RE: https://journa.host/@theintercept/117588901666147554
"An Israeli airline shipped thousands of pounds worth of parts for controversial “bunker-buster” bombs through John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York during the height of the Israeli–U.S. war against Iran, according to a new investigation by a left-wing research group.
Challenge Airlines, a cargo hauler based in Israel, made three flights this spring carrying the bomb casings for BLU-109s — a 2,000-pound munition that has been tied to numerous mass-casualty attacks on civilian neighborhoods in the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, and Iran in recent years — according to open-source data obtained by the Movement Research Unit and reviewed by The Intercept.
The airline also made more than 100 shipments of guidance kits known as joint direct attack munitions, or JDAMs — which are used to convert so-called “dumb bombs” into GPS-guided munitions capable of striking a specific target — according to data shared with The Intercept. Many of the guidance kits were marked for use on the MK-84, another 2,000-pound bomb Israel used in its campaign to level Gaza, where fragments of JDAMs have repeatedly been found at the site of airstrikes.
“If you look at historic U.S. use of 2,000-pound bombs, in the entire counter-ISIS campaign, there were just two that were dropped in the vicinity of the city of Mosul precisely because there is no way to use a 2,000-pound bomb discriminately in an urban environment,” Paul said, referring to an American air war during the final years of the Obama administration to end the Islamic State’s control of the Iraqi city of Mosul.
Israel hasn’t shared the United States’s reservations. The country made extensive use of the weapons to attack targets in Gaza and Lebanon, including a deadly strike on Gaza’s Jabaliya refugee camp that killed dozens of civilians, according to an analysis by the New York Times.
...Challenge Airlines shipped the bunker-buster bomb bodies on flights leaving JFK for Tel Aviv on March 12, April 30, and May 6, according to the data shared with The Intercept."
