TZRIFIN MILITARY BASE, Israel — The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) revealed a stockpile of weapons and vehicles recovered from Hamas terrorists in the aftermath of the October 7 attack, allowing foreign reporters access to the large cache on Thursday.
Idan Sharon-Ketter, the military reservist who is the deputy commander of the IDF’s enemy weapons collection unit, gave reporters a guided tour, starting with the pickup trucks and motorcycles used by Hamas in the attack and hostage-taking.
Many of the vehicles had bullet holes, and signs of having been hit by airstrikes. Some also had bloodstains on the upholstery.
The weapons themselves were housed inside a large tent. Among the first collections was a huge array of Kalashnikov or AK-47 rifles, favored by terrorists worldwide and popular on the black market because they are cheap to make and very reliable.
The IDF also found many rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launchers, as well as rockets that had two warheads — one to penetrate walls, and the other a hyperbaric warhead designed to incinerate rooms. These were used to kill Israelis in their homes.
Many of the weapons were manufactured in Iran; others were made in North Korea and Russia. A few were manufactured in Gaza: some explosives, for example, were made with a 3-D printer. There were also a large number of mortar shells.
Perhaps most chilling of all were a set of anti-tank weapons, based on an Iranian design but assembled in Gaza, that use magnets to affix to the side of an Israeli Merkava tank at a perceived weak point, then fire a charge into the tank that detonates inside. These were not used to attack tanks, but were rather attached to civilian vehicles fleeing the music festival on October 6.
Other anti-tank weapons were used to breach the “safe rooms” in which Israeli families hid in towns infiltrated by terrorists.
There were other, unusual items recovered, such as an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), or drone, found in Gaza; first aid kits assembled from medical supplies intended for civilian use; and rice sacks turned into bags to hold AK-47 ammunition rounds. There were also explosive frames fitted to the dimensions of Israel’s fence poles, which were used to breach the border barrier; and garden hoses filled with explosives and sealed with a denotator on one end, for blowing up objects with odd dimensions.
Hamas managed to amass this large arsenal despite a blockade by Israel and Egypt, and the poverty of ordinary Gaza residents.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
