In December, the Biden administration blocked a shipment of M4 rifles to Israel. The rifles were meant to be used by local community self-defense units of the kind that had served as the front line of defense against the Hamas attack on Oct 7. However the Biden administration claimed that it was concerned that the self-defense units might be Jewish “right-wing extremists”.
The Islamic terrorists attacking them however had no trouble finding M4 rifles. They just expected theirs to come by a more complicated road from Afghanistan, by way of Iran’s terror operatives, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan via a drug smuggling route, and then inside Israel.
The M4 rifles were part of a package that included grenade launchers, anti-tank missiles, anti-tank landmines, RPGs, C4 and Semtex explosives, and hand grenades.
A number of those were clearly American weapons including the M4s and the M203 grenade launchers: both in use in Afghanistan. The Alma Center, founded by IDF Lt Col (Res.) Sarit Zehavi, believes that the M4s are likely “spoils from Iraq, Syria or Afghanistan.”
“The surprise terror attacks by Hamas into Israel were made possible, in part, because of U.S. arms left behind in Afghanistan by the Biden administration,” Larry Keane, the Counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, wrote at the Firearm Industry Trade Association.
The weapons package now intercepted by Israel shows how Iran may have tapped into the weapons left behind in Afghanistan. The weapons shipment appears to be a ‘sandwich’ with Iran moving American weapons to the Islamic terrorists backed by the Biden administration.
While the weapons were being smuggled by Iran through its IRGC terror arm, the key player was Munir Makdah, a top figure in the Fatah movement which controls the PLO and the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian Authority is a major recipient of American foreign aid and the Biden administration has been pressuring Israel to put its terrorists in charge of Gaza.
Even as the Biden administration was demanding that Israel allow Fatah terrorists to run Gaza, a top Fatah leader was recruiting terrorists to attack Israel. The anti-tank weapons, mines and RPGs suggest that the goal was a significant assault on Israel in order to open a second front in Judea and Samaria, also known as the West Bank, to relieve the pressure on Hamas in Gaza. .
Munir Makdah serves as a deputy commander of Fatah in the Ein al-Hilweh terrorist settlement in Lebanon. Misleadingly described by the UN as a refugee camp, it’s actually a major city of over 100,000 which various Islamic terrorist groups have been fighting over since at least the 1980s. While Ein al-Hilweh is often described in the media as a “Palestinian refugee camp”, large numbers of Syrian Islamists fled there after losing their civil war, and have been fighting with Fatah for control of the city using heavy weaponry including rockets.
The weapons were intended for the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a Fatah terrorist arm, sanctioned by the United States as a Foreign Terrorist Organization for its numerous bloody attacks.
Even as Al Aqsa has gone on murdering Israelis, Marwan Barghouti, its founder, in prison for his involvement in multiple murders, including that of a Greek monk, has been promoted as a future president of the Palestinian Authority.
The New York Times ran an op-ed by Barghouti while failing to identify him as a terrorist. The Washington Post recently claimed that the Biden administration had “raised the treatment of Marwan Barghouti” with Israel. The International Red Cross, which has failed to visit any of the Jewish and non-Jewish hostages held by Hamas, has been clamoring to visit him.
“The Biden administration should make it very clear to the Netanyahu government that if Barghouti is harmed or killed in prison, it would throw gas on a raging fire,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen, notorious for his promotion of Iranian agendas, warned.
While the Biden administration and Iran Lobby adjacent figures like Van Hollen were lobbying for Barghouti, the terrorist’s men appeared to be preparing to unleash a major attack on Israel.
And who was behind the attack? Iran.
Apart from being a top Fatah terrorist, Munir Makdah has also been identified as an operative with Iran’s Hezbollah terrorist movement in Lebanon and the IRGC. After consolidating its control over Hamas and Al Qaeda, Iran is gaining a deeper foothold in the Palestinian Authority.
And the Palestinian Authority is a terrorist operation subsidized by American taxpayers.
The weapons, including the M4 rifles, had come by way of Iran’s terror operatives, including those in Syria, who would have been in a position to move them through Jordan into Israel.
Captagon, the amphetamine used by the Hamas terrorists on Oct 7, is manufactured under the protection of the Assad family, an Iranian client, smuggled out of Syria and into Jordan, where it’s then trafficked to Iran’s enemies in Saudi Arabia, but also into Muslim areas in Israel.
Iran’s global drug smuggling empire provides wealth, but it’s also used by the terror regime to piggyback terror operatives and weapons like those that were meant for the Fatah terrorists.
Opiates and weapons from Afghanistan make their way to Iran, and from there to Iraq, Syria, Yemen and to Gaza and now even the West Bank. In 2022, Israel had detected a significant increase in both drugs and weapons being smuggled into the country. This was likely part of the prep for the Oct 7 attacks which employed both drugs and weapons.
Iran’s drug network is also a terror network and the terrorists are also its clients. Gaza has an estimated 150,000 drug addicts from a population of only a few million.
After Biden turned over Afghanistan to the Taliban, along with its drug trafficking operation, Iran boosted a pipeline of weapons and drugs that are used to bind its allies and attack its enemies.
Weapons left behind in Afghanistan have made their way into Israel. But this time they were intended for the Palestinian Authority terrorists backed by the Biden administration.
While the terrorists want the M4s left behind in Afghanistan, Israel is pivoting away from the rifles denied to it by the Biden administration and shifting over to local manufacturing. After the Biden administration began moving arms from Israel to Ukraine, and then began cutting off weapons to stop Israel from finishing off Hamas, the Israeli government is going local.
Under Biden, Islamic terrorists can still count on American weapons, Israelis however can’t.
Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.
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