How Israel uses armored vehicles as “robot” bombs, with Jon Elmer

So you are watching and listening to the electronic inifat. I am John Elmer. This is the resistance report for day 720 of Israel's genocide and day 10 of the second battle of Gaza City. Let's take a look at the maps here because the battle of Gaza City involves the ethnic cleansing of the city. These are the maps I've been showing you over the last few weeks by the um International Organization of Migration. You're looking at a map on the screen here uh with dozens of arrows pointing from neighborhoods in Gaza City down into the south into the Moasi area which is already overcrowded uh and into the middle camps area and Darl Bala which is also overcrowded and there's no room for people. Um the number we see on the screen here from the international organization of migration is that 328,000 people had left. That was as of Monday of this week. They have updated this number to 388,000 as of this morning. Um, and that number uh greatly differs from the number that the Israeli military said. On Wednesday, Army Radio reported that the Southern Command estimates 700,000 people have left Gaza City so far. um which they said is a significant number and allows them freedom of movement in maneuvering in Gaza City. According to their estimates, two to 300,000 people will remain in Gaza City. Um that's the number that the IDF anticipates. Um the operation Gideon's chariots part two, the attack on Gaza City began last Monday between Monday and Thursday. The first uh 3 and a half days of this operation, the Israelis boasted about 1,200 air strikes, just air strikes. As I always say, that does not include uh all the other forms of munitions uh that are dropped on Gaza. Today, they announced 170 air strikes in the past 24 hours. So, a uh operational tempo to uh and massacres of people fleeing uh massacres in the camps uh that Norah covered in the news report, which I highly recommend people check out for the humanitarian context. um a devastating situation unfolding in Gaza City right now all over Palestine, all over Gaza because of the movement of people um and the lack of of resources uh that those people have to move. Uh debilitating lack of fuel. People have lost all their belongings. There's no currency in Gaza. Um the banks have been long destroyed. Um so there's no currency for people to travel. cost thousands of dollars to travel to get a new tent set up in an area where there's not enough room for people. Um, so this is the migration out of Gaza City. We're going to start in the south this week though. Check out this first map that you are familiar with from uh southern Gaza. There was an operation this week in Rafa, right near actually right pretty much where the Rafa is uh on that map there located right above the Philadelphia corridor which divides uh Egypt and Gaza. There was an operation um that targeted um well first of all let me just say about Rafa. We know this because we've been following it for two years. We know that the Israeli military said that the Rafa brigade was defeated in August of 2024 in March of this year when Israel reneged on the ceasefire by carrying out a massacre in the middle of the night of more than 400 people, half of them children who were at home asleep in their beds during a ceasefire that was guaranteed by international brokers including the United States. Um, ostensibly the most powerful country in the world. Um these kids were massacred in their beds and the boot the war resumed. The ceasefire and prisoner exchange ended. Um at that time the IDF went back into Rafa and said at the time that the goal uh of the Golani brigade in Rafa was to defeat the Rafa brigade. So uh nine months later still trying to defeat the Rafa brigade. Um, and we've uh saw that at the early stages of Gideon's Chariots part one. Um, let's take a look at number two because you can see the outcome of this operation. Four um there was four operations in a single day in Rafa late last week. The final one left seven IDF casualties, four killed, and at least one others seriously wounded. You're looking at an excavator that is uh usually used to to drop Palestinian homes. Um here holding up the destroyed um IDF Humvey, American IDF Humvey. Um as all of uh Israel's tools for the most part are. Um this happened just above the Philadelphia corridor as I said. And once this operation happened, um the IDF admitted that that was the fourth engagement of the day. They had been targeted three other times in Rafa on that day of the operation alone. And that operation was at 9:30 a.m. So before 9:30 a.m. up till 9:30 a.m. for resistance operations in Rafa targeting these units forced the IDF spokesperson to sort of sheepishly say there are underground infrastructure that remains in the area that has not been neutralized. The fighters were able to navigate through the ethnically cleansed, completely destroyed territory on Rafa to get all the way to the south of Rafa and carry out uh a qualitative operation uh killing four soldiers. You can look at the number three has the same uh that's the jeep uh the Humvey before. So channel 12 tried to do uh an investigation to understand what happened. They did it with the IDF and they had an IDF source who said that he had watched over and over the drone footage trying to understand how the fighters were uh able to plant the explosives on this uh route. Obviously, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance again by Casam and the resistance factions um are dialed in uh on this one. And the report from Channel 12 um from the IDF soldier who had been staring at the drone images was that the Palestinian fighters were able to cloak themselves and the weapon uh in a way that the drone didn't pick up. Now, we have seen these movements by Kasam shrouding themselves and moving across the battlefield before. So, this is an example of that in Rafa. Um, but let's move up to Gaza City where the main battle is. This is the map that you're familiar with right now. There Israelis are pushing on Telawa in the southwest of Gaza City. Um, Zetun was uh a month ago's uh operation destroying Zetun. And then Gideon's chariots part one flattened Shajaya Tufa uh Beth Hanoon Baha u Jabalia camp which is north of Jabalia city that you see there. Um and now the Israeli military has three divisions in Gaza City. Um one division uh the 162 is um pushing in from the east uh across Shaya into Gaza City. the 98th Division from the north pushing down south on the western side of Jabalia into the Shhati refugee camp where the Israeli military has not operated since February of 2024, the first few months of the war. That's the same with Gaza City. Israel said they had conquered Gaza City. Um like all other places that they say they conquered and did not. um is is what the story is for Gaza City because we can remember back in at at late 2023 that Israel was using their armored vehicles to put Star Davids uh in the main square in Gaza City. They hung a manora up uh during the um during the Christmas and the holidays uh in just as a a thumb in the eye of Palestinians in Gaza City. They took photos in uh the pal uh Palestinian legislative council. Um they sacked Shifa hospital. All of these things we remember from the first battle um of Gaza City. Um so let's take a look at the first operation. They Israelis went into Telawa and were immediately hit. We see fighters again with eyes on two Merkova tanks. We see uh the fighter here uh with a what looks like a brand new Yasine, newly lathed Yasine. It looks like uh warhead here. Um and this is going to be an elevated Yasine 105 strike. You can see a dead hit on the turret. The Israeli military uh before this video came out had admitted that the commander of this tank uh a company commander in the seventh armored brigade 77th battalion uh had been killed in this operation. Um the his soldiers were shown the next day saluting um their commander who was killed all with their backs to the camera because at this point in the genocide the Israeli military knows that you can't show your faces while committing genocide. So while saluting their uh commander, they all had their faces hidden and were looking away um as if they had turned their backs uh on him. Uh not sure that was their intention, but that's what happens when you committing a genocide and the world is trying to bring justice for that. There was also a major operation in Shik Radwan um yes uh two days ago where fighters um were identified a few meters away from an Israeli position in a close-range close quarters battle face-to-face firefight during which time IDF platoon commander who was leading the forces was seriously wounded in that operation. A sniper operation today killed an Israeli soldier. So the territorial battalions that we've been talking about all throughout the war um are immediately present. They were immediately present in Zetun when that operation started. They're immediately present in Shik Radwan when that operation started. The same the Shhati camp. Um Jibalia, you're going to see operations from Jabalia later on in the show. Um, so Kasam uh as Israel pushed into the center of Gaza City uh this week put up a uh warning to the Israelis. Number 4C here. Um it's the uh P uh warning them about their P saying that um as you were previously warned saying to the Israelis, the more you expand the scope of your criminal operations in the city of Gaza, the greater the danger is to your prisoners. They also released a poster this week that showed the 48 captives that are still in Gaza, the 20 living ones, all soldiers, um and showed their faces uh on the posters. And underneath each one it said Ron Arad one, Ron Arad 2 and so on. And Ron Arad was a Israeli um fighter pilot, a weapons officer on a fighter jet who in 1986 was on a mission in dropping bombs on Lebanon. Um one of those bombs uh failed to detonate as it dropped and it blew the plane up. Um, and the one the pilot was rescued by the Israelis, but Ron Arad, the weapons officer disappeared. Um, and his body was never found and the place where his body is buried was never found. And this was a major story in Israel, um, dating back to 1986 that everyone in Israel knows. So when you write a poster that says Ron Arad number one, Ron Arad number two, and so on, you're saying that the fate of these captives um will follow the same fate as Ron Arad. But as we know, Netanyahu does not care about the PS. But it's interesting to see these psychological operations that uh Kasam has waged at the beginning of this uh war. You can see there the neighborhood uh of Telhawa there um and Ramal in central uh Gaza City. The core the real downtown core of Gaza City is what we are talking about. So uh number five shows the ethnic cleansing of Gaza City. Uh a lot of people probably saw footage of how packed the waterfront area was um in in Gaza City. Tents all along the water, all along the pier there and the harbor. Um they're packed with people and um one of the primary tools that Israel used um besides their aerial massacres, besides their helicopter gunship massacres, naval and artillery shelling, suicide drones burning people alive in their tents with uh grenades dropped from quadcopters. But the real principal one that we've seen in Gaza City particularly is the use of these M113 armored personnel carriers that are basically tank bombs, tracked vehicles, armored vehicles stuffed with explosives, many more um explosives than fit into the largest Israeli bomb um that they've been setting off in these urban uh areas to try to scare the population, to destroy large numbers of housing blocks at one time. Um, and so, you know, followers of this war will know that we've been tracking these M113s all through the war since we first saw them in U Conun just a few months into the war in early 2024. But Gideon's chariots one, part one, really saw a major um upscaling of the use of these tank bombs, these APC bombs. The Palestinians call them robot bombs. um and Gideon's chariots part two as even more so. Um and this week was the first time that Israel's military sensor uh acknowledged these um and it was acknowledged for the first time uh through Army Radio. We'll talk more about that coming up. Let's take a look at what one of those bombs look like. You saw uh one from Nora today. Um but this one in Jabalia camp from a few days ago. the military can send them into those alleyways um that they're too afraid to go in with their troops um and that they can carry these uh armored vehicles can carry uh several times the tonnage uh of the heaviest Israeli bomb. Just some examples, civil defense on September 3rd said the Israeli forces had detonated more than 100 of these uh over the previous week. Um the uh Eurommed tracking of this field officer tracked 15 of these in a day are some of these numbers. Army radio talks about 20 of them in a few hours. Um so they're very heavily using these um these weapons. Um and you can see the massive impact about that. Army radio said that these tank bombs are catching quite a bit of attention in Gaza as they would uh many tons of explosives going off. It creates a massive um plume that you can see all over Gaza. Um they reported that you can hear it shaking inside Israel as well. Um and Army radio pointed out straight up that the scale of these attacks has accelerated the population evacuation from Gaza City. So, they're using these uh terror bombings to get people out of Gaza City. You can see another one um number seven. Um you can see it from the soldiers perspective here because the soldiers know it's coming so they can record these videos. And you can see here there's a twin one. Norah showed one today as well that was a twin one. They set them off at the same time. U this footage is from the Genocide Tracker um on Twitter. Genocide Tracker is a Twitter account that began in 2024 um early in the war that scans Israeli social media accounts um related to their Gaza deployments and it creates profiles for each of these soldiers, their names, their military units uh for the war crimes trials. So um shout out to tracking genocide. We're going to use a few of their videos in this show uh today. But I want to show you the vehicle itself. I pulled this video from uh Raphael. This is from the Israeli Defense uh company and this is them uh off showing this vehicle off. They have 5,000 of them that were given to them by the Americans. These are outdated armored personnel carriers that would get shredded on the battlefield fighting Casam. Um but they're advertising these as up armored. And you can see in the back they can hold up to a dozen um some versions of them have 15 soldiers in the back. But you can see the space in the back in the cabin can be completely all the chairs, all the seats can be moved out of them and Israel can put several different ways of putting explosives inside them. We'll see them as the show goes on. Um, but they have form fit craters uh crates that go into the back that they can then roll on, roll off. Uh, for those they also use bags. They just fill up bags that are hung through the um through the hatches um to fill up that cabin um with like I said the the the cabin can carry um 10 tons um its combat weight of 10 tons and an and a Mark 84 2000B bomb is the largest bomb in the Israeli arsenal. So you're talking many times, several times over the heaviest bomb and it's set inside these armored vehicles. Um, so they pack a significant punch. So Army Radio this week said that they are quote breaking the silence on the M113s on Sunday. The system, they said that the entire city of Gaza is talking about, no doubt the city of Gaza is talking about it because previously these were mostly used in already ethnically cleansed areas. They're used because they're scared to fight the resistance in the alleys. So, they send these vehicles in um to blow up entire buildings. The Israeli justification is that it trips booby trapped buildings. Um but of course, this is far more um than tripping booby traps. Um the Israeli uh army radio said in recent days, the system has been operated in the Gaza Strip on a completely industrial scale, dozens of times a day, mainly at night. Um, it has so far destroyed thousands of buildings in the Gaza Strip in general and in Gaza City in particular and is estimated to have neutralized thousands of explosives. This system a senior officer said this system has become the most dramatic combat means we use in Gaza. The directive of the Southern Command, that's the IDF uh regional command for Gaza said this system must be operational 100% of the time for any mission. The IDF has considered uh submitting the system, these M113 robot bombs as a candidate for the Israel security award. So they're super proud of this as they would be. A senior IDF officer told Army Radio, "Imagine what 100 such robotic APCs can do. Entering the train before our forces, opening the way for it. This is the future battlefield, and we will be the first in the world to do it." So, these guys are super proud of their terror bombings, of their tanks that their uh big brother, the United States, gave them as handme-downs for free. According to the military balance, the Israelis have 5,000 of these. And pre last year, they tried to sell these vehicles on to other countries. And that's what you're seeing um in this Raphael video that I found because this is um the Israelis saying we can take these old outdated armored personnel carriers and we can up armor them. We can make them safer for you and sell them to Ukraine or whatever. But obviously in the years since then they've decided that it's much better off to just use these as terror bombings um and use them as a massive uh tracked vehicle bomb. Um so let's take a look. I went through uh the resistance report archives and I found uh the times we've seen them. This is a good look from Nusarat in 2024. You can see the uh the system the un unmanned system on the top and you can see on the front there that has an automatic 50 cal machine gun. So there's multiple of these uh systems that they use. They also use them to hump uh explosives. So that back in the era when Israel was using um anti-tank mines to blow up houses um these would would shuttle the the uh anti-tank mines in. And again the army radio story brags about these. They think this is the future of warfare too. Lethal robot APCs equipped with a firing system. Such a system can roam freely through the alleys of the Gaza Strip identifying terrorists and firing at them. this kind of mobile see and shoot position. At the start of the war, the first days of the maneuver, the IDF deployed a few such lethal robot APCs. So, this is obviously what we're seeing right now from the resistance. The resistance caught this before anyone else uh had seen this because they were in areas that had been ethnically cleansed. And of course, there is a history of unmanned vehicles. Uh, Israel uses unmanned D9 armored bulldozers uh to destroy houses as well. And these vehicles that you're looking at right there, the M113 has a history itself in Gaza. Uh, two of them were blown up in uh 2004 um and killed everyone on board of both of them. And um the Israelis blamed Adnan Al Ghoul uh for the bombs that blew those up and he was assassinated shortly after that. In the beginning of the 2014 war in Shajaya, the Israelis sent one of these into Shajaya and it was destroyed as soon as it touched the ground. All soldiers inside killed and one uh taken captive. And of course, we also saw them I showed you a bunch of videos from Lebanon throughout the war where we saw them being used by the Israelis behind the lines like in northern Israel. Um but because the long range anti-tank guided missile systems that Hzbollah had, they were sailing uh their missile system um uh the Almas was chasing down these behind um behind the front lines, which is what they're used for. We also saw them cu captured on October 7th because Israel uses them to shuttle like a a battlefield bus or a battlefield shuttle is what they're used for. Um we can look at the next one. This was in Kunis. was actually the first time we ever saw them. This is in early February 2024. Um, and fighters saw them here. Um, there you can see the one from the back. Um, and the massive explosions on those definitely suggest they are holding explosives. Possibly not the same explosives that they're using right now, but maybe this is an anti-tank mine era. There's a second one we're going to see uh get hit by the resistance. Um, and this raised eyebrows at the time when we saw this because we weren't sure what these outdated vehicles were doing on the battlefield. Again, you can see that one pretty clearly loaded with explosives um from that blast. These are aluminum alloy vehicles. Um they don't have the the strength of um regular armored personnel carriers. Let's look at the one from Janine number 11. Um or sorry this is from Rafa um uh Aljanina neighborhood in Rafa and this is they caught one. Kasam caught one. They probably uh just just guessing here but it they probably intercepted the um the signal that it drives on just like they intercept the signal that the drones fly on in order to drop them. And there you can see so they're loaded they have these uh explosives loaded into bags that are dumped. You can see it at the back there. massive bag fills the whole cabin. Um, and this fighter is telling, you can see there. Yeah, perfect. Um, you can see it there. This fighter is saying, "They fight us with remotely operated vehicles full of explosives." This is a paraphrase. Um, but we tell you, fight us face to face. Fight us with your soldiers. We'll drown you in the sands of Gaza, he says as he's shaking his uh his pliers that he's uncutting them. We will dismantle your vehicles of explosives. Your soldiers are too afraid to fight us. So you can see there after you saw from um the Raphael uh demo of the size of the vehicle, now you can see how much explosives are put into them. Um not sure that uh we recommend anyone would recommend doing what this fighter is doing, but um he did it and he and he disabled it and presumably they're able to then use those explosives. So that was in Rafa in August. Um and I think did we see one more? Uh 13. Yeah, one more in Rafa here. Um you can see this is from above. You can see for um that this is probably one humping uh supplies to soldiers cuz watch when you the the the impact is significantly less than uh when they're loaded with uh with ammunition with explosives of whatever kind. But the resistance has been all over these Israel military sensor broke down this week and said, "Oh, we have this new innovation." But the resistance has been showing this. Here's a hand delivered one we're watching. Again, don't think that these aren't recommended um methods considering the amount of explosives in there, but he's got an extra long fuse, and you can see that he clearly gets back home safe to his base before uh this deton before his gorilla action device detonates. um detonates that vehicle. So, the resistance has been all over this. This is again in in Rafa in the summer. Um I think I've lost what number I'm on tomorrow. 13. Yeah, number 13. This is in Jabalia. You can see this. This is during the uh general's plan to ethnically cleanse the north. You can see the uh the resistance has spotted it and hit it with a Yasine. And you can see that explosion looks very similar to the ones we watched and the ones Norah showed. Um so the resistance intercepting that one. Um so this was during the the general's plan and um the day two days before Dr. Husam Abu Safia was captured from Kamal Adwan Hospital he wrote that on Tuesday the 24 December 24th um yesterday for the first time robots advanced near the hospital he said posing a significant danger due to their proximity. They were very close and they detonated explosives. As a result, the partitions and the doors of the hospital um were destroyed. The destruction was horrific. Um the hospital departments, 20 people were injured, including five medical personnel. Dr. Abu Safia is a pediatrician who was two days later disappeared by the Israelis, and he is still in Israeli custody uh as we speak. um a little bit uh later um actually in October of this year um um Dr. after Abu Safia was 2024. Um and then later in the month uh we saw Saral Kud's fighters in Bay Hanoon talking about as they're setting a barrel bomb talking about the fighters. The fighters said we will never abandon our positions. They came at us with robots um which is again he means these M113 APC uh suicide bombs. Um but we will never retreat. So the resistance has been all over these on the battlefield for the full two years of this war. Um and that's what we're seeing. Um number 14 shows the industrial scale here. This is a photo from Alazer and this is what really caught the soldiers attention is that Gideon's chariots too. These were all seen lined up along the border. We saw these um and soldiers took pictures of them um and shared them on social media. Um, and this is the industrial scale that um, Army Radio is talking about. You can see it on the next slide as well. Um, again, another genocide tracker uh, photo video from the Israelis. So, look at that. It's just truck after truck as far as you can see loaded up with these um, APCs. Um, the Jerusalem Post had a story that said that on acting orders of the IDF's uh southern command chief, these deployments of vehicles has surged with officers in the field reporting their usage has tripled. Forces on the ground testified to the movement of hundreds of these explosiveladen vehicles towards the Gaza border. This method protects our forces ahead of the ground incursion, enables faster movement, one of the officers said. Over time, the techniques for operating these vehicles have emerged, ranging from towing them into position um and to using robots. More recently, reports have surfaced regarding the development of explosive barrels. Um this is what I was telling you that fit perfectly inside the back to maximize them. And the Jerusalem Post this story is from uh said that the um intensity of the explosions can hurt can be heard 100 kilometers from Gaza. This is the complete industrial scale application of these weapons. Um, we can look at number 16 because you can watch them now. So, you see them on the truck. Here's the soldier showing you unloading them off the truck. Um, and then the soldiers are going to watch as they deploy them here, destroying Palestinian homes and uh, cheering it because they are the Tik Tok army who don't want to fight, who just want to massacre civilians and destroy any uh, semblance of life and society in the Gaza Strip. None of their hero stories from battle for two years um, have involved uh, conflict, uh, involved fighting. They all involve um dressing up in uh captured clothing, playing on children's tricycles um and blowing up schools and people's homes, burning them. Various different ways that we've all seen the Tik Tok army operate. Um let's look at number 17 because it was also an operation in Jabalia. You can see the fighters here wrapping up the shawad, the casam built uh explosively formed penetrator, a large one here. Um, and as the fighters are preparing it, they're reciting a poem from Tamim Albarguti, who is a prominent Palestinian poet from a prominent Palestinian literary family. It's just another example of what we've seen all throughout the war of these fighters expressing themselves in nuanced and culturally significant ways that transcend the operation itself. And a good catch by Tamara. The poem is called Nasheed Morid by Tamim Al Barguti. translates as a disciples anthem is the poem that these fighters um are reciting. And we've seen them doing this all the time. Um we've seen it on the walls. Um we've seen them write it on their weapons. We've seen them talking it out as they go. Um these fighters are deeply ingrained in the national project. And here the EFP is going to target those two Maroba tanks that you see the red triangles drop on them. Um and it looks like it gets both of them. If you look to the left is where the explosion's going to happen. It looks like it blows pieces off the second one um while targeting the first one. So, a devastating hit in Jabalia. This operation was from earlier in September. Um a successful operation was executed in Jabalia. Now, just one quick note before we go on Yemen. As Norah said, um the Yemeni uh resistance was able to target a lat multiple times this week. three times drones got through this week. One yesterday um left uh up to 20 people wounded in Israel, although um usually the breakdown of those numbers are that 17 of them were just stressed out uh by this, but they count that as a casualty in Israel. Earlier in the week, we saw a drone, a YAFA drone hit uh Elat um and fly all the way over Elat. So clearly they're penetrating Israeli uh air defenses in Alat and the Israelis bombed Yemen today in response. So we will be following the Yemeni front um as we also follow the battle for Gaza City. But that is the resistance report for day 720 of Israel's genocidal war on Gaza. [Music]