The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) invited members of the international press last Thursday to a base in central Israel for a small taste of what Hamas terrorists used against Israeli civilians on October 7.
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From the pickup trucks and motorcycles that ferried terrorists into Israel, as well as Israeli hostages back to Gaza, to AK-47s and thermobaric grenades, the armory collected for viewing was but a tiny fraction of what was recovered by the IDF in southern Israel’s civilian communities.
Lt. Col. Idan Sharon-Kettler, deputy commander of the IDF’s enemy equipment collection unit explains that the exhibit’s message was twofold.
First, to dispel the notion that Hamas is just some militia that targeted legitimate military objectives. Sharon-Kettler says the IDF saw “vast amounts of weapons, [and] of explosive materials used not against soldiers, but citizens and families in their own houses.”
Military-grade weapons used against civilians
The equipment included military-grade weapons like the Shawaz anti-tank explosive which was used to break into Israeli civilians’ protected shelters and safe rooms; and thermobaric grenades, which raise the temperature in a given space to 3,000 degrees Celsius.
These grenades were used in houses and civilian cars at the Nova music festival to incinerate everything, and everyone, in their vicinity.
Second, the display was meant to put Hamas and the October 7 atrocities into the context of a more global war against Islamist fundamentalist terror.
“There is a general comment about Gaza as being an open-air prison,” Sharon-Kettler adds. “[These weapons] can’t be found in a prison. This is [the result of] organized smuggling into Gaza from many different countries. There’s a lot of money that goes into this. Someone is funding and planning for a long time, and we see the result—a massacre of civilians.”
Among the contributing countries: Iran with UAV attack drones, TNT, and RPG-7 dual warhead rockets. Also, Russia and North Korea provided Hamas with RPG-7 rockets and RPG-7 anti-personnel fragmentation rockets, respectively.
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