TEL AVIV (Dispatches) -- The Israeli military’s “Loot Unit” has seized enough weaponry to establish “a small army,” as well as “mountains” of cash and gold since launching the wars in the Gaza Strip, southern Lebanon, and Syria, Ynet reported.
“We don’t like to just take in loot, keep it, and maintain it without making a profit from it,” admits Lt. Col. Sharon-Kotler. “I always ask what the value of this loot is?”
Soldiers from the loot unit stole “mountains of cash” in enemy territory. In one case, the loot unit seized around $1 million from a private home in Gaza.
The stolen money is counted in bank machines that the military purchased for the looting unit, alongside scales for checking the value of gold bars and jewelry seized in Lebanon and Gaza.
The cash and gold are transferred in secured vehicles to the war ministry’s main cash desk section in The Kirya in Tel Aviv. There, a recount is carried out and deposited in the Bank of Israel for confiscation.
So far, around $28 million in cash from Gaza and Lebanon have been confiscated in this way, including various currencies such as shekels, dollars, euros, and those of Arab nations.
Over 500 people, most of them in the reserves, serve in the loot unit under the Israeli military’s central supply center in the Technology and Logistics Division (ATL), but in total, 2,400 soldiers assist in looting operations.
After the fall of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s government in December, Israeli soldiers entered Syrian territory and seized weapons and equipment from the disbanded Syrian army without encountering any resistance.
Soldiers collected thousands of weapons from the Syrian army, including several T-55 tanks, anti-tank missiles, large Schwaz charges, Kalashnikov rifles, and considerable amounts of ammunition.
“In general, it was very surreal for us, collecting loot from an enemy without fighting him at all, just going into his bases and loading it,” Lt. Col. Idan said.
The looting was so widespread that soldiers joked the data-x-items “broke their backs” from carrying them. 
Most of the looting has been conducted by and collected by special army units dedicated to “seizing” money and other property from “enemy” territory. But “independent” looting by soldiers has also been rampant.
An Israeli officer referred to as A, who participated in the looting of southern Lebanon, said soldiers couldn’t use vehicles in some villages so they moved the stolen data-x-items on foot.