Snipers hit Israeli troops in buffer zone, with Jon Elmer

You are watching and listening to the electronic atifada. I am John Elmer. This is the resistance report for day 573 since October the 7th. I will be covering Yemen as usual uh on this episode, but we are going to start in Gaza as we do usually. Um we'll pull up the first map just to get people situated as Norah reported in her great news report uh that you can check out. Uh this is day 61 of total siege on the Gaza Strip. This is the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs mapping. This is the same mapping as last week. There they haven't updated this map, but um the uh Israelis have pressed their buffer zones. Um and as we were just talking, the Morag corridor uh that runs between Rafa and Conunis in the south. Um, and we are going to start this week uh in the north. The Israelis said that they have carried out more than 2,000 air strikes uh as of today. Um, and they have killed 2300 Palestinians, including 700 children and wounded 6,000 more since the resumption of fighting on March the 18th. Um, the siege of Gaza goes two weeks earlier than that to March the 2nd. Um, so if we take a look at the next map, we can see a zoom in here on northern Gaza. And this is the uh the three battlefields that we'll be talking about, battle spaces. They're not really battlefields still yet. The Israelis are in the corridors. They're in the buffer zone, and they're not very often uh encountering builtup areas at this point. But uh the key areas of operations that we covered last week were in the uh upper right corner. There is Beth Hanoon on the northeast side of Gaza with the buffer zone you can see in purple overlapping with the orange which is the um displacement orders, no go zones. Um and the resistance operations were in that upper corner. They were within 200 300 m of the uh fence and they were effectively behind Israeli lines which have pushed up to the edge of that purple. Um and we're going to focus on that uh as well this week. So more than 70% of Gaza is now um buffer zone or no-go zone. Half a million have been displaced since the uh March 18th resumption of the war. The war began on March 18th again with a midnight attack, a surprise attack during the ceasefire. Israel reneged on it by carrying out 80 air strikes in less than 10 minutes, killing more than 400 people, 170 of them children. Uh since then half a million people have been displaced uh in the six weeks and we are now in a situation where 1.9 million people in Gaza are living in tents, living in fabric um or living in shelters. We know those shelters have mostly been destroyed. So even when you're living in a shelter um it's in a tent shelter um in the schoolyard that has been already bombed. So we're going to focus on Beth Hanoon right now in the upper right corner. As I said last week, we watched uh Breaking the Sword ambush. It was a tunnel ambush that was executed in the buffer zone. Um it was called Breaking the Sword as a play on the Israeli uh campaign names. After October 7th, the Israeli military uh called the war um uh swords of iron is what they called uh what the Palestinians call Alex Flood. And then the March 18th massacre they called the strengthened sword operation. So, breaking the swords um has been Kasam's names for this series of ambushes in Bethanon. And Bethanon um to remind viewers was the first place the Israelis invaded on the 27th of October 2023. And then the days before the months before the January 2025 ceasefire were focused on Beth Hanoon. And there was a series of operations that I showed you on this program. Uh dozens of operations, ambushes of death series, um that showed all kinds of operations against the Israelis that took a devastating toll on the Israeli military and really pressed them into uh into the ceasefire that had been on the table since December 2023. and um the uh introduction of the Trump administration um allowed them to reach back for that uh ceasefire, but it was really the resistance operations that pressed them uh into that position. Um so if we look at the next slide here, the um the breaking the sword ambush, the first one we watched, this is the fighters uh we watched this last week. You can go back and watch the segment. I broke it down at length last week. Um but these are the fighters emerging in the thistle in the thicket um out of a tunnel 300 meters from the fence uh behind Israeli lines in the buffer zone still in the Gaza Strip um 300 meters from the fence. So you can see we saw a squad of six at least six we could see on camera um come out and carry out this ambush against uh an Israeli convoy. Um and they used this thicket which you can see if we look at the next slide you can see how they concealed themselves within this overgrowth the spring growth in Gaza. Beethanoon is an agricultural area. The buffer zones are agricultural areas. The Morag corridor um um is a is an agricultural um area um as you heard earlier on in the show. Um and so the fighters are using this. You can see in the upper right corner of this slide here um that's facing you. You can see a fighter uh o almost completely concealed wearing camouflage to hide in this thicket. Um and so the Israelis this week uh carried out an operation. And if we look at number slide number five, channel 12 reported on this um that the Israeli military on Monday began uh to burn the agricultural fields uh around Beth Hanoon because they thought they had found all the tunnels. That was the operation of the 252nd division. Their operational uh mandate was to find the tunnels in the Bay Hanoon area. So, operation breaking the sword clearly demonstrated they did not find the tunnels because um that operation was carried out through a tunnel as have uh according to the Israeli military all of the operations that they have faced since the resumption of war have been tunnel-based operations. So, in their infinite wisdom, there are uh scorched earth. They're literally burning the fields uh in hopes that that will expose the tunnels. So, they've flooded the seawater, gas. We heard about we heard about all of their explosives um that they've used for the tunnels. None of them work. The tunnels still function after 18 months um of war more. Um the tunnels are still functioning and you can't destroy tunnels by uh burning fields. But this is a very symbolic uh uh visual uh because the forest fires uh began in the Jerusalem area a few days later. not linked to this burn, but um this just shows the failure um of their operations against the tunnels and it shows the strategic implications of Kasam's tunnel network that's allowed them to fight this long um and allows the Isra puts the Israelis in a position where Benjamin Netanyahu believes if they stop the war today and accept a ceasefire that they will have lost the war because they have not defeated the Kasam brigades uh in Gaza. burning. Uh look at the next slide too. Number six, uh shows a closeup that they showed on channel 12 on Monday in Israel. But you can see there's the exact thicket, the thistles um that those fighters were hiding in is now being burnt. Not clear that that's going to work for concealment. Uh to to stop the concealment. Look at the way it is now. It'll still be used. They'll probably just wear different uh color of shirt. So, there was a second uh Breaking the Swords ambush here um that I'm going to tee up here. We aren't able to show you the full video. It's a twin sniper operation. Um something that we've seen a couple times throughout the war, but where two uh Al Ghoul sniper units target the same place. So, you have uh two snipers in different positions targeting the same uh Israeli force. And that's what we see uh in this video here. but we've had to um uh edit it to uh prevent uh these videos from being taken down. But you'll remember from last week this operation um through the fields and then these RPG attacks on the Israeli position um with the jeep upside down. There was three killed, at least five seriously wounded. And here's the breaking the sword ambush part two on the screen. the fighter says they carried out a double sniping operation against soldiers um using the Casam made Al Ghoul rifle against newly positioned new positions in the uh buffer zone. And here's the four spots that we have blurred out uh the soldiers. And here's the twin Casam Alhul snipers. Uh one of the sniper operations it said was not on film. Here we're seeing um on standing on top of a Merk of a tank. Um you have these tank driver um and a special forces yahalom tunnel unit soldier standing on top of the tank. Both are hit by sniper fire and then the um yahalom unit officer comes and climbs on top of the tank to uh to help the two soldiers who are wounded which is something we don't see very often. Usually the soldiers run after these sniper attacks, but the Yahalom soldier climbs on top of the tank and now there's three of them on top of the tank and they're hit with a single round, which we've also seen. A single round hit two people. Um, and the Yahalum officer ends up feet in the air going down into the turret uh hatch of the turret, which is an iconic shot that we can't show on here, but it was the source of um a Casam poster after the fact and many pictures of it with the the boots in the air as he's going down into the tunnel. Abu Oda, the spokesperson for the Cassab Brigades, released a message about this operation where he said, "Our fighters continue to fight heroic battles, carry out wellplanned ambushes, and lie in wait for enemy forces to inflict certain death on them at the time, place, and method of our choosing. The exploits of our warriors in the field from Beethhanoon to Rafa is a source of pride. They are feats of military prowess that serve as an example for the next generation of our nation. Our fighters in combat zones and defensive ambushes are ready for confrontation and have pledged to remain steadfast until victory or martyrdom. And that is the point of these operations. The Israelis haven't moved into any builtup areas for these operations until this week. And this week we saw the first operations. Last week we saw operations in Tufa in eastern Gaza city. Um if we look at this next map you can see the evacuation notice for Zetun Shu Jaya and Tufa. These are on the eastern edge of Gaza City. Um and they announced that last week we saw the first um Yasin strikes against tanks uh and armored bulldozers. And we could see from those operations that those bulldozers and tanks were right on the edge of town. Um this week there was a number of operations in Tufa. Um there was a Yasin strike versus tanks. There was anti-personnel IEDs uh in Tufa. Um as well and a number of uh rocket artillery operations um and a second series of Yasine strikes. So, we're starting to see that when the Israelis push into builtup areas, the resistance is there waiting for them, as we've seen all throughout this battle. They don't run around chasing the Israelis. Uh when the Israelis move into combat zones, which have been moved uh civilians have been moved out of these areas um and they fight. And the um this next clip is actually an interesting one. This is from the Israelis. This shows a Yasine round from their point of view. This is from their tank commander uh display unit. The camera is on top of the uh tank and you can see from that upper floor window, we're getting an elevated Yasine strike that appears to hit at least the uh 360 degree panoramic camera that the commander uses and the gunner uses uh for their sights. Um the Israelis showed this clip and then they attached to the other side of the clip. This is just a 10-second clip. Um the other part was an air strike on a building. Didn't seem like uh didn't show any connection between this building being hit. Um but that's what from their point of view, the Israelis put these videos out. Um they believe that they're showing successes um when really they're showing their tank uh likely being penetrated here and then the response isn't tank fire from the tank that's hit. It's an air strike that's many minutes later, more than half an hour later at best, and it's not even clear they're targeting the same position. Um, so that's an interesting shot. We haven't seen uh that shot from the inside of the tank before. If we look at uh number 11 here, we have Sarah Aluds using improvised launchers here. These are rocket artillery that we watch them fire every week. Um, but instead of launching them on a trajectory in Tufa, you can see they've made a makeshift launcher and they're going to just fire it directly at an Israeli military position uh in Tufa, which is a um something that they have done before. We've shown them using this this tactic before, but as you can see, it seems very effective. they hit the exact spot that they want with an artillery rocket that normally is fired um on a trajectory arc. Um but they fire it directly at that position. Also in Shijaya, there was a significant battle um that the Israeli military said this week was the toughest battle since the war resumed. It was a 2 and a half hour gun battle between the IDF and border police who were operating undercover. And the undercover unit moved into Shajaya. Um, and as soon as they moved in, they were hit by a tunnel ambush that killed the the initial fighters, um, the Israeli fighters, and then set up a 2 and a half hour battle to try to extract those soldiers that were killed at first. So, um, like I said, the IDF said it was the toughest battle since the war resumed. Um Yedio Aronote uh the Israeli newspaper uh talked to the IF and they said there was a multi-layered tunnel ambush where five cells appeared one after another targeting reinforcements um not allowing the Israeli military to get in. It was Yasine strikes. It was snipers. It was small arms fire um against the Israeli units uh coming in. It took more than 2 and 1/2 hours to extract uh what was supposed to be an undercover ambush um that was outed by a counter ambush by Casam. There was multiple Israeli killed um including a platoon tank platoon commander from the 401st Armored Division. That's the Iron Tracks division that the Cassam Brigades have uh pointed out. Uh the casualties from that unit are significant in the many dozens uh throughout this battle. So that is SA and Gaza city, eastern Gaza city. We've looked at the north here and after this we will move to the south. Um uh this is the uh map and what it looks like in the south. Rafa is completely cut off. It is uh no go zone, no population in Rafa. It's been completely depopulated and the Israelis are in there knocking down whatever buildings remain from before. Um in the bottom of that uh image below the Rafa crossing there, that's where Karam Shalom is the main uh crossing where food was coming in um before the 61-day siege. Um that's completely closed uh at this point now. And the Morag corridor cuts across um through that you can see the dotted line. Essentially the Morag corridor follows the governor at line between Rafa and Conunis. And so there was operations by the resistance in the Philadelphia corridor, which is the purple line at the bottom along the border with Egypt. And then the Morag corridor um that they're carving is up along that dotted line essentially that you see cutting um Conunice from Rafa. And there was a complex resistance operation in the Philadelphia corridor on the western side of the corridor this week. uh IED and small arms complex ambush um that wounded at least four IDF soldiers um next to Telesultan. Telesultan is on the western edge of the Philadelphia corridor. And also this week during a promotional video for uh a new artillery rocket uh ammunition that the Israelis um have been using in the Morag corridor, the Israeli military said that the 282nd Artillery Brigade has launched more than 5,000 shells um and artillery rockets at the Moore corridor since they began um that operation two or three weeks ago. And also they took the military um they took army radio on a tour of the Morag corridor. And while they were in there, uh, the army radio correspondent asks, um, why there's not military pressure in Rafa, why they're only in these corridors. Why is it very limited? Why don't we go for quote a big maneuver and get the real large centers of gravity of Kasam? And here he says is perhaps one explanation. the commander of the 255th 25th reserve brigade of the Israeli military said that the only res is the only reserve brigade fighting in Rafa and it reveals that of his fighters that have reported barely half to twothirds have reported back. So you have um half of their reserve soldiers have not come back to continue the fight. Um they are e either awall or on uh approved leave. um because they can't handle the war be lasting this long and so they don't have the fighting force to carry out um the kind of maneuvers that army radio is seems to be calling for. So that's why we get these operations in the buffer zone. That's why we get these promotional videos um of new uh weapons because the Israelis aren't actually fighting um in these areas in these concentrations. They're not fighting Kasam. Kasam is in the same strength that they were before this, the wars against civilians. Um, if we look at the next slide, this was a rescue operation that Kasam released this week. Um, they said that the Israelis bombed uh a site where their captives or the prisoners of war who are all soldiers at this point. So, Israeli prisoners of war. Um and Abu Obeda told us um early on that they were not going to move uh captives from the areas that Israel put under evacuation orders. Um they were going to stay there. 15 days ago, Abu Ba said that they lost contact with the American soldier who's fighting uh and and is captured. 30 days ago uh was when they said they weren't moving prisoners from the evacuation zones. At this point, we know that there are 59 captives still in Gaza. 22 of them are alive and they are soldiers. And so, this is an interesting operation that Casam showed um that they're protecting. We had to cut it out cuz I don't we're not showing um we haven't been showing any prisoners of war, but you can see at the end of this video um after they dig him out of the tunnel, which this video shows a lot. It shows a lot about the way the tunnels operate. Um and when they say they're cut off from when Casam releases a message saying that they're cut off from their um that fighters or guards or captives are cut off um you can see very clearly what it means there. That's a Kasam fighter um digging in the tunnel. Um and we have cut out the part where the Israeli prisoner of war is given oxygen and his life has been saved. the uh Kasam fighters are speaking in Arabic and Hebrew to him trying to follow him and they say more details to follow on that. So that is the resistance report news from Gaza. [Music]