Rafah fighters capture remotely operated bomb-filled armored vehicle, with Jon Elmer

all right so we are going to start as ever in the southern Gaza Strip the fighting in Rafa picked up this week I've been talking about the Battle of attrition and how the fighting was uh had sort of curtailed a little bit over previous weeks um if we look at these Maps here if we look at overall Gaza I've been talking about how the Israeli military has been keeping itself into those two corridors the narim corridor in the north there that divides Gaza in half uh and then down on the south of Philadelphia Corridor on the Egyptian border and we've given you tons of background on those and over the past few weeks the Israelis had um focused their attention on the Philadelphia Corridor um and digging tunnel tunnel attempting to dig tunnels to close tunnels well they dig they stick uh long shoots down into the ground and attempt to find where the tunnels are and then they dig around them and so that was a pretty significant project that tied up a lot of their troops well this week they moved back into the city in a number of circumstances and we went from seeing uh six or eight operations in in all of Rafa for the first three weeks of September to seeing 16 qualitative operations in Rafa this week alone so we are going to focus in on that if we look at this zoomed in map here we can see the main areas um of of Rafa the Israelis come from the border around Karam Shalom which is right down um south south of the Rafa Crossing and the way you look at that map East in the way that we describe it um and so they move o they move in from that border from South uh up into the City and just before we came on air there was a video published of cassam brigade's operation that targeted that supply line and that was the third operation we'll get into that next week they missed our deadline uh but that was the third qualitative operation um this week along hitting that supply line to feed the Philadelphia Corridor uh with troops and supplies and weaponry so that's an interesting development but still Tes Salan on the western edge of the Philadelphia Corridor is where um there's been multiple operations and there was a couple in the center of Rafa as well so we are going to dig into those here if we look at number one um we're we're seeing here uh this is a Yasin strike against a n Troop Carrier we going to see a lot of Namer troop carriers this week I think that's part of the Convoy um that's uh shuttling troops into the Philadelphia Corridor to carry out that work so we see uh more ners than uh than usual and not seeing them in tank convoys in the way they were before not sure what we're seeing being there but um I believe it's uh shuttling troops down to the Philadelphia Corridor and you could see this is from inside a house and when you're firing from inside a house around these walls like this the trophy uh active protection system that the Israeli military armored vehicles uses just doesn't have any chance on this and um you can see that that's a direct hit uh in that one and you can hear a secondary explosion in the original video that we have removed the audio from you can you can find the original videos uh on my Twitter feed maybe tomorrow can throw that up in the ticker at some point during this uh but that's where you'll find it um but this this this particular tactic showing them inside still operating inside homes will remember that the commander of the 162nd Division that is in charge of the battle in Rafa told us uh on the 12th of September that the fighters had been dismantled and destroyed um and so we're going to see for this next half hour or so that that is just not true and I can't count the number of times we've done this before if the Israeli military were to reinvent reinvade shua tomorrow speaking of rat Shaya would be there to meet them in an organized military formation that the uh Israeli military keeps saying that they they defeat and dismantle but they don't they use that term dismantle because that's what happened to their forces on October 7th they were dismantled their their command and control was destroyed by the cassam Bri Gades and that that made them unable the Israeli military unable to fight all day um on October 7th because that had been dismantled so um this video also has tank fire in the background um as well so you could see that it's um the tank the namr mounted machine gun is firing um so these aren't just pot shots this is in the middle of a battle now 150 plus days into the invasion uh of Rafa so Fighters are still carrying on uh carrying on a pace they they don't seem to be in any way um visibly uh degraded according to anything that we're seeing on camera we can do number two here tomorrow this is a kassam operation in the center of Rafa versus a D9 armored bulldozer and this says targeting a D9 military bulldozer at dawn 24 hours later it was taken over and the flag of the alcas Bri Gades was raised on it and it was set on fire so what we're seeing here is in the dark this shot is before daylight so we don't see a lot of uh a lot of the detail but you can see there the um the Yassin shot um and the fighter notes that the bulldozer is burning it's going to any jokes that the it's going to need another bulldozer to tow it well then they wake up in the morning or go go through the entire day wake up the next morning and the D9 bulldozer is still there um and they they haven't dragged it out so so this fighter says uh the enemy has been unable to remove this vehicle from its place of the Ambush our ambush of death we say to you that we that you will drown in the Sands of Rafa that's their common that's the common line from the fighters in Rafa that they will drown you in the Sands of Rafa um and he this fighter says this is dedicated meaning uh a gift like a dedication to uh our brothers in Yemen and to the axis of resistance so again we see the multif front uh solidarity from these Fighters they interact with their historical leadership they interact with the other fronts we remember when the West Bank operation dialed up immediately videos out of Gaza were saluting the West Bank resistance by name by location um and so this multi-front battle has been a a critical part of this war and as we see with the war escalating in Lebanon which we'll talk about later the multiple fronts of this war are a crucial part uh of the story of this war this war was completely uh begun by Palestinians hasbalah Iran uh the the aner Allah in Yemen they did not know about this operation they found out the operation the same day as we this was an indigenous operation grown in Gaza commanded from Gaza using Gaza Fighters and as we've seen over the last 11 months using Gaza weapons Gaza made weapons we've seen imported weapons um but those are the exception to what we see and the reason why these Fighters are still able to go 11 months into this battle is because they made their own stocks and are presumably continuing to make their stocks so the idea that you're dismantling the camber Gades is just not happening if we go to number three there tomorrow um they're not dis manling uh the cassandre Gades because the cassandre Gades have more recruits than they have Fighters killed they're going to have more recruits than they can handle these are two fighters wiring up a shaad uh Kasam built uh explosively formed penetrator device and as they're walking over it to place it by the road the one fighter says the tree the tree put it on the tree uh and this is the first time we've seen them use a tree we've seen them use an elevated shaad before we saw it used out of a wind um but it's actually a tactically smart move it puts the the weapon up and aim down you see how he's pointed it down so he's he's not just throwing it up in that tree now we see the ner here with the tank Commander's head popping out um and he's going to get a head high uh shawat device aimed down pointed down on the the the tank on the AR armored personnel carrier so uh it's an ingenious little move here if we watch it what one more time I can show you the details because he's he's placing it so they're wiring it up here in the house you can see the device uh being wired they're going to take it outside and and you can see the fighter is going to go and put it on the road um you can see here he leans his shoulder in to go on the road and the second fighter says right here says put in the tree and he turns back and he looks and he's like yeah let's put it in the tree so he's got a disguised camouflaged so that uh that it looks like just a shirt stuck in a tree um so it it conceals uh it conceals the weapon um for the advancing troop for the advancing Israeli troops um along the supply line so this is another attack along the supply line and then uh they set the cameraman back in a safe distance and you can see one point they're trying to aim for about a meter away from the to place the Shad device a meter away from uh the armored vehicle so that the shape charge has a chance to form and that shape charge is blasted and it pierces in through the metal uh through through the the armor of of the tank and goes inside of the tank so let's look at number four um we're seeing an elevated uh Yasin strike here again elevated strikes are more advantageous because of the armor above the tanks are built for uh being hit by other tanks so their fronts are strongest and the Israelis uh put their engine of their uh armored vehicles in the front to be more protective of their troops most tanks have the engine uh underneath and the back um and the Israelis have theirs in the front so the armor is thicker in that area so if you could be elevated and fired down on um as we look here this is we see the uh trophy active protection system engage on this round it's not clear that it intercepts it but that ball of flame that you see outgoing there that's the outgoing round of the uh trophy APS but because they're firing through the window there and then around the corner it's not clear to me that the the round gets picked up in time to be neutralized by that system but again we're seeing number five is is another one of these um yasine strikes again this is with a tandem 85 this is the device that I've told you that they've used it's another ner Troop Carrier um they they took the um outdated 885mm rounds and cassam added a second charge to the front a 64 millimeter charge to the front to make it a tandem charge which allows it to work uh versus the armored vehicles that have lately and since that weapon that's a 1980s Soviet weapon since that era the armor has increased on these vehicles and so Cam's uh Ingenuity indigenous uh Ingenuity is to put a second round to animate these we normally see these being used against bulldozers um and there were this week there were there was at least six attacks on D9 armored bulldozers uh this week so U that's interesting to note because those those are the ones who are shaping the land so if we go to number six tomorrow this is a really remarkable one we're seeing here uh a captured uh m113 this is the outdated mothballed uh armored personnel carrier uh and this fighter is saying that they're fighting us with remotely operated Vehicles full of explosives so this is this is essentially a carbomb that the Israelis have created you can see there the plastic explosives inside those thick heavy bags and filling up the entire uh infantry cabin compartment below and they use them as car bombs to destroy houses um this one of the methods that they use them to destroy houses we've seen these been hit before and I've describe to you that they're unmanned elbit makes a a kit for them to make these vehicles unmanned because they're not um battle worthy at this point you can see the control device there by his knee um and the wires he's going up here and clipping these wires with a bit of a reckless abandon but you always have to appreciate these Fighters they've been living through um and surviving these Fighters have survived through uh most unbelievable things so snipping the wires on this booby trapped tank didn't seem to phase this kassam fighter and we're looking here at probably something like four or five tons of explosives like 10,000 pounds of explosives which can simply be taken by cassam and Return to Sender as they do when they take the bombs um it's a different form the pl IC explosives is in a different form but it can be used in Barrel bombs it could be used in shw could be used in various other uh devices too so the fighter says um that they're fighting us with remotely operated Vehicles full of explosives we tell you fight us Face to Face Fight us with your soldiers and we will drown you in the Sands of Rafa we will dismantle your vehicle of explosives he says as he's cutting the wire and he says the soldiers are afraid to come at us if you send us your if you send us your soldiers we'll Stomp them and the whole time this video is being uh shot there's the zanana buzz the buzz that the that you hear of the drones going over uh all the time so he points that out too he says your reconnaissance vehicles are above us and your automatic vehicles are here below us um so that's interesting to know we saw these for the first time people who are regular listeners will remember I identified these vehicles back in February when we saw them for the first time in Unice and when we saw one of them get hit it exploded an enormous explosion which um we didn't know that they were using these remotely um but that that explosion was an indication to look into what was going on here and within uh and that was in February so it still wasn't clear in February was going on but by May um it became known when they were used in Shaya and they were used in the jabalia camp operation and some of them were C captured because you can capture them with the same system that the Palestinians use to down drones they capture them by jamming the signal that goes between the controller and the vehicle you can jam that signal and then spoof that signal and basically tell it where to go to and that's what they do with these drones here that you're looking at this is an AATA drone this is a DGI off-the-shelf drone but this is what the Israelis have used as their uh Workhorse drone going house to house so these are the drones that go house to house we don't see them captured very often I think because they're close to the soldiers they the soldiers release them from the doorstep and fly them up the stairs so we don't see them captured as much as we see the other drones but you can see look they just capture it they got all the video on it um and that's an important story because we'll know that uh as Norah reported at the beginning the AL jazer Bureau in uh Mala was shuttered this week and it was shuttered the day after a video was released on Al jazer that was provided by captured drone video from Kasam Kasam filed uh captured Israeli drones took the video gave the video to Al jazer Al jazer F broadcast we've seen it before it happened in Shaya where they broadcast the human shield video um they've done it a number of times the couple of videos along the Waterfront where uh people were massacred carrying White Flags that's done by Kasam with captured IDF Drone footage and so that's what um that's what led to the closing of the rala bureau and when the when the Jerusalem Bureau was closed previously it was closed because of the sh uh the Shaya video that was released so their responding the Israeli military is responding to these war crimes videos being shown because these are potent videos with um all of the testimonies in the world um from Palestinians don't seem to uh resonate but when you have Israeli Drone footage of the war crimes that stuff's going to hold up in in court and it's a remarkable uh accomplishment of the resistance to do that and to give away their position um to give that war crimes footage and it's a story that um would would be really great to dig into as it goes on because um the decision that they've made to do that is remarkable and it has consequences and Al jazer has been shut down based on British mandate era um laws so and the Israelis have to go back to the m113s for a second the Israelis have hundreds of them like between 500 and a thousand so if they want to make car bombs out of uh out of these m113s they can do that uh to uh to numbers in the hundred um and so when we get testimony from the fighters I think you could tell by the voice and the way he was describing that m113 that they've seen them before they've seen them and we've seen them before be dismantled because they're not they're just aluminum they're not valuable to the fighters themselves to keep um the actual vehicle because they're crap uh crap Vehicles so they burn them and we've seen that happen so that is the resistance report from Rafa this week from Gaza again we had some uh you know harassment operations mortars on the narim corridor but the focus of the fighting in Gaza has been in Rafa and there's a number of qualitative operations that we didn't see on video what is hidden is greater as Kasam says um so maybe next we'll be seeing those come out in the coming days or uh it just goes it fits with the fact that we only see on video a certain percentage um of their operations so that is the resistance report from uh Gaza [Music]