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One evening in November, deputy commander of the IDF's Enemy Assets Confiscation Unit, Lt. Col. (res.) Idan Sharon-Kettler convened a periodic summary meeting with his Military Intelligence Directorate counterparts at the intelligence collection and technical spoils unit — known by its Hebrew acronym Amshat.
This meeting, held as the IDF was preparing to wrap up the ground operation and declare a ceasefire, was attended by reservist officers who could relax over a coffee and, with a sense of satisfaction, review the period they’d just finished up, removing thousands of weapons from southern Lebanon. This followed gathering tens of thousands of weapons from the Gaza Strip over the past year.
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Loot and weapons seized by the IDF during the ongoing war
(Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Unit, Yariv Katz)
“Come on. Let’s open a booty collection point at the Quneitra crossing too,” suggested pony-tailed Lt. Col. Idan. This served as a reminder both that the unit hadn’t taken such steps in two battle arenas since the 1973 Yom Kippur War and as a prophetic joke.
“We all laughed” he recalls. “We had no clue the Assad regime would fall the following week and that we’d have to also deal with Soviet tanks and anti-tank missiles in the ‘Pita’ outposts on the Syrian Golan Heights.”
Since the outbreak of the war, the Technological and Logistics Directorate’s Enemy Assets Confiscation Unit has accumulated 180,000 pieces of weaponry from the Gaza Strip, southern Lebanon, and Syria - enough for a small army.
"At the beginning, we carried the guns crates and rockets of ammunition that we found there into Israel on our backs at nighttime. We soon realized it was too much."
What’s the booty? Aside from the cash, gold bars and jewelry worth millions of shekels, a variety of anti-tank missiles, drones, cutting-edge rockets for all ranges, thousands of explosive devices of various weights, thousands of rifles - including brand new ones, sniper rifles, military walkie talkies, compasses, binoculars and night vision equipment, shoes and uniforms, dozens of vehicles, and even collectables such as 1930’s French guns and valuable, rare pistols for the use of the better connected Hezbollah terrorists. Indiana Jones meets Maroun El Ras.
We’re talking tons of equipment now scattered across the country in warehouses and reinforced bunkers, some secret, waiting to be told what Israel is going to do with all of this military treasure.
Northern assets
Major A. of the Egoz unit was among the first soldiers dispatched to Lebanon early 2024 as part of the Northern Command’s covert operations in southern Lebanon. A. is sharp, tough, experienced and his body’s dimensions are not especially small.
He set out with a group of soldiers fresh out of intensive fighting with Hamas in Gaza’s Khan Younis. At the time, Israeli eyes were on the southern arena. Should we go into Rafah or not? Should we go for a second hostage deal or wait? However, the eyes of A. and his commando brigade comrades, were already on another front.
A. and his comrades were dispatched on dozens of covert operations in southern Lebanon’s Redwan-land to locate weapons caches meant for Hezbollah’s elite forces’ invasion of the Galilee, and bring them back to Israel without being detected. They familiarized themselves with the territory and prepared it for the noisy, broad-scale ground operation then launched late September by other IDF brigades.
"So as not to expose operations in southern Lebanon, we couldn’t set up a collection point for enemy weapons like the ones we’d deployed across junctions and roads adjacent to the Gaza border.”
“We couldn’t use vehicles as we were passing right by terrorists in the Shiite villages. It could expose us,” he recalls. “At the beginning, we carried the guns crates and rockets of ammunition that we found there into Israel on our backs at nighttime. We soon realized it was too much. It was breaking our backs – and our men are strong.”
The vast quantity of spoils of war found by the soldiers came up for debate among Northern Command top brass, who realized that there were huge weapons caches located right in front Metula and Misgav HaAmakim kindergarten areas and Shlomi and Kiryat Shmona homes and neighborhoods.
An officer who was in the know says, “In the end, they were authorized to remotely destroy half of the weapons and bring the rest to Israel, which was very difficult. So as not to expose operations in southern Lebanon, we couldn’t set up a collection point for enemy weapons like the ones we’d deployed across junctions and roads adjacent to the Gaza border.”
The dilemma reached the Northern Command chief and the Chief of Staff, and it was decided that the seized weapons would be brought into Israel only if it didn’t endanger troops. As their friends form the unit greeted the soldiers on their return, they were astonished by the quality of the weapons.
“There was no need to clean or refurbish them or test their safety, like we’d done with some of the guns and weapons coming out of Gaza,” says a unit official. “The weapons seized from Lebanon, were brand new, still in their original packaging, complete with inventory lists that could teach our maintenance and supplies officers a thing or two.”
Ethical dilemmas
Until 1973, the enemy weapons units were dispersed across IDF divisions. As part of the lessons learned from the Yom Kippur War, they were consolidated into a single General Staff emergency body, made up completely of reservists. The General Staff’s orders regarding seized weapons have been updated in times of war, most recently July-August 2014 during Operation Protective Edge.
At the end of that summer, it was decided to break up the unit into northern and southern branches, and a central base at Tzrifin base near Rishon LeZion. At the Julis base, for example, mostly ex-Yahalom personnel deal with weapons likely to detonate, including anti-tank missiles and explosive devices.
Over 2,400 soldiers serve in the unit – and it’s not enough. To streamline the process while still in enemy territory, the IDF is now making efforts to recruit “enemy weapons matchmakers” into the units and battalions.
Personnel with specialist “collectors” tendencies, work to a set methodology: They remove the booty from the brigade that brought it in from enemy territory; conduct preliminary cataloging; register it; disarm explosives and distribute it to the booty storage warehouses. From here, the two main objectives are: intelligence research for ongoing operational activity and understanding the enemy’s weapons, and storage for future that may involve selling or transferring it to another country or recycling for IDF use.
"We firstly register the loot from the combat unit, then it’s all collated in a daily spoils of war report. This also prevents looting.”
In recent months, voices from the political echelon have been calling to transfer the seized weapons in the form of aid to Ukraine for its war against Russia. This idea, however, is off the table due to the desire to maintain neutrality regarding the war in Ukraine, certainly toward Putin’s Russia with its interests in Syria, the quantities not serious enough for the scale of fighting in Ukraine anyhow: Seized weapons from Israel would be a drop in the ocean for Volodymyr Zelensky’s vast forces, already supported by Germany and, until now, the US.
The IDF is also not confirming whether it has managed to recycle any of the explosive materials for the use of IDF’s engineering forces. However, Ynet has learned that this is, at least, in its pilot stages, if only to ease IDF’s enormous demand for explosive devices.
“We’re rushing to optimize the seized weapons for our soldiers,” says Lt. Col. Sharon-Kettler. “Immediately following Hamas’s invasion of the Western Negev October 7, we studied the adhesive charges they had developed for armored vehicles. This is how we assured the protected of the Namer armored personnel carriers in the two and half weeks between the massacre and the start of the ground operation.”
As far as we know, there have only been a small number of cases of weapons stolen by IDF soldiers - none of whom were from the retrieval unit. These cases, which included the theft of Kalashnikovs from Gaza and one case of a stolen Hezbollah jeep, are treated as criminal. Concerned this could spread, the IDF has deployed military police to check the trunks of all vehicles leaving bases storing enemy weapons, to make sure no one’s taking home any souvenirs.
“Everything is documented and counted,” explains Lt. Col. Sharon-Kettler. “We firstly register the loot from the combat unit, then it’s all collated in a daily spoils of war report. This also prevents looting.”
What to do with the tanks
The enemy weapons unit recently reached a historic milestone: for the first time since the Yom Kippur War, its personnel collected weapons from a regular, state military force. Even in Lt. Col. Sharon-Kettler’s wildest dreams, he likely couldn’t have imagined such a mission a year ago.
What started out as half-joke, half-wishful thinking, became real in recent weeks: IDF enemy weapons personnel found themselves in Syrian territory, loading two old Soviet T-55 tanks - after collecting thousands of pieces of weaponry from Assad’s crumbling army, including anti-tank missiles, large explosive warheads, Kalashnikovs and plenty of ammunition – all manufactured in the Eastern Bloc. In one Syrian outpost, they even found an old Nazi-era German gun.
“In one tank, we actually found relatively new systems, with an anti-tank missile system that fired from inside the tank itself, which seemed to have undergone maintenance and had been upgraded in recent years. They were operational,” says Lt. Col. Idan.
"Gathering weapons from the enemy without having to fight them was rather surrealistic for us. We just walked into their bases and loaded up.”
The amazement was also shared by the Syrian civilians. With an armored vehicle, the IDF soldiers dragged the two-tank booty in the dead of night through open terrain, until reaching a road near Quneitra. Curious local photographers were waiting to film the tanks crossing the border into Israel en route to their new home at an IDF base on the Golan Heights.
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“The shells and the ammo rack in the belly of the tank where they were stored were heavily greased – something we don’t do under our protocol. What loader would pick up a shell that would slip straight out of his hands?” says Lt. Col. Idan, referring to what he found as he entered the Soviet tank. “This was probably their way of preventing the shells from getting stuck in all the accumulated rust.”
“Capturing war trophies such as tanks without enemy bodies in them like in the past was very strange. The unit was accompanied by rabbinate personnel. Gathering weapons from the enemy without having to fight them was rather surrealistic for us. We just walked into their bases and loaded up.”
The IDF is now mulling what to do with the two Syrian tanks. Should they break them down for scrap or put them in a museum? A less romantic option is using them for shooting practice for armored corps training at the Shizafon army base.
Captured medical equipment
The military-legal definition of “booty” is any property or item found in possession of a terrorist organization or enemy state, found during wartime or during hostilities against Israel. This may, at first glance, seem like a clear and simple definition.
On the ground, however, there are plenty of dilemmas that end up with leaving behind terrorists’ property such as cars or money or, conversely, taking medical equipment if it could be used for hostile terrorist activities - such as medical training mannequin found by IDF soldiers at the start of the Gaza ground operation.
This mannequin was found in a hostage cage, designed for Hamas terrorists to practice medical treatment on Israeli hostages, babies or children. Horrific as it may sound, this mannequin was taken as booty for completely different purposes - to serve as a Hasbarah tool for Israel in the battle for international legitimacy.
Another dilemma faced by the unit and its legal advisors during the ground operation arose while the IDF was preparing to attack a hospital being used as the Nukhba terrorists’ main headquarters. Troops found a rather new and very expensive MRI machine inside the hospital, the kind that even Israel's healthcare system desperately needed, especially in the periphery.
“We debated whether to send in troops to remove it. After extensive consultations, we decided against it, as we couldn’t prove that this device served terrorist purposes,” says a unit official. “We thought of maybe removing the machine before the attack, and then returning it to the Gazans, but we then realized they might sue us if the machine was damaged.” In the end, the hospital used as a terrorist base was attacked, with the MRI machine inside.”
Another dilemma regarding seized equipment involved a unit commander fighting in Gaza noticing spare parts belonging to Palestinian forces, and realizing they could be used for his own unit's tanks and vehicles. "He contacted us, sent photos from the field, and explained that these parts might be critically needed for his unit," the official added.
The most fascinating section in the booty base at Tzrifin is that of the “money suitcases” – piles of cash found in enemy territory, seized and confiscated by IDF soldiers. There was NIS 4 million, found in the private home of a Hamas brigade commander that reached the booty unit and was brought to Israel.
There are grey areas here too: The IDF official explains, “If soldiers go into the home of a terrorist in Gaza and see a 200 shekel note on the table, they can’t take it. It doesn’t count as booty as we have no way of knowing it wasn’t meant for his wife and children.”
The seized money is counted in banking machines purchased by the IDF, and the gold and jewelry captured in Gaza and Lebanon are weighed on scales to be valued. This weighing and counting is conducted in the presence of two officers.
A special document is then printed off and the valuables are transported in armored vehicles to the Defense Ministry’s main treasury department at the Kirya in Tel Aviv where the money is counted once again and deposited at the Bank of Israel for confiscation purposes.
To date, no less than NIS 100 million in various currencies – shekels, dollars, euros and currencies of Arab states - have been confiscated.
At this time, only Shayetet soldiers use Kalashnikovs, which are more resistant to water, and it’s yet to be decided whether to give them the best quality guns seized in Lebanon. “We don’t like integrating just any seized weapons, holding on to them and maintaining them with no benefit,” says Sharon-Kettler. “I always ask what is the value of this booty? We’re not going to equip a whole Golani battalion with new Kalashnikovs. We also don’t have maintenance for North Korean, Chinese or Russian anti-tank missiles that we’ve captured.”
But take a look at all these gleaming, neatly packed, 50 caliber bullets for heavy machine guns. There are also 7.62mm rounds that fit IDF MAG machine guns
“True. We even found Hezbollah ammunition manufactured in 2020. Brand new. We captured so many bullets that we counted them by crate and weight, rather than one by one. We’ll soon change that to get a more accurate count of how many tens, or hundreds, of thousands of bullets we’ve seized. We won’t be using the grenades we seized since most are Eastern-Bloc manufactured with unsafe detonation mechanisms.”
Al Capone's rifle
A secondary purpose for capturing enemy weapons is for military deception operations. The IDF has turned the battlefield into a war of ruses, setting Hezbollah and Hamas traps and baits, often luring terrorists into its ambushes.
The booty unit includes several veteran soldiers, some in their seventies, who say, “The quantities we reached surpassed past wars. Hamas and Hezbollah aren’t classified as terrorist armies for nothing. For perspective, you must understand: in the Yom Kippur War, we captured 2,000 armored vehicles from Egypt and Syria, only 300 of which we managed to refurbish for IDF use. In Operation Protective Edge, we seized only a few thousand items. In the Second Lebanon War, it wasn’t even a priority.”
As my visit to the unit draws to an end, Lt, Col. Sharon-Kettler insists on showing me his guilty pleasure of items cherished by gun collectors. From a dark, cluttered container, he pulls out an Ingram submachine gun, likely an American model copied by Iran or China, with a drum magazine reminiscent of old gangster movies featuring Al Capone or Bonnie and Clyde.
"But take a look at this," he says proudly, revealing an even rarer find salvaged from Gaza’s alleyways and Lebanon’s bunkers. “A French MAS-36, a bolt-action rifle seized in Lebanon, and it appears functional. And here’s a Russian PPSh submachine gun, the Soviet equivalent of the American Thompson 'Tommy Gun' from old war films."
The first thought that comes to mind is that these weapons should be preserved as historical mementos - as battalion and brigade commanders have done in the past, framing them in their offices after military operations.
The IDF, however has a rigorous protocol for seized weapons. Brig. Gen. Israel Shomer, former commander of the 146th division, now head of operations at the General Staff, took the Kalashnikov rifle of a terrorist who was killed outside his home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza on October 7. When he got to his division’s base in the Galilee, he handed the rifle over to a logistics officer to apply for permission to keep it as a memento.
IDF approval, however demands that two conditions be met: a direct connection between the captured weapon and the officer (i.e., if the weapon was used in an attack against the officer) and; a recommendation from the Chief of Staff general, who must personally approve it.
Brig. Gen. Shomer is still awaiting approval for his Kalashnikov from October 7 which, for now, is securely stored in the IDF's seized weapons warehouses.