Prosecutors say an alleged Hamas network dismantled last year had amassed 13 pistols, a fully automatic rifle and 718 rounds of ammunition, and that one suspect had already recorded a video claiming responsibility for an attack. A joint investigation by Der Spiegel and Der Standard now places the Jewish Museum Vienna and the Austrian-Israeli Society among the possible targets. Hamas denies any link. On the eve of October 7, Europe has to stop filing Hamas under activism and start treating it as what it is: a terrorist organization operating on its soil.
The targets
According to the investigation, reported by Ynetnews on Monday, the network was preparing attacks in Europe around the second anniversary of the October 7, 2023 massacre. It remains unclear precisely what was planned for that date, who would have carried it out or which site would ultimately have been hit. But Der Standard reported that the Jewish Museum Vienna and the Austrian-Israeli Society were among the sites investigators considered possible targets.
The details are chilling. Five HS-9 pistols were allegedly hidden for weeks in a self-storage facility in Vienna’s seventh district, rented under a false name and located roughly 1.5 to 2 kilometers from several Jewish and Israeli institutions, close to major public transport routes. The pistols sat in a suitcase lined with a thick layer of aluminum foil, alongside gun-cleaning oil and lubricant. Investigators read those items as a sign that this was not an emergency stockpile but a set of firearms being maintained for use.
The arsenal
German federal prosecutors last month indicted seven suspected Hamas members. They say the network obtained 13 pistols, a fully automatic rifle and 718 rounds of ammunition through two separate procurement operations, with Israeli representatives, Jews and people seen as supportive of Israel as intended targets.
In the first, the five HS-9 pistols traveled by train from Copenhagen to Berlin in late July 2025 and were then passed, through an intermediary, to Mohammed Naim, who allegedly carried them to Vienna. In the second, a suspect identified as Borhan El-K. allegedly collected a fully automatic rifle, eight Glock pistols and more than 600 rounds in Germany in August 2025; the weapons were apparently meant to be hidden in Leipzig.
German police moved first. On October 1, 2025, six days before the anniversary, they arrested three suspects during a weapons transfer. Further arrests followed in Britain, Denmark, Cyprus and elsewhere. Nine people have been arrested in all; the suspects hold German, Danish, Bulgarian and Lebanese citizenship. The seven defendants face charges including membership in a foreign terrorist organization and preparing a serious act of violence threatening state security. The Berlin higher regional court must still decide whether to open a trial, and the defendants are presumed innocent until a verdict.
A video, and a father in the politburo
Late on August 7, 2025, investigators say, Mohammed Naim filmed himself in a rented room in Vienna’s Favoriten district, his face covered and his eyes hidden behind sunglasses, with two pistols on the table in front of him. In the 4-minute, 32-second recording he allegedly vowed revenge on Israel, warned that “blood will be spilled” and said the “armed resistance” would send Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “message in blood.”
His father is Basem Naim, a member of Hamas’s political bureau and a former Gaza health minister. According to Der Spiegel and Der Standard, the two allegedly discussed plans for attacks in Vienna or Germany on Telegram. The elder Naim has publicly condemned attacks targeting Jews in Europe and the United States. Hamas has denied links to the suspects.
From fundraising to firepower
For years, as Ynetnews notes, European security officials viewed the continent primarily as a base for Hamas fundraising, political activity and logistical support rather than a theater for attacks. That assumption is now untenable. Investigators have linked Hamas operatives to a weapons cache established in Bulgaria as early as 2019, and to another network that tried to locate weapons depots in Europe in 2023; four of its members were convicted in Berlin this year. A study by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point concluded that Hamas had spent years building weapons caches in Europe.
In last year’s case, prosecutors allege, the preparations went much further: weapons ready for use, firearms and ammunition moving across several countries, targets under consideration and a claim of responsibility already on video.
It is also worth recalling who raised the alarm. According to Der Spiegel and Der Standard, Israel’s Mossad gave Germany’s domestic intelligence service information in June 2025 indicating that terrorism suspects were involved in weapons transactions in Germany. Israeli intelligence helped protect Jewish lives in Vienna and Berlin. Europe’s gratitude should take the form of action.
Israel braces. Europe must act
In Jerusalem, nobody is waiting. Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Tuesday that he had put the military on high alert ahead of the anniversary, “in light of intelligence regarding Hamas’s intentions to attempt to carry out attacks and terror operations against our forces in Gaza on that day,” according to AFP, as reported by Arab News. On Monday, at a state ceremony marking three years since the attack, Netanyahu said there would be “no Hamas rule in Gaza.”
The organization that murdered 1,221 people on October 7, by an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures, and dragged 251 hostages into Gaza, is the same organization whose operatives prosecutors say were stockpiling pistols near Jewish institutions in Vienna. There is no wall between the two.
Europe should draw the obvious conclusions. Hamas networks must be investigated and prosecuted as terrorism, not tolerated as a branch of political activism. Their financing and their front structures must be dismantled with the same rigor applied to any other jihadist group. Intelligence sharing with Israel, which has already proved its worth, must deepen. And Jewish museums, schools and synagogues across the continent must be protected as what they now are: potential targets.
Three years after October 7, the question is no longer whether Hamas intends to strike in Europe. Prosecutors say its operatives had already brought the guns.