Israeli troops trapped by fierce ambush, with Jon Elmer

You are watching and listening to the electronic inifat. I am John Elmer. This is the resistance report for day 594 of Israel's war, genocidal war. And I am reporting this on the 22nd of May. Maybe we can start with the maps as usual to get ourselves uh acclimated. 80%. This is still last week's map. Had they OCHA didn't update this map, but uh as Norah reported in her excellent newscast off the top of the show, uh more than 80% of Gaza is now a no-go zone. Conun uh I'll get to Conun shortly, but uh evacuation notices all over Kunice and all over the north um of the Gaza Strip as well. Israel uh is carrying out 150 air strikes a day. they're that they're admitting to. They haven't acknowledged that tempo of air strikes since um December 2023 and January 2024. Um and again, as you see um in everything that you see on your screens, and I know everyone that listens to this sees it on their screens all the time, you're never seeing fighters in these massacre scenes. You're never seeing armed people in these uh massacre scenes because Israel is targeting civilians. uh and the resistance is waiting for the Israelis to advance and as soon as they do uh they are being hit. The Israeli media discourse is calling this stage of the war the Trump plan. Um but I'm going to give the usual caveat that I always do in that uh Israel has a lot of plans. Um and the people of Palestine, the people of Gaza, and the resistance in Gaza uh does uh all their work to uh undermine those plans. And we know that many of these plans u go to die in Gaza because they are defeated. But um at this point, Army Radio released uh a statement the other day about the aid distribution. And again, if you didn't listen to Norah's news uh report off the top, you should go listen to that clip. Um it's an excellent report and uh she covered some of that in uh in her report. But army radio said that the Israeli plan to evacuate the north of Gaza um uh with it is by creating new humanitarian aid distribution mechanisms to serve to completely empty the north of its population. This is from army radio. Out of four distribution sites that Israel plans, three are in the south based around the Morag corridor and one of the four is in the south below is in the middle areas below the Netzarim corridor south of the Netzarim corridor establishing these humanitarian aid centers. Um, Israel's plan is to allow access for Gaza civilians located in the north to access the food distribution site that's south uh of Nitserim corridor south of Wadi Gaza that separates Gaza City uh from the middle camps area. Um, the idea of the plan, according to Army Radio, the idea behind establishing the center south of the Netsim corridor is that anyone who comes from northern Gaza to the distribution center to pick up um the only food that there is in Gaza, they will not be allowed to return north of the Netsim corridor. This will be a quote one-way ticket, Army Radio said, effectively compelling the Gaza population to move south of the Nitserim corridor in order to receive food. Israel believes that this will finally empty out the north of its population and contribute to uh the complete ethnic cleansing of that. Now, we know that these have been Israel's plans all throughout the war. um and they have not achieved that in the uh beginning of the war in December. Um they asked everyone in the ga in north Gaza to leave um and told everybody to leave and we know that hundreds of thousands as many as half a million never left the north. Um and I think you'll find that that is the case again this time their people will not be leaving their land um the way that Israel's plans uh suggest they will. So if we look at the next map, you can see this is uh the total destruction of the Gaza Strip. This is a map by Sergio Vulmer. It's a remote sensing uh indexing, bare soil indexing to estimate the soil water content from satellite imagery. So essentially it shows you um all of the tilled, destroyed, upturned soil. And you can see uh from buildings or from agricultural land, you see the destruction of homes, destruction of commercial and industrial buildings and of course the destruction of the agricultural land. And you can clearly see this the outline of the Gaza Strip uh clear from space um because of this destruction that we've seen and we've been reporting on for these 594 days. Um take a look at the next map in the so we'll start in the south. Um, this was a map released by the New York Times uh that decided to f to cover the situation in Rafa. And you can see that's dotted line is the MOAG corridor that I've been reporting on for the last few months. And you can see the destruction on either side. Uh, according to the United Nations Protection Cluster, 92% of homes in Rafa have been destroyed. Um, and that is an ongoing process. Um, and Netanyahu's been pretty open about this. He was open about it on March 31st when he said that Hamas will lay down its weapons. Its leaders will be allowed to leave. We will see the general we will see to the general security of the Gaza Strip and we will allow the realization of the Trump plan for voluntary migration. This is the plan. We are not hiding this and we are ready to discuss it at any time. So the Israelis uh again have plans of um forcing people to the south, making them go to the south to get the aid that is being delivered through a private mechanism uh of American and Israeli contractors who are profiting um off of these centers. Um and they're calling this the Rafa model. If we look at the next video, you can see what the Rafa model is about. Um this is from a video of satellite imagery from 972 and you can see that this is eastern Rafa. Um last week I broke down operations in eastern Rafa and you can see it just has been completely erased. This is the Rafa model for the Trump plan. Um last week I showed you the Rafa brigade carrying out uh a series of operations called the gates of hell ambushes. Um, and this is 10 months after the Israelis said that they defeated the Rafa Brigade. They came back uh a couple months ago and said that they needed to defeat the Rafa Brigade. So, we know that these statements from the Israelis are uh for their domestic audience and to attempt to show um military uh gains in this war. But they have achieved none of their goals. And if you want to uh reiterate their goals, they're very clear. They were number one, return the captives through violence. That has failed. Destroy the Cassam brigades. That has failed. They're about the same size as they were when the war started. Uh destroy the government. Um they've not been able to do that. We had uh Asima Nabia on the show last week from the Gaza municipal u Gaza municipality uh showing the heroic work that they are doing. Um, and the number four is that Gaza is no longer a threat. And we know that that is not the case. You have an entire generation of uh of people growing up in Gaza knowing that resistance is their only option. Resistance in all different ways. Uh, like we talked about on this show all up till now, resistance of the school kids going back to school, resistance of the doctors uh, rebuilding the hospitals, resistance of the municipality workers who are fixing the water. um constantly fixing um rebuilding as the genocide is going on um and that is the resistance across society. If we look at this next slide number four is the uh evacuation notice of Conunus. So this is a significant uh evacuation notice pushing people out of Conunus, a significant city and the refugee camp as well as the um three or four uh suburb areas outside uh the farming villages that are out to the east of Kununis. And the Israeli military said that the IDF will launch an unprecedented attack to destroy the capabilities of the resistance in this area. will remember that the Israeli military was driven out of Khan Ununice in March of 2024 by a series of spectacular resistance operations um that were called the night of power ambush uh that people can go back and look at um but just this massive evacuation of Kunis. And I just wanted to show you this one more um the next one on the attacks on the hospitals here. Um this this can't even they can't even keep this up to date. This is the World Health Organization's official tally. It was published last week, but just in the week that uh since it was published and it only covers up to the 7th of May, what you're looking at your screen if you're listening, we have 686 attacks on healthcare. 910 people have been killed in those attacks. 1380 people injured. 122 health facilities have been attacked and 33 hospitals um and 180 ambulances affected by the 686 attacks. Um since this was published Nasser um has been attacked the Nasser hospital in Kunis um the European Gaza Hospital in Conunus um has been taken offline in the north. The Indonesian hospital and Ala hospital have been attacked. Indonesian hospital is out of service now in the last 36 hours. Um, as is Camel Adwan for the fourth or fifth time during this war that came Adwan has been out of service, but again they rebuild it. And this is the Israeli military. They had a change of command of their most highly trained special forces, their flotilla 13. Um, these are their best trained troops. They're they like to say they're equivalent to the United States Navy Seal uh SEAL teams. Um, in the second sentence of the accomplishments of the outgoing commander uh at this handover ceremony, the second sentence said, "During the fighting, Flotilla 13 operated in eight hospitals in the Gaza Strip such as Shifa, Rantzi, Camel Adwan, the Indonesian, Nasser, and Al Aml. So, this is the Israeli military special forces bragging in their uh accomplishments of sacking these hospitals that have been made multiple times rebuilt by the Palestinians. So, I just wanted to bring that up uh bring that to your attention. We will move now to the north. In this next map, you'll see the Shajaya n neighborhood. This is where we're going to be focusing on. This is a map from 2012. But um I want you to see in the bottom in the well you can see in the center Gaza city and the old city and then you see Shajaya is to the east of that and if you look along the pink buffer zone which was the buffer zone going back uh a decade and a half um you'll see Al-Mar Hill and that is the hill that overlooks Gaza City. It's a key strategic location going back thousands of years of warfare in the Gaza Strip and you could see it on the map there and that's what we are going to be focusing on today. Um, just to set up Shajaya, it is the birthplace of the Cassam Brigades. Um, and it is also the spark, the area where the spark was lit for the first inif after breaking out of Israeli prison inside Gaza. Islamic jihad fighters battled with the Israeli military in Shijaya um and sparked uh the f the fire in Gaza that would become a few weeks later the first inifada. And in 2014, Shajaya was famous for uh essentially repelling the Israeli ground invasion during Operation Protective Edge when a convoy uh the first convoy of the ground invasion by the Israelis was met by Kasam fighters in Shijaya. Um their most formidable uh battalion is in Shajaya and they met them and destroyed the convoy. Um they led to the death of 16 soldiers. 56 were wounded and the Israeli military withdrew after uh 48 hours of pitched battle tunnel uh born battle. Um the Israeli military withdrew and shelled uh Shuja creating up till then the worst massacre um in the history of the conflict. Of course, this war has put all of those has dwarfed all of those previous understandings of massacres. We have daily massacres uh that are at that rate now. But you can see Al-Munar Hill there. It's 1.5 kilometers from the Nahul Oz base. Nahul Oz is the main base that was attacked on the morning of October 7th and it was a key pillar when it was overran of collapsing the Gaza division. There's been a number of operations in Shijaya this week as the Israelis move inch beyond um um al-Munar Hill that you can see there. They're not even in Shaya yet and they're already being hit uh with significant ambushes which includes Sarah Elkuds on Tuesday, a return to sender operation using a 2,000lb unexloded Israeli bomb and detonating it against an Israeli convoy. But the operations that we're going to focus on today are um are it's a series of ambush. It's an ambush by Casam that lasted uh multiple hours and it's called the Lions of Munar um uh ambush and we watched also uh the first operations after the ceasefire were on Al-Mar Hill. We remember when Saral could snipe soldiers on Montar Hill. So they're uh getting hit before they're even moving into Shuja. So we'll start uh with that operation with this next slide. Um the Israelis military the Israeli military and army radio they described this as the fiercest battle uh since the ceasefire uh collapsed was was collapsed by Israel. They reneged on the ceasefire. Um the Israeli military talked about five cells appearing from tunnels all around them uh throughout the course of a two and a half hour battle. Um and it was a multi-layered counter ambush because as the commander here is setting it up um the Israeli forces moved in to set up an ambush and they were spotted uh by Kasam uh which we can see in this next slide. You can see the surveillance um one they've used pictorials here. This is the first time that we have seen Casam use this um cuz parts of this operation were not on film, but they showed us how this worked. We're looking at a a pictorial here of a Casam fighter hiding in the rubble watching Israeli troops uh arrive at a to set up an ambush. They're arriving in the middle of the night and Casam in the rubble. Um we have a fighter here watching and surveilling them entering this position. Um, so they discovered the infiltration of the Israeli military and Yamas border police undercover Mr. Ravim. These are the uh undercovers that dress like Palestinians um that were moving into this position. The commander opened the video by saying that the uh Israelis advanced at night and infiltrated into one of the houses in the Shujaya neighborhood thanks to the v vigilance of our fighters. This infiltration was spotted and ambushed the next day. Um according to army radio they were setting up this ambush at this site. Um if we look at the next slide um this is the ambush scene. Again another pictorial showing the zero distance uh ambush. There was immediately a soldier from the Yamas. The undercover soldier was immediately killed. Um, according to the Israeli probe, um, Kasam ambushed the site the next day at 4:40 p.m., tipping off at almost 2 and 1/2 hour battle that, uh, during the exchange of fire, the Yamas undercover was killed. And the rest of this operation, the next 2 and 1/2 hours are effectively the attempt to recover um, this uh, counter ambush that Casam pulled off. If we look at the next one, you can see the key factor was hitting from zero distance, ambushing the building where the soldiers were in, but then also, as we've seen throughout this war, Casam cutting off the reinforcements. And that's what we're seeing here. We have a pictorial of three uh Casam squad, threeman squad uh with the Yasines and small arms fire. Um this happened um 20 minutes uh after the initial ambush. This is the first recovery uh troops and they were immediately hit which we can see in this next video. Um they were immediately hit by uh Casam fighters that were set up in position for this ambush. We can see on the screen here the Humvey open top Humvey being hit by a Yasine strike. Um the the strike is from the ground floor uh from the ground. Um and we're watching this from a cameraman uh who's up in a building. So, it's a a pretty good angle of that shot. Um, the first missile um according to the Israelis hit the Hummer and and three were seriously wounded in that Hummer hit. And if the next slide we see is the tank comes after the Humvey. Um this is now stretching uh from 15 minutes to an hour these two tank operations. And you can see again another pictorial to describe this section. Uh but if we go to the next slide, we also have video of this um from the operation. Um and again, this was just uh moments later. Um you can see the the Merk of a tank there getting hit from the ground floor uh from the ground level again and the fighter uh filming it. It's slowed down here the second time. You can see it's a clean shot. No active protection system deployment. Um the Israelis said that at least three were wounded inside that tank. So you can see the efficacy of the Yasines um by C by cross referencing it with the Israeli reports. This next one um is the second tank uh that gets hit number 13. Um they're showing us here in the pictorial cutting off the reinforcements and we're going to see this from two cameras. This is the first camera that we're seeing um from the window and a second camera. So, they've got multiple cameras and multiple camera men uh on this operation. This was a half an hour later um that this tank was hit and again three wounded um and one soldier killed inside that tank. the tank commander, according to the Israelis, the tank commander was killed in the platoon commander was killed in this um Yasine strike and the um Casam report on it. So at this point there's now two dead and six wounded in this fierce counter ambush that Casam is operating and the Israelis are unable to extract um their wounded because they're continually being hit. So there, this is another pictorial um of the tank cuz Kasam describes this part of the um operation. You can see the tank commander in this pictorial with his head outside of the turret, which we've seen them riding outside the turret before. And because this is now an hour and a half after the initial operation, um perhaps they believed it was over. But uh we can see on the next slide um that Casam says that uh our mujahedin carried out a heroic sniper operation from a house which resulted in hitting the head of the soldier who was riding in the tank. So that is uh a sniper operation al sniper operation as part of this ambush. In the next slide, you can see the safe house um that the Israelis retreated to is under attack here by Casam fighters. There's this audio track through this entire video is is gunfire um on this uh Israeli position. So, in the house across the way where they try to take cover, another uh Casam cell is on top of that. So these are these are why you hear in this Israeli uh investigation that went into this um because this story was a story in Israel. I reported on this ambush a few weeks back. This was from the 25th of April um because it was a big story in Israel and they had to explain why there was six medevac helicopters for this one operation. Um and they had to explain the border police role in it. So we got a lot more information than we normally do out of Israeli field reports to to uh corroborate the evidence from both sides. So um a remarkable option uh operation the lions of Montar um and an indication of if the Israelis move forward into the builtup areas where they are not yet uh doing um that they will hit operations like this. Um, and the next one is a video from Sural Kuds sending salutes to Yemen. Um, we see them attaching stickers here to Gazaade rockets. Um, the first sticker says dedicated to the free and brave people of Yemen. The second one is a um is a a tribute to uh the commander of the Janine Brigades uh Nur Battowi who was killed um the Friday before this video was made this week earlier this week. So, a week ago, Friday, he was assassinated in Nablas. Um, but he's the commander of the Janine brigades. Um, we see them on the wall. You see Abu Hamza on the wall there and you see Noratawi on the wall and you saw Yahasari who is the spokesperson for the Yemeni armed forces on the wall there. And the voice over on this says, "We salute the many people in all arenas, especially those in Al Sabain Square, which whose voices echoed with strength. That's the place where the million person marches were every Friday. Um and the voice over says also referring to something that we heard uh Abu Hamza say before he was assassinated that quote we extend our salutations to the great leader Abdul Malik Badradin Al- Houthi who whose detailed speeches about the battle its course and its consequences we as the Palestinian resistance listen to attentively as if he were present with us on the front lines at the heart of the confrontation in Gaza in a sincere expression of authentic authenticity and Arab identity they say about uh Al Houthi's speeches and we also extend and salute the proud mountain voice of Yaha Sari who is the spokesperson uh for the Yemeni armed forces. So uh tributes back and forth between uh the resistance factions in Yemen and in Gaza. And Abdul Malik Aluthi in his Thursday speech, his regular weekly Thursday speech said uh to the crowds in Al Sabain Square said in response to the message from the fighters of the Alkuds brigades, we convey on behalf of ourselves, our people and the fellow fighters of the armed forces abundant greetings and we ask that God grant you grant you and all your fighters in the Gaza Strip support, victory and steadfastness. So uh uh communications like we always see from the resistance, communications to their own people, communications to their fighters, communications to the other factions, and communications to the the outside world. Resistance in the outside world. So um so that is the resistance report for this week from Gaza. [Music]