Airlines United Kingdom.

Another company, aside from ASL Airlines Ireland, that is  involved in the transport of these ITAR goods from the US to Israel is FedEx, which also has offices in Dublin.

FedEx has not responded to queries sent Friday asking whether it has any concerns about facilitating the shipment of ITAR goods to Israel, given the war crimes Israel is committing in Gaza.

It also did not respond to a query asking for its response to calls from UN experts for an arms embargo on Israel. Nor did the US Department of State.

In February, the  Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights released a statement from a group of UN experts calling on countries to “refrain from transferring any weapon or ammunition – or parts for them – if it is expected, given the facts or past patterns of behaviour, that they would be used to violate international law”.

They “welcomed the decision of a Dutch appeals court on 12 February 2024 ordering the Netherlands to halt the export of F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel. The court found that there was a “clear risk” that the parts would be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international humanitarian law.

Hiding the evidence

As recently as 1 November, plugging a series of tracking numbers obtained by The Ditch into FedEx’s normal online shipment tracking tool revealed details of such shipments.

They showed the routes of ITAR goods from various locations in the United States to Nevatim Air Force Base in Israel, home to squadrons of US-made Israeli F-35 fighters.

On 8 October, FedEx picked up one such parcel, weighing 0.8kgs, from Madison, Wisconsin, and flew it via Memphis, Tennessee to Cologne, Germany, according to the FedEx tracking tool.

Under “Special Handling Section”, there was a note: “Deliver Weekday, ITAR”.

FedEx’s flight tracker then shows it leaving Cologne at 6.04 on 10 October, reaching Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport at 11.08, and then being delivered to “Nevatim AFB”.

According to flight-tracking website Flightradar24, ASL Airlines operated a flight that day that left Cologne at 6.08 and landed at 11.04– aircraft B738 (EI-HRB).

That’s a Boeing 737, with the airline listed by Flightradar24 as ASL Airlines Ireland, serial number 32686, registered to ASL Airlines Ireland. It frequently flies the Cologne-Tel Aviv route.

This is just one example. There are dozens of other such parcel numbers, going back to September.

However, between 1 November and 2 November, the tags showing that these parcels contained goods regulated by the International Traffic in Arms Regulations disappeared from FedEx’s shipment tracking website.

FedEx has not responded to a query sent Friday about this.

León Castellanos-Jankiewicz, a senior researcher in international law at the Asser Institute in The Hague, says in the EU there are no rules or requirements for companies, including shipment companies, to disclose where such goods are being sent and to who.

This lack of supply-chain transparency is a problem, Castellanos-Jankiewicz says, because it makes it harder to hold anyone accountable for how they are used in the end.

“If things go wrong, and that product is indeed used to violate human rights, to commit war crimes, crimes against humanity, the people who have been harmed by these products will have a lot of difficulties getting access to justice,” he says.

Risk assessment

The fact that these goods were shipped via Cologne, raises the question of whether the German government has conducted a risk assessment on what they’d be used for, before allowing them to pass through, León Castellanos-Jankiewicz says.

The EU Common Position on exports of military technology and equipment, from 2008, applies to items on the EU Common Military List. That list includes aircraft, related equipment, and components, specially designed for military use.

For such goods, the Common Position says EU member states should deny export licences if such goods are likely to be used to violate international humanitarian law, or be used aggressively by the recipient against another country, or “prolong armed conflicts or aggravate existing tensions or conflicts in the country of final destination”.

However, “Israel seems to be a special case and the US/Germany continue to supply arms” says Simone Wisotzki, project leader at Peace Research Institute Frankfurt’s research depart­ment on international security.

She said she doubts the German government has done any risk assessment on these trans-shipments of ITAR goods to Israel.

“In the case of Ukraine, US arms are also transshipped through Germany without any national risk assessments,” Wisotzki says. “I guess this is a political decision and part of the ‘special relationship’ between the US and Germany (and Israel).”

On Monday, outside the ASL building on Malahide Road in Swords, just off Main Street, by the Garda station, O’Mahony and the other protestors have tea and pastries, Palestinian flags, and posters saying “No profits from genocide in Swords”.

“We just feel we have to take action,” O’Mahony says. “If we don’t, how can we look at our kids?”