Footage shows Yahya Sinwar on Rafah frontlines, with Jon Elmer

this week there was also another remarkable story um Al jazer published a documentary um again I'm reporting on the 30th of January the the kassam footage was released by Al jazer on Friday the 24th it was a documentary on the program what is hidden is greater and it was a remarkable documentary if we look at the maps here we're going to just show you um where we're talking about here map 20a is the full Gaza map to give you a sense of what we've been talking about uh up until now in the North beta noon in the far Northeast is where we just covered and going all the way down to the far Southwest that's tesalan um in Rafa you can see in the zoom in there tesan touches on the Philadelphia Corridor this was the other strategic Corridor that netan that Netanyahu when he realized he wasn't going to defeat Kasam he was going to hold this Corridor and block um people's access to it but under the prisoner exchange deal after today's exchange the Rafa Crossing is supposed to open and it will open for wounded patients and allow 50 wounded fighters on top of the civilians um to exit through Rafa for much needed desperately needed mil uh medical attention that has been denied since May 7th when Israel sealed off the uh Philadelphia Corridor and took the Rafa Crossing so this is the remarkable footage uh number 21 that I brought for for you from this documentary we're going to watch um Cam's top leader Yahya Sinar Kiri is covered in a blanket walking through the devastation of teles Salan he's walking up here to meet with the commander of the tesan Battalion where you can see just the other the utter Devastation but here you see in a tactical vest Yahya senoir who Israel said was in a tunnel surrounded by captives which all the captives have said is not true he visited them on the first day asked if they were well said they would be taken care of and said they would be the civilians would be returned home the next day uh he told them that in Hebrew which he learned in prison where he was the prison leader um as well he's also you can see there that is the Israeli military kicking up dust driving uh I don't know what is that 100 meters in front of them that's Mahmud hamdan the tesan Battalion Commander for the Kasam brigades and senoir is on the front lines here um looking at battle plans um and that was something that when he was killed uh we wondered immediately does that mean there's going to be footage of senoir actually uh commanding operations and this is the answer to it Kasam released this footage to Al jazer it was shown on Friday in the documentary uh on there you see him on the front lines that school is an Israeli military position he is 125 M away from the Israeli position um along the border so just really remarkable footage um of a commander on the front lines a couple of things that senoir said when he was released from prison in The gilad shalad Exchange in 2011 he said they thought prison was our graveyard but it was our Academy and he also said when he got back into Gaza and put his feet on the ground in Gaza he said I will take my place among the fighters of the cassam Bri Gades so mission accomplished he also once uh jokingly said to a a TV interview he said I don't like wearing this suit they forced it on me I prefer to wear a tactical vest so he did that um as well so remarkable footage and then 21b this is this is what he said this is the poem uh that Nora was talking about the L direct literal translation in English um doesn't work too well it's a beautiful poem by Ahmed shauki who is the prince of poets Egyptian poet lauad uh some people say founder of modern Arabic poetry um and and sinir is quoting this line as he walks up to the camera um and I've done uh a tapere tapere uh not a direct translation not a literal translation but um in essence what he's uh saying in this quote is in front of true Victory stands a closed door pushed a little more open by every hand bloodied in the Str struggle for Freedom um and that is the line that he walks up senoir has got the poem in his head um you know sinir was an Avid Reader all the Israeli intelligence talked about how he just devoured all books uh when he was in prison led the library U taught the prisoners U and so it's just a remarkable moment to see him walk up and give that line um and it's not just the the S the sentiment in the poem it's difficult to translate poems especially super beautiful poems and especially in a language like Arabic that English fails almost at every turn um but it's not just about Fighters it's about the civilians too um and so I think that uh in essence that's what he's saying in front of true Victory stands a closed door pushed a little more open by every hand bloodied in the struggle for Freedom um so a remarkable statement uh from the from the front lines of the battle uh in Gaza by the leader of the battle the Strategic leader who was released in a prisoner exchange as we're watching prisoner exchanges happen right now if we look at 21c you can see him here with Mahmud hamdan um he also had sinir also had with him uh the Glock that was captured from the Israelis in the critical 2018 uh Counter Intelligence um the Kasam foiled um a clandestine operation by the Israelis that sent in Special Forces to try to tap the uh tunnel telephone line that we've seen be used all throughout this war as Mission critical for the reason that Kasam is able to operate for these 16 months the reason why they have had command and control for these 16 months is because of the tunnel telephone Network Israel in 2018 tried to come in and tap it and they were caught um they were outed by Kasam uh security um and interrogated and their gun was captured and there was a shootout several people were killed and one of the Israelis was killed and his gun was taken so sinir was holding the gun uh when he was killed of the uh Israeli Special Forces soldier who uh as part of the 2018 raid so very very symbolic um very notable um fact that they have captured weapons and they're showing them using those captured weapons and this is uh like I said this is Mahmud hamdan Talis suan Battalion Commander um and I'll show you something about him in a moment but first let's look at 22d which is just showing senoir right on the front lines he's in his tactical vest he's got his captured weapon um and he's commanding operations he's not in a tunnel he's not hiding he's out in front um and so all those Suggestions by the Israelis in their architecture of lies that has been underpinning this entire War this was remarkable footage to see and if we look at the next one um this is where the Israelis boast uh of having assassinated Mahmud hamdan when they do these eliminated uh posters and these are most almost always have been absurd uh these posters we we saw the one I showed you last week on the show for Abu Hamza Hassan Fad in banoon the banoon Battalion commander who was not killed but some of them have been ridiculous like they uh they used one photo and said that they eliminated a senior uh Kasam commander and the photo was of a famous Egyptian journalist who's like the head of the Egyptian journalist Syndicate who's well known in Egypt um and that was a mockery um of the uh is Israeli military's art architecture of lies right from the first moments of October 7th justifying um justifying their successes framing their failures um as some kind of subhuman um uh brutality um in order to justify the genocide that this week um more than any other week of this war was proven to be fail a failure from The Prisoner exchange the terms of the prisoner exchange are the terms that kassam demanded um the end of the aggression the withdraw from the corridors the return to the north those were the key demands by Kasam throughout the negotiations that they refused to give in on Israel's key demands or key objectives of the war were were to return the captives through violence that failed destroy Kasam that failed destroy the government we saw that today in the last several days that the government is functioning in Gaza um and that number four for Israel was that uh Gaza was no longer a threat to them after total defeat of Hamas and Netanyahu even went further and said the idea of Hamas would be defeated for generations to come nothing could be further from the truth the this is we saw this week Palestinians in Victory returning home to the north where they will rebuild and the failure of every single military objective um of the Israelis so that is the resistance report for this week a Monumental week um after uh an incredible 482 days that we've been watching this battle [Music]