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Israel’s capture of a vast arsenal from Iran’s terror proxies reveals an axis with the most unexpected originsAmong the weapons taken from Hezbollah was a Nazi-era MG-34 machine gunFox News Digital was granted rare access to the Israel Defense Forces’ Tzrifin Base in central Israel. There, stored in careful order, lies a formidable collection of rockets, grenades, drones, sniper rifles, automatic weapons, anti-tank rocket launchers, mortars and assorted firepower seized from Hezbollah and Hamas.
This arsenal, manufactured in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Russia, China, and by local workshops in Lebanon and Gaza, and even including a relic of the Nazi era, formed the machinery with which Hamas and Hezbollah waged war against Israeli civilians and the IDF after the October 7, 2023, massacre.
The IDF notes that Hezbollah directed some of the same weapons against Lebanese civilians as well. Both groups belong to Iran’s so-called “axis of resistance.” Together they have killed more than 300 American citizens, according to available reports.
At the height of the conflict Israel fought a multi-front war against Iran and its proxies. Tehran fired these weapons into civilian areas, including Tel Aviv and Be’ersheva. Days after the joint American-Israeli strikes on Iran in late February, the regime launched a ballistic missile into Beersheba, wounding 19 people.
To the untrained eye the small Nazi swastika emblem on a German Second World War MG-34 machine gun, recovered from a Hezbollah compound in Lebanon, is almost invisible.
For Lieutenant Colonel (reserve) Idan Sharon-Kettler, commander of the IDF’s Captured Equipment Evacuation Unit, identifying such markings is routine. “The German MG-34 has the markings of an eagle carrying a swastika stamped on it,” he explained. The gun, he told Fox News Digital, appears to have served “propaganda or for morale” among the Iranian-backed terrorists in Lebanon. A second Nazi-era weapon, the MP 44 (also known as the StG 44), was likewise taken from Hezbollah.
Hamas and Hezbollah, both designated terrorist organizations by the United States, showed particular ingenuity in converting ordinary vehicles into instruments of high-intensity attack. Dual-use technology, equipment that serves civilian purposes one day and military ones the next, is their stock in trade.
“Motorcycles like these took Israelis hostages,” Sharon-Kettler said, indicating an Egyptian Halawa Motors motorcycle captured inside Israel on 7 October. That day Hamas murdered more than 1,200 people, among them more than 40 American citizens, and abducted over 250 others.
The IDF also recovered rockets belonging to Palestinian Islamic Jihad that had been employed as “propaganda dummies” in Gaza parades directed against Israel. From Hezbollah in Lebanon came all-terrain vehicles designed to carry rockets and fighters. One such ATV was fitted to hold six rockets complete with launchers. “You can sit on top of a hill and control a road that goes underneath. And with six anti-tank rockets you will stop almost any vehicle that passes,” Sharon-Kettler observed.
In the broken, hilly terrain of southern Lebanon the vehicles offered obvious tactical advantages.
Iranian-made mortars were found in quantity. “We found hundreds” in Lebanon, Sharon-Kettler said. Drones, including decoy models, were seized as well. Some of Hezbollah’s drones, according to Sharon-Kettler, exist chiefly “to make noise” and thereby “divert [IDF] resources.”
Dozens of Iranian-produced cannons were taken from villages in southern Lebanon, the organization’s heartland. “In many houses the canons were pointing out of windows,” he reported. One of the captured pieces was of Russian manufacture. The storage halls also contain Russian AK-47 assault rifles in various configurations, together with more recent AK-103 and AK-104 models recovered in southern Lebanon. “Light sniper rifles, some made in Iran, some Russian, are very common with Hezbollah and Hamas,” Sharon-Kettler noted.
Among the more unexpected finds was a highly decorated Turkish hunting rifle used by Hezbollah, as well as sophisticated Austrian Steyr sniper rifles, including the Steyr HS .50-calibre model. An Iranian-made replica of the Steyr was also displayed. Sub-machine guns of Chinese and Russian origin, and anti-tank launchers produced in Russia and Iran, completed the collection of small arms and support weapons.Uniforms manufactured in Syria, China and Lebanon, helmets, anti-shrapnel vests and medical kits further illustrate the professional and guerrilla equipment amassed by these groups.
Both Hezbollah and Hamas embed their fighters among civilian populations, placing them inside residential neighborhoods, hospitals, schools and mosques. This is how these terrorists operate, but it seems the Left doesn't like to discuss this situation.
Sharon-Kettler offered a blunt assessment of Israel’s continued presence in Lebanon. “Even after the agreement we had with the Lebanese army and government, once we entered Lebanon again, we kept finding everything that is here. For me, it means, if we are not doing the work to clean Lebanon from military entities targeting are civilians, nobody else is doing that.” He referred to the November 2024 ceasefire arrangement between Lebanon and Israel that was meant to end the fighting begun when Hezbollah joined Hamas’s war on 8 October 2023.
A State Department official, speaking on background, recently informed Fox News that the American-led effort to secure the disarmament of Hezbollah by the Lebanese government and a phased withdrawal of IDF forces from southern Lebanon continues. The next round of talks is scheduled for early September in Rome. “We feel good about the trajectory,” the official said, adding, “We are not naive about the difficulties. . . "
Hezbollah, of course, is trying to sabotage the process.
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