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Resistance Report β€” 19 Dec 2023

Is Israel’s strategy to flood tunnels feasible? With Jon Elmer

Jon Elmer analyzes the impossibility of reports that Israel intends to flood Gaza’s tunnels.

Nora Barrows-Friedman, Asa Winstanley, Ali Abunimah and Jon Elmer of The Electronic Intifada were joined by academic Abdaljawad Omar, on the day 69 livestream. You can watch the entire broadcast here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML_DqEhph0g

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Full transcript
John I wanted to ask you about the other kind of you know symbolic kind of you know hbar propaganda show of the flooding of the tunnels which we covered uh last week um where the Israelis you know were were showing these images of um you know guiding a giant hose from the from the Mediterranean Sea into some you know supposed opening of a tunnel on the beach um and they were you know talking about how this is their plan now and they're going to flood the tunnels and they're going to you know eliminate all the fighters inside um what can you say about what we know more about that well was it that story was almost uh two weeks ago and so and now they're saying these are American sources that we're getting from this the Israelis aren't talking about this so it was an American sources saying that um the Israelis have begun this process that they said they had begun two weeks ago um and one of the the good things to throw into this story when Ali was talking about the logistics is that they the Israelis said they had five pumps uh north of Shati on the on the Mediterranean coast and this Wall Street Journal article they reup this Wall Street Journal article and they say that adding two additional pumps is why they started so so from five to seven pumps and the story is framed around adding these two extra pumps so now we got the two extras where we don't have five we got seven now we're going to flood a 500 kilometer tunnel Network that has drainage is um a an incredible uh feat of engineering that clearly they didn't forget about drainage anyone who's been in Gaza in the winter knows that drainage is a very significant issue the place floods considerably the sand Alone um is a problem for collapsing so um this is again just just part of one of the pillars um of creating an endgame because there's no you have had all these people saying you know hamas's tunnels hamas's tunnels so what's Israel going to do if they haven't found any they don't even have an idea where their prisoners are being held not even a faint clue the the prisoners who got out talked about that that they got bombed on the way into Gaza and then as soon as they got into the tunnels it seemed like Israel was bombed the tunnels that they were in um so they have no idea and this is just uh I'll keep this short but this is just another part of the uh of this propaganda campaign to to craft an image of not even Victory but just like bare minimum success yeah I'll just add quickly to this John that this Wall Street Journal story which is pitched as an exclusive and you know probably organized by the Israelis or whoever is doing PR for them but even that story expresses doubt about the possibility of flooding the tunnels they say that you know there's hundreds of kilometers of them they're not all connected maybe you could get a few of them and for me the real giveaway is that it says that the Israelis the Israeli authorities believe that some of their uh uh prisoners of War are held in the tunnels and in my estimation they're Mo most like you know who are the who are the prisoners left it's the high high value military prisoners and officers and those are the ones that they're going to want to protect I mean I I think that the resistance tried to protect everyone as best as they could but they're definitely going to want to protect those uh PWS and so they they may well well be in the tunnels and so there's two possibilities either Israel wants to flood the tunnels and kill its own people who may well be held there Israel says it believes they're held in the tunnels that's possibility number one possibility number two is Israel knows that it can't really flood the tunnels and so nothing will actually happen to its PWS who are who are who are down there the IDF experts themselves don't say so foreign affairs you know uh what foreign affairs magazine like what Chomsky calls impeccable establishment credentials they ran an article by the idf's uh leading tunnels expert in the IDF um just uh in the early stages of the war you know like a 3,000-word article it doesn't say seawater it doesn't say flood anywhere in the peace they ran Foreign Affairs ran a piece just the other day with someone about how to defeat Hamas nothing about seawater nothing about flooding so just just I mean grasping at straws thanks for watching this video please subscribe to our YouTube channel hit like leave a comment these engagements help us with the YouTube algorithm and it helps us to get around Silicon Valley censorship as much as possible it does make a difference you can also support our journalism by going to electronic in.net and clicking on donate now thank you