Merkava tank crew hit through open hatch, with Jon Elmer

You are watching and listening to the electronic devada. I'm John Elmer. This is the resistance report for day 713 of Israel's genocidal war in Gaza. Uh I will be breaking down uh another handdelivered explosive through the turret of a Merkova tank in Jabalia. Uh later on in the show we'll also touch on the West Bank and Yemen. Uh but as always let's take a look at the maps first. Here we can see that the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs map now shows Gaza as a completely uh under complete um expulsion orders. So you can see the purple runs from the uh from all the way through Gaza City. That announcement came this week. Um and we are now in according to the Israeli military day three of Operation Gideon's Chariots part two. The invasion formally began according to the Israelis on Tuesday. They announced it to CNN, not to their uh local media, which their local media was um made a point about. Um and the defense minister um the Israeli defense minister boasted that Gaza City was burning on the heels of 100 Israeli air force air strikes in the first 12 hours after the announcement which brought the number to over 1,000 air strikes in just over a week in Gaza City alone. A tempo of operations that we have not seen in some time. Um and of course that's just air strikes. I say this every week, but those numbers are just air strikes. They don't include naval shelling. They don't include artillery, tank shelling. Um, they don't include their quadcopters that are carried out at a company level, taking hand grenades and dropping them from quadcopters onto tents and burning them. Doesn't include the M113 tank bombs, the robot bombs that um are being sent in ahead of the armored vehicles. Um, so that's just air strikes. And of course, as Norah reported in the news, there's a communications uh blackout in Gaza, which is uh at least in part due to the fact that Israel has been dropping every tall tower that had um um that that had connections on them. Um and so information is being spotty right now in the north. Um and there's no pretense of fighting here. The Israeli military is not saying they're fighting the resistance. In fact, they haven't even said that they've stepped out of their tanks yet. Um, this is day three of the operation, and it's still um there's no way you could tell the difference in Gaza City between day three or two weeks ago or 3 weeks ago. The Israelis have been killing 100 people a day. Um they're killing people in tent camps. They're killing people uh they're targeting hospitals. They're targeting the roads that they've asked people uh to evacuate on. And the Israeli defense minister calls this quote fighting valiantly. Um which is really interesting statement from uh the defense minister who is a Netanyahu toadi and not a military person. But um to just uh to say that this is uh brave fighting by the Israeli military who are just raining down American explosives onto civilians uh is very telling. So far, there's only two divisions uh of the planned five divisions that are supposed to be participating in the second battle of Gaza City. Um the Israeli military spokesperson says that they expect that there will be se several months of uh battle and then several more months of eraser in Gaza. as we have seen everywhere else that these fights have been um like Rafa where they completely destroy the area as the military strategy um not fighting the resistance but fighting against infrastructure as they call it but we know that that just means civilian homes. Um we could take a look at the number two here with the the zoom in on the north and just see what we're talking about here. see complete uh evacuations orders uh all over the north, 82% in shoot tokill zones. Um this is from uh the United Nations Office for the Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs. They put these maps out once a week and they come with a bunch of stats and uh I'll read you some of those um that were in this week's reported damage. 78% of all structures are destroyed or damaged. That's of as of mid July. So uh that's two months dated. 90% of the commercial um of the commerce and industry se segments of the population of the economy are completely destroyed. 81% of the roads are destroyed. 100% uh of the population is in phase five of the IPC uh famine. Um shelters 436,000 housing units damaged or destroyed. That's 92% of the Gaza's uh the Gaza Strip's housing units have been destroyed. Um and the government media office said in just the last month since the middle of August u there's been 1,600 residential buildings, 13,000 tents and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of more. Um we can look at the number three is the Israeli evacuation notice. The top that says um um we are publishing the areas that people can go to. This is the official notice um there was local notices delivered all over dropped um from quadcopters um in localized areas but this is the overall notice that the Israeli military gave it. The second part says the areas that people can go to are Nusat Bazi Dbala and Western Conunis. There was strikes in Nusarat yesterday. Um so they're targeting areas they're telling people to leave to. At the bottom it says the IDF is determined to resolve the battle against Hamas and will act with great force. Proceed immediately to the uh listed areas. Um and so as they did that, Norah reported in the newscast they hit cars on the road uh evacuating. Um so these evacuation notices are no more useful than they were at any other point uh in the war. We still have uh the is the Israeli military establishment fighting with the political establishment about uh the military not wanting to fight uh in Gaza City, not thinking they could defeat Kasam in Gaza City and the fact that there's no uh talk anymore about the captives, the Israeli soldiers who are left. All of the captives left are Israeli soldiers. Um, and there was a um a fight between uh the chief of staff, Al Zamir, um, and Ron Durmer, who's Netanyahu's uh, pointman on the file uh, before uh, going to to the uh, starting Operation Gideon's Chariots 2. The other day, um, Zamir said, "Why isn't the negotiating team traveling around the world uh to force a deal? Why don't we?" And he says to the Mossad chief, "Why are you sitting here in the room? Go and get a deal." Um, of course, ignoring the fact that Israel just uh a few days earlier had bombed the negotiators um and attempted to kill all of the negotiators in Qatar as we just heard um from Dr. Sami Alaran. If you didn't catch that interview, you should check it out. Um looking at number four, we can see the migration map. This map was actually updated just a few minutes ago while we were on air. The map we're looking at here shows 191,200 people displaced. We're looking at a map of the north of the Gaza Strip. Uh, and you can see a bunch of lines. Um, and each of those lines represents a community that has been evacuated. Each of those lines that you're seeing represents thousands of people uh driven out and displaced. The numbers today were updated to 246,800. And again this is the migration cluster. This is a group of um NOS's and ENRA and the international office for migration. The Norwegian and Danish refugee councils are in on this uh site cluster as well. Um but this is this is a catastrophe. We talked about it last week, but people don't have what they had the first time the catastrophic uh evacuation of Gaza City happened. There's no currency in Gaza. Um there's no fuel, there's no food, there's no um places on the way down to the south for food or fuel or water. Um and to have this expulsion happening at this point right now is a catastrophe um in every way. If we look at the next map, you can see that this is what the roads look like. This is this map was released this week. Um, and you can see that the what you're looking at here is the road grid in particularly this is northern Gaza and central Gaza. The red areas are completely destroyed. So you can see on the left side of that map that you have a block of all red. So it's just the roads are completely destroyed in that area. Gaza city is above that red block. So everyone going from Gaza City is traveling on destroyed roads. This is from UNOSAT, the United Nations. um satellite network. Um and the orange is mostly destroyed and the yellow is uh partially destroyed and you can see all the way down um that that is the case. And this has been going on. This destruction um of the roads have made it very difficult for people to get down south. It's created massive um traffic jams and again um there's a lack of cars. People have lost their vehicles. um they've lost everything. Um and they're on the road right now. 80% of the roads have been destroyed. That's data from July. So you know that there's been two months of eraser since then. Um and the uh government media office pointed out that the area that people are supposed to go to, Moasi, that the Moasi area um falsely promoted by Israel as a humanitarian safe zone safe zone now shelters roughly 800,000 people um but has been struck by over 109 air raids, leaving more than 2,000 dead in successive massacres carried out by Israeli forces inside Moasi itself. Moasi lacks all basic necessities. No hospitals, no infrastructure, no roads, no water, no food, no shelter, no electricity, no education. Uh making life there nearly impossible. The areas marked on the Israeli maps as shelter zones now amount to only 12% of Gaza's territory upon which uh people are supposed to be the 2 million people in Gaza are supposed to be crammed into concentration camps. So that was the government ministry um in Gaza sending that statement out. Um but let's take a look at the resistance. Let's start in northern Gaza. We could see Oh, we wait. We have a zoom in on that map. Sorry, I meant to uh to tell uh meant to flip this map. You can see here more clearly. The red destroyed roads make it impossible to go from the mostly destroyed yellow roads uh down to the south. So that's the zoom in of that same map. And you can see uh why getting out even for people who want to leave um is very difficult. But that people who are leaving right now are representing uh less than onethird of the population in Gaza City. And many people have said that they are not leaving Gaza um despite what the uh Israelis have been doing to try to get them to leave. Um so let's take a look now at that map from the north. Um, just to point out that these maps and evacuation notices that Israel gives have no legal authority, but the previous chief of staff, Herzi Halevi, the chief of the Israeli military, who oversaw the first 17 months of the genocide, he gave a speech in southern Israel the other day in the Gaza envelope that was reported on by Yedio Areronote and then picked up and translated by the Guardian um where Herzihale Levy took credit for more than quote more than 200,000 uh casualties in Gaza. He called it 10% of the Gaza population. And he said that not once was a military operation inhibited by legal advice. Quote, "Not once has anyone restricted me. Not once." Um Yedio told uh Halevi Yedio said that Yedio Areronov the newspaper said that Halevi told the audience that the main importance of Israel's military layers um military lawyers was to convince the outside world of the legality of Israel's um actions the actions of the IDF. Halevi says quote they are legal advisers who say we will know how to defend this legally to the world. It is very important for the state of Israel quote unquote. So, it's a facade um that Israel believes gets them out of Warheim's trials, which um if there is justice will not happen. Before we go to the first film, I just want to set up this operation in Jabalia because we talked about this last week. We had two field reports of it. Um and before I break down this film, I just wanted to um to remind you of those elements of it. Um this was an an attack on the 401st Armored Brigade who has a history in Jabalia. In Jabalia um the Jabalia battalion had killed the commander of the 401st Armored Brigade um about a year ago, 3 months into his uh tour in Jibalia. He was killed by the resistance. Um and the IDF investigation into this operation that we're going to watch um draws on a few key details. The first one is that the operation was effectively a breaching operation. Um the Cassam Brigades fighters advanced into a defensive position that the Israeli military had set up, an outpost that uh tanks were guarding. The operation was executed at 6:00 a.m. in the morning, 1 hour after the tanks had moved into position from their morning routine in what the IDF calls quote dawn readiness with commanders in situational assessments and force and forces on the highest alert. This is the context of the operation where at least three um of the fourman Kasam squad advanced into the Israeli defensive position and deposited a gorilla action device through the open hatch of the Merk of a tank turret. Um and the last thing that army radio points out is that um the Casam attack on the bunker and the approach to the tank were possible despite this dawn readiness um which is supposed to be the time of maximum alertness and vigilance. Security officials say this is exactly the scenario the forces train and prepare for an attack on a bunker in a gorilla by a guerilla formation. And despite all of this high readiness and such uh and previous attacks, the Kasam fighters managed to carry out a successful attack. That's what Army Radio noted that despite their best efforts, Kasam still defeated them in this operation and this video was released this week. So, let's take a look at it here. Uh we're seeing the fighters here um preparing the Bark Guerilla action device. This is the new gorilla action device that we've seen them manufacturing. Uh it's a little difficult to see. The camera work on this one isn't what we are used to from Kasam. But we see here three fighters preparing um this operation and they are going to again breach an Israeli defensive position. That's there hasn't been fighting in Gaza. Um the Israelis are in behind defensive positions. There we see the tank um that is the target. We can see how close the fighters are able to get up to that tank. And now we're going to watch here. You can see the fighter crossing that open space and he's literally going to climb up on top of this tank. You can see him there um in shadow. We'll show you later a closer look at that. But you can see him there. He takes the bark. He's right on top there. He takes a shot and someone in the Israeli soldiers inside um of the base fire on him. But you can see with the cameraman as well um that both were able to dismount from the tank and run. And that is the detonation of the bark, the lightning gorilla action device. It killed the four soldiers inside instantly. Again, you could see in that angle the shot um that may have hit the Kasam fighter. There was some report there was one report um in Yedio Areronote that said um that a fighter a Kasam fighter was killed but that doesn't match with the Israeli investigation that said no fighters were killed and um that Yetiio report was the only one that said someone died. The IDF investigation said that they looked through the area um and did a sweep and found nobody. This last frame here says uh he who repeats the same mistakes falls into the same traps. basically uh it doesn't have a direct translation, but it's essentially referring to the fact that Kasam keeps catching these guys with their hatches open. Maybe we can take one more look at it um now that we know um what we're looking at because it's um a a pretty impressive operation um to to breach the Israeli position at their highest readiness. Um so it's not a sneak attack in the sense um it's a frontal attack. Um and the resistance still um 23 months into the war are able to execute this. You can see the three fighters and there's two cameramen that we're going to see here. So this is the shot of the tank. Um you can see it from the side uh angle there of the tank and you can see the commander at one point um the commander's head is popped out of the hatch and we have seen that many times. We've seen snipers fire on them um with their riding outside the hatch. We've seen yes strikes with the soldiers outside the hatch. Again, you can see the shadow of the fighter getting up here. And you're going to see the ping of a soldier firing on him there, but you see him jump down. He's able to jump down and run away. So are uh the other cameramen are able to run away. Um so I believe that we had everybody return to their base safely here. Um the Israeli military said that there was a trail of blood um presumably from the fighters and then the Israelis panicked and they all started firing at each other and an Israeli soldier was wounded by friendly fire um in that uh in that panic. Um so you can see those are pretty significant um IED that they have manufactured in the war. This is this IED did not exist before the war. There you're seeing the ammo cookoff in the tank. The IDF said the four soldiers were killed uh immediately. If we take a look at the at number nine, you can see the gorilla action device there. Um we've been tracking these. This is now half a dozen of these we've seen from southern Gaza all the way up to the north in Jabalia here. Um and the next slide you can see him climbing up on the tank with a handy little circle that we've put on there. Um so that you can see um that he's able to get up on the hatch. And this is the first operation of an IED deposited inside a tank turret hatch. We've seen previously um them doing it to Nommer troop carriers. Um so that is the operation that was from earlier this month in Jabalia. Um if we take a look at number 11, we can see uh what was predicted. I I mean I I I alerted people to the fact that there would probably not be a lot of on the ground fighting. um from the end of uh Gideon's chariots number one till the beginning of uh the Gaza Cidian invasion and that has been true. Um but we still see a number of operations. We see standoff fire, artillery fire. This is um Sarah's mortar unit um from the central brigade firing on uh on Telar in Shijaya on the eastern edge of Shijaya. And you're going to see after he launches these 60 mm mortars um that they're landing these, you can see them here. You can see the excavator, the Israeli position. They're landing all of these mortars all in and around um their targets. So, whenever we do get to see uh where they land, we're always seeing them be very close with them. And that makes sense after two years of these artillery units. These are dedicated units. Um this is the as I said this is from the central brigade um firing on uh an IDF position in Shijaya. And just just as we were going on the air the Israeli military admitted to uh an operation in Rafa um in the southern Gaza Strip uh what they s suspect was a tunnel operation and was part of three operations in Rafa just today uh against these units. So they said at Rafa, the Rafa brigade was defeated. Um it's been ethnically cleansed. Uh but there's fighters still accessing via tunnel and hitting the Israelis. Four soldiers were killed. Three more were wounded in their Humvey in an IED attack. And this was one kilometer from the Philadelphia corridor, which is on the border with Egypt. So um the resistance u hasn't claimed that operation yet. Uh we'll see who executed that operation, but in an area that the Israelis believed that they had full control over. They were sending cadetses into that area. Um they've sent media in uh softkin vehicles into that area, but the resistance caught them uh that time. If we look at number 12, we also have Sri Kuds carrying out rocket operations. Um, and this rock uh rocket operation was also from the northern central camps just south of Gaza City. You can see them calibrating there using wooden makeshift launchers. Um, and then those uh Casam rockets there, they either look brand new or someone painted them. Um, if they're building rockets during the war, we're definitely going to see it. We've been looking for that throughout this. You can see they're they're pretty good shape. uh those rockets um and the fighter here is going to write sural kuds on the rocket before launching it. Um the Israelis uh said that one of these rockets were intercepted. The other one was not intercepted. Um and these are the kind of operations that we have seen this week. There was seven mortar um and rocket operations this week. But there was also a couple other there's a couple Yasen uh one Yasine operation versus a tank and one versus an APC um in Kununis along the two corridors in Conunus. Um there was two IEDs versus tanks in Jabalia and an IED hit a tank in Shikrwan in Gaza City. Um and then today just as we're going on air we're hearing about this operation in Rafa that hit a Humvey. Um, so operations are still going on, but once the battle in Gaza City uh begins, which it has not yet, and the Israelis are saying that this is uh um a gradual operation, so they're going to take their time with this, but it seems that we have on on deck here a many months operation, several months of clearing. And if we look at the other operations of much smaller uh areas and area like Kunis which is separated um and is easier for um the Israeli military to hold um that operation was five months um so you could assume based on that what we um are looking at in Gaza City. So um we will keep following that uh each week. Just a little check-in on the West Bank here. Um the Norah talked about this operation as well, but there was an IED operation um in Tulcarum. Two soldiers were wounded in their Panther armored personnel carrier last week and Medevac helicopters had to take them out. That is one of 260 IED operations against Israeli troops since October 2023 according to the Palestine Information Center. And if we look at number 13 here, um you can see that uh SL Kuds, that's the Panther, that's a panther vehicle in flames there. Um and that's Abu Shuja, who was the uh commander of the Tulcaram brigade. Um and it says playing off his name, which means the brave. Um it says the brave will remain a horror that haunts you or a horror that chases you. Um and SL could put that video out there. Also, Norah reported on the after effect of that, which was um a mass arrest in Tulcarum that looked um well, the Israelis wanted you to watch it because they arrested a thousand people and made them all walk through town with their hands on each other's shoulders um in a parade um which is a war crime. And uh that took the number, it was 1,000 arrested in less than a day. Um, and as Norah also pointed out, there's been 19,000 arrests in the West Bank. There's since the war started it, there's 11,000 um, Palestinians in Israeli prison service behind bars right now in the West Bank. That doubles the number from before the war. And it does not include uh, anyone arrested in Gaza. And we know the number uh, we don't know the number in Gaza, but we know that it's many thousands uh, have been arrested in Gaza. um almost uniformly civilians taken from shelters. Um let's take a quick look at Yemen where actually when we were just on air as well, a drone struck a lot lat. Um if we look at number 14, um Abdul Malik Alhouthi spoke today and talked about there had been 24 missile and drone operations. As you can see there on the bottom, that is the YAFA drone. And the ballistic missile that you see there is the Palestine 2 ballistic missile that has a now has uh just recently added a cluster munition warhead where you can see the Kafia at the top there. The re-entry vehicle is a cluster munition. Um and that's the YAFA drone at the bottom of there. Um, so 24 missile and drone operations in the past week, Abdul Malakal Houthi said, and that didn't account the two that just happened while we were on air. That takes the number to 67. In the past 3 weeks, there's been steady attacks uh drone attacks in particular um on the Israelis. If we look at number 15, we got um footage from the Israelis. There you can see the Yafa drone. That's a good shot of the Yafa drone. It had penetrated Israeli airspace. Um and the Israelis shot it down. Uh but we we know it hit uh Ramon International Airport in Alat last week. Um but that was just a good uh shot of the uh Yafa drone. There you can see. And then uh number 16 is just to give you a look at that drone. Uh again that this drone was unveiled by the Ameny Armed Forces on the 23rd of July 2024. Um so last summer it has 14 hours of endurance, 50 kilogram warhead um as we saw when it hit uh Ramon airport and six meter wingspan, 2500 kilometer range which puts uh most of central Israel well within target of this. Um and if we look at the last slide number 17, you can see the rocket booster again of the Yafa drone. Um, and that is the resistance report for day 713 of Israel's genocidal war on Gaza. [Music]