For months the Australian government has been repeating that it will not send spare parts for F-35 fighter jets but an investigation by the newspaper "Declassified Australia" claims that Australia is secretly sending the parts to Israel, as reported on the "Consortium News" website.
Spare parts for Israel's F-35 fighter jets are being exported directly from Australia to Israel, "These exports represent clear evidence of Australia’s complicity in Israeli war crimes," the report states.
The investigation found that cargo records of goods sent on flights from Sydney to Tel Aviv marked goods as "aircraft parts." It’s uncertain whether these documents show just two individual shipments, or are a glimpse of a much bigger Australian direct trade of F-35 parts to Israel."
One of these flights departed on July 4 and the records show aircraft parts were loaded into the cargo hold of Thai Airways flight TG472 at Sydney International Airport. The flight took off at 2:50pm for Bangkok to connect with El Al flight LY82 for Tel Aviv, which landed on Sunday, July 6.
It also states, the aircraft parts were described as 'packing' and marked EAR99 - a classification under the US Export Administration Regulation 99 relating to dual-use goods (civilian/military). The package was listed as weighing only one kilogram.
The documents state that the source of the aircraft parts was Lockheed Martin, the manufacturer of the F-35 fighter jet. "Lockheed Martin retains ownership of parts and components of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, and manages the global supply chain and is responsible for all allocation of those components," the report explains.
The report continued, The shipping records state the supplier of the goods as "RAAF", the Royal Australian Air Force." The documents go on to list the sender’s location as Tindal, the pick-up location as "Williamtown", and after being sent off from Sydney Airport, the location of the receiver of the goods is simply "Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Israel."
The report said the information "Demonstrates that the federal government can no longer deny or hide behind the mechanism of 'plausible deniability'." Plausible deniability is when an intelligence organization or government deliberately leaves ambiguity between itself and a problematic or illegal action so that it can deny responsibility. The article calls for a formal investigation into Australia's support for "War crimes taking place in Gaza."
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on July 15, 2025.
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2025.