A team of investigative journalists have exposed that the Australian Labor government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been exporting F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel amid the Zionist state’s genocide against the Palestinian population.

The important report, published by Declassified Australia in partnership with Irish-based news site the Ditch, reveals the Australian state’s direct complicity in Israel’s war crimes, and exposes as a lie the repeated refrain by Labor government officials over the past two years that it has not been exporting weapons parts to Israel.

The article was co-authored by Declassified Australia editor and former Australian Broadcasting Corporation producer Peter Cronau, and lawyer Kellie Tranter.

Cronau and Tranter wrote: “Declassified Australia has sighted shipping records detailing goods sent on two recent flights from Sydney to Tel Aviv in Israel. 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.”

The 1-kilogram package, labelled “Aircraft parts,” was marked “EAR99”—US Export Administration Regulation 99 which is used for goods that are dual-use for military and commercial applications. The documents obtained by the journalists state that the world’s largest arms manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, was the source of the aircraft parts. The goods description on the documents is JSF—referring to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter which is made by Lockhead Martin, the world’s largest arms manufacturer.

It was revealed that the package was sent from the Royal Australian Air Force’s (RAAF) Tindal airbase in the Northern Territory via RAAF Base Williamtown near the regional New South Wales city of Newcastle before being put on a flight to Tel-Aviv—the centre of Israel Air Force (IAF) operations—from Sydney Airport on July 4.

Tindal airbase is the major RAAF base in northern Australia and includes the No. 75 Squadron that uses F-35A joint strike fighter jets. Williamtown is home to the RAAF’s fleet of F-35A Lightning II Joint Strike Fighters and is the regional hub in the Asia-Pacific for maintenance and warehousing of F-35 components.

A pair of 1-kilogram packages—also marked as JSF parts sourced from Lockhead Martin, sent from Tindal to Tel Aviv—was flown from Sydney Airport on April 9. These packages were marked as subject to the US State Department’s International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). The parts were designated as munitions which can include military hardware, guidance systems, armaments, military aircraft, related technical data and software.

F-35 fighter jets have been used by Israel in its genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. F-35 fighters have been used in Israeli war crimes including airstrikes on designated safe zones and the use of 2,000-pound bombs supplied by the US government to indiscriminately kill thousands of people. These fighters were also used in airstrikes during Israel’s illegal assault on Iran last month.

While the exact nature and contents of the packages remains unknown, the leaked documents uncovered by Declassified Australia expose the deliberate complicity of the Australian government in Israel’s war crimes.

This belies the claims by the Albanese government that F-35 parts sourced from Australia were not shipped directly to Israel, but were part of a global supply chain—a feeble attempt to distance the government from Israel’s war crimes.

The direct transfer of the parts, from an airforce base to Israel, could only have been approved by the military command and the government. That is an involvement, even more direct than the previously known practice of permitting private weapons companies to export their products to global networks aiding Israel.

Declassified Australia’s investigation represents the final nail in the coffin of any of the increasingly unconvincing attempts by the Labor government to plead innocence—as if another nail were needed.

In early 2024, Labor awarded Israel’s largest defence contractor, Elbit Systems, an Australian army contract worth almost $1 billion. Pictures showing Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz inspecting an Australian-manufactured R400 weapons system in Israel surfaced in April this year.

Declassified Australia has previously revealed dozens of active permits for military exports to Israel. The site showed that hundreds of defence export permits from Australia to Israel had been issued since 2015. A sharp increase in defence export permits to Israel has been seen since 2022 when the Labor party under Anthony Albanese came to office.

The joint US-Australian Pine Gap spy base in the Northern Territory has also likely provided critical intelligence to Israel for its airstrikes in Gaza and other parts of the Middle East.

Labor has led the charge of the Australian political establishment which has feverishly supported Israel’s mass murder of Palestinians based on the justification that “Israel has the right to defend itself.”

This has been coupled with a ferocious attack by the Albanese federal government and its counterparts in the states—above all, Labor state governments in Victoria and New South Wales—against all opposition to Israel’s war crimes, fraudulently declaring that hostility to the genocide is antisemitic. Governments in Australia have arrested peaceful anti-genocide protesters, sent police onto university campuses, collaborated with university managements to expel or suspend pro-Palestinian students, and recently ordered police to use force at a Sydney rally against the Gaza genocide, leading to a young female protester to be badly injured.

Labor’s support for Israel’s mass slaughter is another demonstration of the ruthless and criminal character of Australian imperialism. This is inseparable from its broader support for war globally which is being led by the US.

The genocide is part of one front, directed towards a region-wide war in the Middle East, targeting Iran above all. Australia has also been one of the biggest non-NATO financial and political backers of the war in Ukraine which is aimed at inflicting a decisive US-NATO defeat over Russia. 

Meanwhile, the Labor government of Albanese has completed Australia’s transformation into a frontline state in Washington’s war aims against China which is viewed by the strategists of American imperialism as the chief threat to its global hegemony.

This broader militarist eruption highlights the fact that the Labor government cannot be pressured to alter course. The working class must take matters into its own hands, including halting arms shipments to Israel.

The trade union apparatuses, which are tied by a thousand strings to the Labor party and capitalist system, have done everything in their power to prevent such industrial action or strikes by workers in opposition to the genocide. That shows the need for workers to establish rank-and-file committees, totally independent of the government and company-aligned union bureaucrats.

Above all, workers and youth must take up a perspective of ending the capitalist system which is the cause of genocide and war.