Hundreds of pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered Friday morning outside FedEx's air cargo facility on Edes Avenue in Oakland, near Interstate 880 and Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport, demanding that the company stop shipping parts for F-35 fighter jets to Israel.
NBC Bay Area reported that the crowd included faith leaders, union workers and students. The protest fell during the week marking the third anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel and the war in Gaza that followed. Protesters said an F-35 was used in a strike on a Gaza refugee camp that killed as many as 120 people, and they accused FedEx of complicity. NBC also noted that lawsuits have been filed against FedEx in Belgium and France alleging such shipments are illegal.
Who organized it
The action was billed as a mass mobilization of the Oakland People's Arms Embargo campaign. An East Bay DSA event listing set it for 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the FedEx airport cargo warehouse at 9190 Edes Ave. and urged people to ride BART to the Coliseum station and transfer to AC Transit's 45 bus.
The campaign grew out of an August 2025 report from the Palestinian Youth Movement. That report said the federal government was using FedEx at the Oakland airport to move replacement F-35 parts, routed through FedEx's Memphis hub to overseas destinations including Nevatim Airbase in Israel.
What the airport says
The Port of Oakland, which runs the airport, has published an air cargo fact sheet on the dispute. It says the federal Defense Logistics Agency's facility in Tracy was designated a resupply center for the F-35 program in 2019, and that Congress and several presidential administrations have permitted the plane's sale to foreign nations.
The Port says its commissioners, executives and lawyers met with campaign representatives several times, starting in October 2025 and most recently in March 2026. At each meeting, it says, it laid out the federal laws that govern cargo and asked organizers for any legal basis that would let the Port block the shipments. According to the Port, none was provided and its legal analysis has not been disputed.
That leaves the fight where it has been for a year: activists pressing the company and local officials, and the Port saying the decision isn't its to make.