As Israel’s campaign of mass killing in Palestine enters its second year and extends to Lebanon, the collective sense of urgency felt by people around the globe has inspired a shift in organizing strategy. Activists in the U.S. have been organizing to quell the Israeli war machine by turning their attention to logistics companies that physically deliver munitions to Israel.

For the past several months, the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), a transnational coalition guided by principles of justice and liberation, has launched a new phase in its multipronged campaign against one of the world’s largest genocide profiteers: Maersk. Maersk is a Danish logistics company that deals with shipping, port operation, supply chain management and warehousing. As the world’s largest container ship and supply vessel operator, Maersk has subsidiaries and offices in over 130 countries.

Since October 7, 2023, Maersk has shipped over $300 million in weapons components to U.S. arms manufacturers, organizers have found. As a key culprit in the weapons trade, Maersk plays a direct role in maintaining the flow of weapons and weapon components used on the besieged population in Gaza, where the Ministry of Health reports more than 42,700 people have been confirmed to have been killed in Israel’s genocide — widely considered to be a vast undercount. Truthout reached out to Maersk for comment, but did not receive a response in time for publication.

In a broader context, the U.S. is Israel’s largest foreign weapons provider; over 68 percent of the ammunition used to maintain their illegal apartheid is supplied by the American government. Taking inspiration from national organizing tactics, from direct actions outside Israeli arms company Elbit Systems to student-led encampments that have successfully pushed universities to divest from genocide, the “Mask Off Maersk” campaign is gearing up to demand a total arms embargo with myriad political organizing strategies. Simply put, the mask has fallen and the demands of the campaign are clear: Maersk must cut ties with genocide.

Earlier this year, thousands of participants in the movement for Palestine convened in Detroit for the People’s Conference, where the “Mask Off Maersk” campaign was first announced. In July, students, activists and community members in Houston, Texas, gathered for a Palestinian Youth Movement-led teach-in as part of a national week of action to bring the Maersk campaign to life. In this phase of the struggle to end the mass murder of Palestinians, campaign organizers understand the need to disrupt the supply chain that exists to fast-track the money-to-weaponry pipeline. Ending Maersk’s relationship with Israel is one of the most explicit ways to stop the flow of heavy-grade artillery into Gaza — a concrete, tangible consequence for Israel after conducting genocide with relative impunity for more than a year.

Logistics companies and the facilitation of war go hand in hand; the latter cannot exist without the former. American weapon companies sit squarely at the top of the global arms industry. In 2022, the top five U.S. weapons contractors made........

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