On Monday, June 8th, 2026, the Palestinian Youth Movement’s Mask Off Maersk campaign & Oxfam Denmark, one of the foremost human rights organizations internationally, released a groundbreaking new report explicitly proving Maersk’s shipment of bullet, bomb, and mortar components for Israel after claiming for years to not ship ammunition. Not one month earlier, we similarly exposed Maersk for violating their official 2025 settlement embargo. For a company who claims their purpose to be “Improving life for all by integrating the world,” six separate reports and briefings in just two years explaining how Maersk does everything but is quite stark, even for today’s business standards.
The not-so-shocking truth is that thus far, Maersk’s motivation has not been human rights, but profit by any means necessary. For the logistics giant, ‘human rights’ is a practice in semantics; a statement, a public posture, but never a commitment or, as our findings reveal, a real policy change. Palestinian fathers actively sift through the rubble of their homes in search of what might possibly remain of their families as Maersk loads its next shipment of munitions components in preparation for Israel’s next massacre. Maersk knows this. Maersk has gone to great lengths to ensure that Israel is still capable of committing these massacres. As a campaign that has mobilized millions across the globe to end Maersk’s complicity in genocide, we deserve clarity. The Palestinian people deserve an answer. So, consider this a formal question to CEO Vincent Clerc and the Maersk leadership: Maersk, what is a weapon?
Maersk has been one of the most important logistics companies in facilitating the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Yet in an ever-lengthening ‘statement on military-related cargo’ posted on Maersk’s website, the logistics giant claims with confidence that it does not ship weapons. Moreover, at this year’s Annual General Meeting, CEO Vincent Clerc emphatically denied any role in shipping specific military cargo for Israel when questioned by shareholders, even refusing to answer questions on their human rights due diligence policies. So, it’s really critical that we understand what a weapon actually is, and how Maersk is decidedly not shipping it. Here’s what we do know:
- Maersk has shipped Oshkosh vehicles that Israel uses to transport abducted Palestinians to prison death camps outside of Gaza
- Maersk has shipped mortar components for the mortars used to indiscriminately bomb Palestinians in Gaza
- Maersk has shipped millions of kilograms of bullet cores and case cups—everything you need to make a bullet other than the explosive primer and gunpowder
- Maersk has shipped the wings, batteries, and surface analyzers for the Israeli F35 fighter jet that Israel drops MK-80 bombs from, a weapon so barbaric that an Al-Jazeera investigative unit concluded they, alongside other bombs, evaporated over 2,000 Palestinians.
- Maersk has shipped every single part of the aforementioned MK-80 bomb besides the fuse and explosive powder itself!
And the list goes on, and on, and on. In no way, shape, or form are these shipments neutral or innocent. The same class of bullets shipped by Maersk in 2024 were suspected to be used in 2018 to shoot, maim, and kill 233 Palestinians, including Razan Al-Najjar, a 21 year-old medic killed while nursing her people back to health. These same bullet cores were shot 335 times from a Merkava-mounted machine gun at 5-year-old Hind Rajab, trapped in a car with her murdered family members as she pleaded with the Red Crescent to save her life. Gaza’s destroyed mosques and churches, its neighborhoods leveled to the ground, the Palestinians murdered in so-called safe-zones–including as recently as May 23th— can trace their fate to the type of cargo that Maersk ships.
So, we ask again. From the rubble of Gaza’s homes. From the mass graves where bits of our mothers, fathers, friends, and colleagues are buried. From the Palestinian prison death camps. From the ruins of Al-Shifa Hospital, from the honorable Rafah and al-Mawasi:
Maersk, what is a weapon?
Maersk knows that they are complicit in the worst genocide of our lifetime, and Maersk has gone through great lengths to obfuscate their role in it. When Maersk was first confronted with the Mask Off Maersk campaign’s groundbreaking research, and an international movement of workers, students, and compatriots to hold them accountable, their instinct was to distance themselves and deflect. “Maersk upholds a strict policy of not shipping weapons or ammunition to active conflict zones,” they claimed, while admitting that they handle “the transportation of civilian and military-related cargo to Israel.”
This false distinction, used to escape corporate accountability through legal jargon, fell apart under closer examination from our campaign. Month after month, the Mask off Maersk campaign released new reports linking Maersk to the shipment of the wings for every single Israeli F-35 fighter jet delivered since at least March 2022. And as our research overflowed, so too did the global response, forcing Maersk to think quickly. In just two years, The Spanish government blocked two Maersk ships, forcing Maersk to permanently re-route to the Port of Tangier in Morocco while French dock workers refused to unload Maersk’s Israeli-bound military cargo, forcing Maersk to remove their port from its Mediterranean-Sea-C route
If this wasn’t enough proof of Maersk’s intimate familiarity with our campaign, its own international press chief admitted that they read our reports.
Maersk knows that the people have called its bluff. And yet, in the face of complicated ship re-routes, striking dock workers, legal counsel, exposing research reports, breaking headlines from major news agencies, direct actions outside its Copenhagen headquarters and solidarity protests outside its offices across the world, Maersk chooses to maintain complicity. They even go against their own stated policies.
European nations are sounding the alarm bells on Israel as it displaces thousands of Palestinians under expanding settlement construction. But we know that this plan is not just for the West Bank and Jerusalem but is also set for the Gaza Strip as detailed by the Kushner’s Master Plan for Gaza, backed by satellite evidence that new structures are being built every day by the Israeli Military. What happens if international real-estate developers, mouths practically frothing at the site of Gaza’s destruction, are successful in building their ‘international city’ atop Gaza’s ruins? Will Maersk also ship to settlements in Gaza? Our campaign’s settlement report catches Maersk red-handed – not even one year after their claim that they no longer deliver to Israeli settlements, their trucks are caught delivering items for construction and demolition for COMASCO Ltd, listed by the United Nations OHCHR as complicit in the demolitions of Palestinian homes.
Maersk, how far can legal jargon stretch before tearing at the seams?
The walls are closing in on Maersk, and it can either jump ship or stay the course of genocide and suffer the consequences of history. Accountability is overdue. Maersk, the simplest path forward is the path of human rights. Save yourself the trouble of million-man strikes and new research reports and stop shipping military cargo to Israel. Implement a real, comprehensive embargo on transport to Israeli settlements.
Because if the last two years have proven anything, it’s that failure to do so has real, material consequences. In 2025, The Norges Bank Investment Fund, Norway’s Sovereign Wealth Fund (and one of the largest in the world,) divested from Caterpillar on the basis of their participation in destroying Palestinian homes and lands in the West Bank to build Israeli settlements alone. That same year, Norway’s Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg came under scrutiny from Norway’s parliament for potentially profiting off Maersk’s shipment of military cargo for Israel. Now, add the Spanish government’s 9-part-embargo on Israel and the Italian, French, Moroccan, and Spanish dock workers who routinely refuse to dock Maersk’s cargo. Add the financial loss, the organizational instability and the political isolation that Maersk is facing. It begs the question: what is at stake? What does Maersk have to lose, and what does it have to gain by defining a single question: Maersk, what is a weapon?
Maersk, United Nations institutions have listed your company as complicit in, and profiteering from, Israeli human rights abuses and the genocide in Gaza. Our demands are clear: end all activities that facilitate Israel’s settlement enterprise across Palestine, cease your shipment of military cargo and munitions for the Israeli military, heighten your human rights due diligence. There is no nuance left to have, no more re-defining words to separate your shipments to Israel from the genocide in Gaza. There are only tens of millions of laborers, students, artists, and doctors, across six continents, hundreds of countries, thousands of cities, and you. Maersk, the dust has settled. The mask is off.
Palestinian Youth Movement
The Palestinian Youth Movement is a transnational, independent grassroots movement of young Palestinians and Arabs dedicated to the liberation of our homeland and people. We currently comprise of 15 chapters across North America and Europe.
