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Resistance Report — 4 Jul 2024

Fighters in Rafah destroy Israeli tank with hand-delivered explosives, with Jon Elmer

Jon Elmer on the latest resistance in Rafah, southern Gaza. This segment was one of two from the livestream day 271. The second part focuses on the battle of Shujaiya, in eastern Gaza City, watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcagvth20NY&

Nora Barrows-Friedman, Asa Winstanley, Ali Abunimah and Jon Elmer of The Electronic Intifada were joined by Abubaker Abed, EI contributor in Gaza, Shir Hever, military embargo coordinator for the BNC, and Ahmed Masoud, British Palestinian novelist and playwright on the day 271 of the livestream. You can watch the entire broadcast here: https://youtube.com/live/_2o8aRZoveE

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Full transcript
we are going to start with the maps to give people a sense of what we're talking about we're going to start uh in Rafa with the resistance report today but you can see the map of all of Gaza here Rafa in the far south um and then just uh east of Gaza City is shaja where we will be covering uh later on in the report um and there's still resistance along the narim corridor there that you could see in Red so um the Shaya battle space is new but uh we've been following the Rafa Invasion as Ahmed said uh goes back to the beginning of May um and we've been following it closely so let's look at a map here of a of a zoom in where we can see um the main battle spaces so right along the border is the Philadelphia Corridor we're going to see uh that appear in the show again today Tela sutan is uh in the western uh edge of Rafa you can see the Rafa Crossing that Ahmed described that is closed um here uh in the zoom and also uh the Israeli military invaded uh K yunus again uh yesterday they gave evacuation notices uh to large areas of con Yunis um an already destroyed City where many people were taking shelter so that's what you're seeing there on that map and we will start in tesalan with uh this first video is a remarkable video nine months in there still uh the resistance is still giving us these kind of remarkable videos we see kassam Fighters here with eyes on uh Israeli military vehicles we see a marava tank here flashing its lights into a building um so Kasam is in the building across the street and we're going to watch them literally here hand dig a tunnel U underneath the road outside of a house that they're positioned in um and you could see this happening over the course of a couple of days um by hand um so these tunnels this gives you a clue of what's happening as the war is going on the tunnels are able to be built like this this is an attack Tunnel built from scratch and literally we're watching it be built from scratch by hand uh by these Fighters preparing um a roadside bomb um an IED that's planted underneath the road uh to detonate underneath the marava tank and this uh footage is just remarkable and what we're seeing here is an uh these are Israeli and American anti-tank mines uh that are used for these are M15 mines that are usually used for uh against tanks but uh of course the Israelis as we know have been using them to blow up people's houses in a more costeff effective way than um than artillery shelling and um F16 F-15 bombings um and here we see a fighter who says um essentially he's saying to us it was something that we're going to see um as a theme of this show that these are their goods being returned to sender and we can see the commander there again on a closed line able to talk between positions um and that's something that the fighters have been doing all war so targeting that vehicle they've got a camera right there for the Target and now we can see um the blast hole from those anti-tank mines the anti-tank mines are designed to destroy the tracks they're called track Breakers um but when Kasam Stacks them into a pile like that with nine uh or 10 of them piled up uh it's significantly more than a track breaker and in the cam Field Report they said that these M15 mines were captured um not left behind the Israelis sometimes leave them behind sometimes they flee um their positions and leave them behind um sometimes they uh don't use them all because of the resistance uh curta in the area of operations for the Israeli military so there's a number of reasons why uh Kasam Fighters get these mines into their hands um they capture them they're Left Behind the Israelis flee and leave them and don't want to bring them back um into Israel with them because it's dangerous to travel with them um if their vehicles are hit while they're traveling with these mines it blows up their vehicle as it does the houses that they're in which we saw earlier in the war in magazi Camp when uh Kasam fired a Yasin at a house that had these mines all in them that were being prepared to blow up a neighborhood so you can see the way the Kasam Fighters uh have stacked these mines and then using the same system that they used to pull the dirt out of the ground they used to place this mine outside the house so they the the tunnel that attack tunnel goes from inside that house out into the street um and then the uh Israeli vehicle runs over so you can see him there talking in a tunnel on a closed line so that's something that we've seen all throughout the war and is of a major strategic Advantage for Kasam uh is that they have this closed line Network that the Israelis have tried to get into multiple times uh throughout the last uh say the last decade um and have been unable uh to do that so significant operation there in tesalan number two here then Kasam followed that up by giving us this this is a mixtape they put together of all their ambushes uh or many or some of their ambushes throughout the war and just uh for the audience I counted the ambushes and located them all there's nine ambushes that you're going to see many people remember these ambushes um from previous points uh in the war they're in tesalan um this is the one in con Yunis uh that we saw the Knight of power Ambush um that killed eight soldiers uh in a multi-state staged Ambush that's banoon that we saw earlier in the war um that's also banoon the Ambush uh couple of months ago where they killed two soldiers uh with one Al goul bullet there's then a bullly roundabout um there and those Fighters are in Shaya we see jabalia Camp um and also um yeah you see the Shaya operation there from December with the burning tank um so those operations nine ambushes that they're showing here including captured captured gear there's dog tags and there's their ner being towed from last week um and that's Abu abeda saying you will only find ambushes anywhere that you go in Gaza you could check my Twitter feed for the um uncensored version of that and the of that uh Ambush mixtape which has excellent music um and also has many uh Soldier drops that we edit out of these videos to keep these videos PG um so let's look at number three here because this is um a sniper operation an Al ghoul sniper operation and this is remarkable um this is on the Eastern edge of Rafa and this Soldier uh is talking on the phone to his mother um which is just remarkable lack of discipline total failure of leadership and command that the that his Commander is sitting in this house was watching this this guy go out on a balcony and talk to his mother on the phone and she was quoted in Army Radio uh saying that the call ended and she heard everything else that happened after he was sniped um the Israelis released his name obviously and Kasam also released his name but just remarkable lack of discipline I mean sheer talked a little bit about the the rot in the leadership of the military um that's what you're seeing here to send somebody on a rooftop in battle space to phone their mother on a on an unsecured uh cell phone line is just so many levels of uh a mistake we're seeing it here from two cameras um in any case it cost this one soldier uh his life and you could see um it's a pretty far shot uh the distance from that camera angle is pretty clear shot so uh sniper operation in eastern Rafa let's do number four here because this is also remarkable this is this was uh released on uh on the weekend on Sunday and this is Kasam saying that uh these are them uh gorilla action devices these are the hand delivered IEDs that we've seen them use throughout the war that they run up and put under uh the tank barrel uh under the tank turret or on the back door um and you could see in the background they're showing videos of last week's EI resistance report those videos were shown last week from the alsa bua Ambush and here we're seeing something like six or seven dozen of these um and Kasam saying that our preparation is continuous let's let's show this one a couple times tomorrow because it's just so remarkable um so you see the TV in the background they're using the TV to date the video which is something that you might have seen you know in a hostage video where they hold up the newspaper to show uh to prove what date it is this is Kasam running footage from Al jazer in the background to show um to show the date of the uh of that this is recent that this is happening right now that they're making these rounds um right now and um this is of course one week after the chief of staff of the IDF said that uh Kasam was no longer functioning as a military framework which is just absurd because we're actually watching them function as a military framework all over the place um and we're even watching them constructing uh the weapons and what we're seeing here is interesting because these are uh type 75 uh people's Liberation Army uh recoiless gun shells um and it's possible that they're just using the Shell as a casing and they're refilling them with um Israeli explosives the unexploded ordinance that are higher grade explosive um and so we're seeing the the WarHeads being repurposed um in this situation which is something that's interesting these rounds are brought in from Libya the during the collapse of the Gaddafi government uh whole stores of these weapons were brought in which is also possibly where we got uh where we saw the hj8 L the anti-tank guided missile system that we saw for the first time last week being used it's it's possible that that came from Libya too I said Syria last week but um Libya is a possibility as well let's so one more time tomorrow there's um because you notice all these little details in this video first of all there's spray paint on the wall um that basically says in much more beautiful Arabic um and meaningful Arabic than the uh English translation but essentially says if you think you're dismantling us uh you're looking at a mirage um you know the closer you get to saying you're dismantling us every corner you turn uh it's just a mirage the idea that you're defeating Kasam is just demonstrated in this video as absurd um they're demonstrated in all these videos that it's absurd but this to be manufacturing during the war this is the first clue that Kasam has given us that they're manufacturing throughout the war um so this is remarkable to see and it's um it's going to be even more remarkable to see in this next video number five tomorrow um we're going to watch the that one of those be used the guy on the right here is holding what we just saw in that video from two days before the guy on the left is holding the the uh original gorilla action device which has a magnetic um which has a magnet and a fuse um on the bottom but the second fighter on the right hand side he's carrying that round that you just saw them make on Sunday um showing the they released the video on Sunday showing that it was happening within the last week but if you look at the guy on the right he's holding um that type 75 canister the guy on the right um has it and the guy on the left on the bottom of screen uh he's holding the original version it's not clear what's going on with this tank because it looks as though Kasam has monitored this situation and maybe that the fight the soldiers are not inside this tank they come at it from the side which would be which would allow them protection um the tank gun can't turn fast enough um even the mounted machine gun can't turn fast enough um to catch them running but their choice of rout out is interesting one behind uh and one in the front maybe suggesting that the the tank is abandoned if the tank is not abandon you're looking at multiple casualties here because you can clearly see that it blasts with double uh each one of those has UH 60 cm of uh can penetrate 60 cmers of homogeneous armor and underneath the turret is a weak spot and in the previous video you could see the label that cassam was putting on the manufactured uh Guerilla action device that was saying where to target the vehicle um the back door um and the turret Gap are the two most important spots and you see these Fighters run up and put it right into the turret Gap and that's what causes that explosion and inside the turret are the crew of the tank not the Infantry the Infantry is in the middle of the tank but in the turret is the commander the driver the loader um so we haven't seen any casualty report from the Israelis that would match uh what we're seeing here which again doesn't really tell us anything because they've been lying throughout the war about their casualties they often release them days later when they do release them um this is just an unbelievable operation to carry it out to hand deliver the weapon like that um and to obviously clearly effective um and for the fighters to get away and to return to their base safely um with the skills that they've learned um in this battle and this is something that's happening throughout the war all these Fighters are returning um they're returning to their base safely these are not martyr to missions and the fighters return to their base as better Fighters and pass on their knowledge to the rest of the units um and and improve throughout the war and will improve for the next war and that's what we're clearly seeing here that's is just a remarkable operation you can see just show it one more time tomorrow just because it's incredible uh if you look in the back there you can see the sea so what we're looking at is we're looking at South Southwest Rafa we're looking at the Philadelphia Corridor the the frontier area around the Philadelphia Corridor which is the area that the Israelis are going to try to hold um going forward for their plan to hold the nerim corridor and hold the Philadelphia Corridor and use them to raid throughout uh the the middle parts of the Gaza Strip and to cut off the border and the arm smuggling that they believe they can cut off by digging up the tunnels but as we know they have only gotten to the first level of tunnels there you can see the sea in that again I don't know how many times we can run this because it's it's just an I mean it's just unbelievable footage the courage is unbelievable obviously uh but the Acumen they just run they put it exactly where it's supposed to be put not two feet off where it's supposed to be put and then they get out of the way in separate spots the fighters are going to pre-planned positions um to escape and to escape safely so just remarkable resistance uh continuing in Rafa now two full months in into this operation um so that is the South that is the uh resistance report from Rafa and as I said uh the Israelis invaded conun just to cover that really quickly Islamic Jihad fired 20 Rockets uh at Israel from a territory that Israel said that they had cleared uh and in Revenge uh Israel dropped leaflets forced the population to leave massacred people and then uh are in the process of carrying out strikes uh in conun in the South so just wanted to bring note we haven't had any videos from that uh yet but the 20 Rockets is more Rockets than have been fired at any one time in months and the Israelis continually say that they have stopped rocket fire from con Yunis which we know is not true because uh we saw rocket fire chase the Israelis out after that night of power Ambush during Ramadan that they just showed in the mixtape um immediately after the Israelis pulled out they pulled out hours after they were hit by that Ambush and minutes later they were hit by rocket barges um from conun so uh it doesn't work these these check boxes that the Israelis want to show that they're U achieving at least some portion of their military objectives in Gaza is just they can't even um they can't even show that so that is the resistance in Rafa there was uh more than 27 separate operations in Rafa in the last week since you last saw me so they're able to carry on this pace um now two months into the War uh and the Israelis appear to be setting up positions along the Philadelphia Corridor maybe I'll bring you next week some satellite footage that seems to show that they're um they have troop concentrations right down on the water right along the Philadelphia Corridor which are going to be targets just like the narim corridor is a target um those those positions will be a Target going forward the longer the military stays in a fixed position the uh more likely the gorilla Fighters are going to uh operate to hit that fixed position that is just a a truism of gorilla Warfare uh or Warfare of any kind and as we see these Fighters are not operating as gorillas right now they're operating as a national Army still we're seeing the commanders issuing the orders um we saw a video today that we'll do on the show next week where uh they did an after action report so they a they actually telling the commander what happened uh in the operation which is something that we haven't seen before we've seen the commanders giving the operation but all forms of the command and control are are still functioning in the South uh in in Rafa 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