Resistance in Rafah remains fierce as Israeli military encroaches, with Jon Elmer

let's take a let's take a look at a map here of Rafa so people can get a bit of an understanding of where the area we're going to talk about um we're going to be talking about along the border there with Egypt that's the Philadelphia Corridor that Norah was talking about in her introduction um the sahah Eline gate there that's just southeast of the Rafa refugee camp the fighting has been in that quadrant um over the last week and as we heard on or's report they uh Israelis have actually flown uh moved up at significant speed up the Philadelphia Corridor and the Philadelphia Corridor was um an area a buffer zone that Israel created um before they left the Gaza Strip and all through the second inata the Philadelphia Corridor was used as a tank Patrol line um that would fire into the camps um fire into the camps in Rafa um I lived in Rafa for time uh during the second inapa and it was a brutal area they would um randomly fire into the buildings into the camp constantly trying to push people back off the border and then of course they famously demolished the houses along the corridor the Philadelphia Corridor and that's where um the brave activist Rachel Corey was trying to defend houses in that area at Tom heale it's another International who uh was defending um the attempts to create this buffer zone and after the disengagement uh Israel and Egypt came up with a an arrangement where the Philadelphia Corridor would be a demilitarized zone and so the Israelis moving up at great speed up the Philadelphia Corridor which they have done from Kum Shalom down in the far south of that map that you see there um and over the last uh 36 hours they pushed through the Rafa Camp along the Border um and made it as far as tesalan so they have more than three4 of the Philadelphia Corridor in there uh under their control in so far as uh anything is under Israeli control because we're going to go to jabali in the north today and we'll remember we reported in November that the Israelis said they had occupational uh complete occupational control over operational control over jabalia which was just a joke um but in terms of what's on the salad on the uh Philadelphia Corridor is the tunnel apparatus that connects Gaza to Egypt and so this is a a a place that has been under attack um by Israel for many uh Generations now um their first opportunity to move into Rafa and they take the Philadelphia Corridor which is uh for them a strategic piece of real estate and you can see how far that stretches their supply line from the border um and Karam Shalom there from their border crossing in Karam Shalom all the way up through to tesalan that you can see in the upper uh left corner of the map the blue you see in the top uh upper left is the Mediterranean so you're coming right up and that's Al maasi uh the area that we've been talking about on the show uh where they have forced uh a million and a half people from all over Gaza to live there on what Nora described accurately as essentially a sand dune um at best a beach with no roads no um infrastructure no equipment um and so people now in that area are panicking um because of the advance all the way through tesana on the Philadelphia Corridor um there's people moving out of maasi and the footage today I think you talked about it Nora in the introduction but the footage just literally from the last 24 hours is another Mass Exodus from maasi from the safe area because of the tent massacres because they've been massacring people uh daily for the last number of days in those safe zones so I just wanted to give you a sense of the area that we're going to be talking about down there near the uh Salah Alin gate uh which is the second crossing that's the new crossing the Rafa Al AA Crossing is what people talk about as the Rafa Crossing and the uh Salah Adin gate is a secondary Crossing for trucks um so yeah just wanted to give people a good sense of what we were talking about and um uh we can we can start with the first one but I just want to say that uh there was a poll in Israel this week that said that 10% of Israelis believe um that Israel is winning the war so 10% of Israelis who don't see any Resistance videos um who don't see any of the Carnage in Gaza um who only see propaganda on their televisions covered by a military censor only 10% of their population believes Israel is winning um 40% believe Hamas is winning um and the rest are in some variation of Uncertain which but 10% to believe only 10% of your population to believe you're winning is virtually the statistical margin of error for zero it would include some uh you know some zealots uh on the far right that believe that the destruction of Gaza is um is winning um but 10% 10% of their population now and I've been reporting these polls from time to time just mostly um just to give a sense what's going on in Israel because these polls were like 90% in October when they started attacking um and they're now down to 10% and also just to say that uh Politico did a story with US military intelligence asking US military intelligence for their assessments and according to US military intelligence uh 70% of the cassam Bri Gades are intact um 70% are intact um and their recruiting is of course manyfold uh more than the fighters that they've lost and another interesting note 65% of the tunnel network is is still intact according to US military sources the same sources that don't know how big the tunnels are uh I don't know how many kilometers the tunnels are nobody's made it down into beyond the first layers of the tunnels U but their indication is that after 8 months of genocide the most basic military objectives getting your people back degrading Hamas I mean they said they were going to destroy Hamas and they said they were going to destroy Hamas in the future the idea of Hamas in the future with this military operation and the reality is for military objectives they've reached very little um 70% um of the Fighting Force still intact That's Heavy losses for Kasam it's a fighting force with 40,000 uh soldiers um but for an eight-month War um that is a fraction of what Israel it's a fraction of what Israel claims that they're uh achieving so um Israel has a higher percentage of destroyed homes in Gaza according to the United Nations a higher percentage of destroyed homes in Gaza than they have tunnels uh uh that are intact by a factor of three so just to give you a sense they've taken down U very little of the tunnel apparatus and as we know the tunnel apparatus is a spiderweb so you don't just take down one tunnel or because you blew up one tunnel entrance that doesn't mean the tunnel is destroyed so I'm going to I'm going to underline that 65% intact uh and and will'll come back to that because I'm sure the number is considerably um higher than that that is intact um so yeah sorry I I I slowed you up there tomorrow but let's go to number one here because we're going to look in Rafa this is in the Brazil neighborhood in the Southeast corner of Rafa where I showed you near the sadin gate um and what you're seeing there is a marava with his tank Barrel pointed directly at the fighter from I don't know what that is 20 feet 30 feet away way too close for the active prote system on the tank to engage that round and also just one of the videos that we've seen where a fighter is in front of the tank when he's uh carrying out that operation so if you're if you have a brave meter that's high on the brave meter as high as we've seen on the brave meter to come out from that Alleyway and blast that tank let's look at it again um because you can see the distance that's the tank Barrel underneath that you see pointing at him so this fighter is going to step out staring down the tank Barrel the tank Barrel is staring at him um and he he gets his shot off there's no interception of that and it's hitting the tank barrel of that uh of that tank this uh second one is an 85 millimeter RPG being fired there at a ner Troop Carrier population 12 inside The Troop Carrier um this weapon that we're seeing used here is the one that Kasam retrofitted and put a second charge on most of them so this the there are some of these that that don't have that second charge uh apparently so one more time around here you can see the tank it's one house away from the fighter he's not coming up from behind he's not coming up from the side the barrel is pointed directly at him he steps out of the alley and blasts the tank and again the fighter there you can see the you can see the Yasin round flying through the air in that moment um and the fighter returns to their base something that is uh something that we see um as a principal pillar of the resistance at this time um from a group that used to employ suicide bombings in the second and defat to now returning to their base safely as the pillar of their fight meaning all of these Fighters are then more skilled Fighters more able to fight more able to carry out the the war of attrition that Israel is looking like it's setting itself up for you're fighting a war of attrition eight months into having these Fighters operationally experience experienced um fighting your fighting force there again you can see the the yassen round flying through the air uh on this one um and you could see the way that the destruction the the active protection system radar can't pick up these rounds when they're being fired through the trees and buildings and ruins like that and so you can see another hit there that's not a trophy um interception we can go to the next one um the trophy interceptions are you always hear the Israelis saying that everything is is intercepted by this magical trophy system like their magical Iron Dome system we'll get to that in a bit uh but the trophy system is not magical it misses most of these rounds that we're seeing because the fighters are fighting within a 60 meter radi 60 meter radius of the target within 60 meters of the target as we see here they're firing from the the living room right out to the tank that's arm marava for out in the streets um and we see again uh another example of the fighters using the destroyed landscape look at that the military vandalism in this is just ridiculous there's no military purpose to smashing the house like that um the house then gets used as a fighting position um and your radar can't pick it up yeah that's good this so you can see here in this shot um that's a yine and and we don't always see the best shots of the SC he's actually got the second charge the 6 you're seeing the 105 mm here um which the Yassin is named after the Yassin 105 you see the Bulge um in front that he's holding there that's the 105 millimeter there's a 64 MIM charge that's just underneath that cinder block that's broken but look at the house look at the background look at the the the destruction that just allows fighters to move and only targets the civilians whose homes you're destroying you're not impeding in any way the fighters in fact you're assisting the fighters because they're able to take cover uh in a situation like this this is just a war against the population of Gaza and anyone who's been watching our show this up till now you'll know that because it's a Target the war is targeting the medical system um as well and Norah's report off the beginning just shows that this is just a war against civilians they're dropping bombs into tented camps um and smashing people's houses like this but you can see the two fighters here with his Yasin getting into position and I just wanted to pause there because it was a a good example of being able to see the yes scene for people we don't often I mean I do I've shown it to you before if you've been on this ride with us these whole uh genocidal uh eight months we've been showing what it looks like from the outside and so just to give you some stats the IDF claimed three killed in action in Rafa in a booby trapped house an officer and two severely wounded soldiers in a tunnel raid and then an officer of the yahalom Special Forces tunnel unit combat engineers they say combat engineers but they're actually not combat soldiers they're just engineers and that's one of the reasons why we know that Israel is not fighting in the tunnels because the Yom guys that are the tunnel guys they don't go into the tunnels and the Infantry doesn't go into the tunnels either you can see lots of testimonies from soldiers who say that their job is to go up to the tunnel if they discover a tunnel they joke they say we we point our gun in it and take a selfie and then we call the yahalom unit so the Infantry units aren't following people down tunnels which is also something for people who say are they giving up these tunnel positions by showing these videos the Israelis aren't going down into the tunnel positions so let's do number three tomorrow this is uh this is Kasam again you can see someone's house with all their clothes uh piled up there and that's a D9 bulldozer with the cockpit right there that's a Yassin 105 tandem charge being blasted from so few feet that the pieces of the vehicle are flying through the window after it um and that's just a deadly hit and this is a one from behind um same deal you do not want to be riding in the cockpit of a D9 getting hit by a tandem charge RPG from within 50 meters which is these are way within 50 meters um it it makes a mess of the situation now some of these D9 bulldozers are actually unmanned so it's possible that there's nobody in these bulldozers and for the Israelis um the one of the reasons why they made the bulldozers uh automatic is because um of scenes like this because their soldiers get blasted in them all the time so the rear cockpit has slat armor you can see there and these are designed to destroy uh homogeneous armor or sandwich armor folded armor of a tank so it's consist considerably thicker uh designed for considerably thicker than these bulldozers when you get a pot shot like that at a bulldozer it's a bad outcome uh almost guaranteed for these Fighters and then because of the way the house we saw the layout of the house when he went through it he's clearly going to be able to exit that house and return to his base um safely let's go to number four after this scene wraps up because watch this pops open the door dead straight on the tank barrel of a marava 4 tank watch it again dead straight on the tank Barrel is pointing right at him he's 25 meters 30 Metter Max away um and then if you see yeah we can see the pause there we'll go back and show it again one more time but look at this what you see here is that um the tank Barrel the the the Yassin shot lands underneath the tank barrel and explodes the shell in the tank barrel and we've seen that a couple of times we saw it during the Battle of shifa when I showed you guys that happened um that it looks like it looked like the cannon exploded now there's a breach on the door of the marava so the loader loads the shell in and then there's a breach door that closes so it's possible that the that that exploding uh tank Barrel didn't blast into the turret of the tank and cause a fire of the type that I read to you last week on the show um but likely what you're seeing is significant damage can we show it again one more time tomorrow because watch watch the way number four watch watch the way that he comes up to this door and just pops it open bang and again you're seeing bravery but you're seeing skill because he didn't get there and then and then drive the Yassin into that pile of rubble if you watch in slow motion you can see the yasen round hit underneath the the turret in the turret Gap underneath the barrel um which is a weak spot on the tank and also the barrel wrapping is a weak spot on the tank so again we see one of those shots from a a helmet uh GoPro um and then you see the fighter watch instantly turn around not admiring his work instantly turning around and there's the cannon going off that's the cannon Barrel look exploding on either side um and it looks exactly like the other ones like I don't know we I I feel like we should run this one for 15 minutes because it's an unbelievable scene um but we won't you can see these on my uh Instagram or not on my Instagram what is it called uh Twitter on my Twitter what is it called X on my ex John Elmer uh just my name is the Twitter okay one more time here um watch it go between you can see the round round Puffs that gray smoke is the round going off and the red smoke is the cannon barrel uh taking off and again it's too close according to Cam's um engineering specifications too close for the trophy system to interact and you can see the trophy if you want to look it's on the upper left corner of the tank on our right if you're looking at it it's and you can see it doesn't engage um and this is again the Israelis and the Americans are saying that this is not the major operation in Rafa um but their tanks are getting blasted and their soldiers are getting killed multiple a day and they're carrying out massacres okay this will be the last one but watch it watch the first shot see the the the gray smoke is the Yasin hitting and then the the orange smoke so that and then the orange smoke is the cannon Barrel blowing up um which would if the breach is not fully closed properly would blast the flame into the tur it of the tank and cause a serious mess that someone will testify to haret to or you'll see uh in pictures of uh burn units in Israeli hospitals where they actually have the gauze um to treat those unlike in Gaza where they've left them um where this the blockade has left them without those resources as TK aptly pointed out let's do number five here tomorrow because he's going to pop another door open hi he just pops it open and there's a back of a D9 armored bulldozer from the length of your hallway there I don't know what that is 30 feet way too close for any kind of active protection system way too strong around that's a tandem 85 that's what I was saying before that's the twin charge the tandem charge of the 85 millimeter that cassam added kassam added that nub at the end so that it could be a a tandem charge the first charge rips through the slat armor um this T armored bulldozer has and the second round follows through it blasts right into the cockpit where the commander and the driver are in there uh beside each other so this is southeast Rafa again southeast of the Rafa Camp um and just the proximity again is just unbelievable and and the the door popping open and you can see the backwash from the the back Blast from the RP from the yassine when he turns around here you can see how fast how far back it goes but look it Direct Hit cockpit bad news you don't want to be in that cockpit when he when that strike hits we'll give you one more time okay let's go to number six here tomorrow but again fighter returns to his base safely and this is a rocket attack so I don't think the Rockets are a particularly critical way to evaluate the capacity of the resistance I've said that all along it's an important part but the idea that they're not firing Rockets doesn't have anything to do with their capacity being destroyed um and just the other day they sent according to the Israeli defense minister um millions of Israelis ran to the shelters is what he said when they fired eight long- range Rockets from tviv um for the first time since February Israel's been saying that they knocked out this capability but they clearly didn't this is something that has been happening um regularly throughout the war of course in October when it wasn't a ground war these Rockets were firing um by the beginning of November they had fired 12,000 rockets and Israel said that they had intercepted 2,000 so their magical Iron Dome 2,000 out of 12,000 rockets that were fired so these Rockets were fired from Rafa from the area the Israelis are operating and that's one thing that these rocket teams do as a statement to Israel that they fire from uh from the territory that Israel is operating in um and so these Rockets were un necessary we don't give them enough of their just time because during this war they always get bumped the mortars and the rockets teams always get bumped by the Yassin anti-tank squads and the shaad efp guys who run up and attach things to tanks and the rockets are just sort of they all look kind of the same they look like they go up in the sky like this um so just visually I haven't been bringing them to you but there's been um three times more Rockets fired than were fired in the 20 14 War um and at that time that was the first war that they reached Tel Aviv uh with their Rockets um and just to give you a sense in they Rockets the Kasam rocket program in 2004 the maximum range was 10 kilometers in 2008 it was 40 kilometers in 2012 it was 75 kilometers by the 2014 War they had 160 kilometer range that could reach H from Gaza from Tel Aviv to Gaza City is 70 kilom so any of these rockets that I'm about to show you here in the rocket program that have a 70 or above are all able to Target Tel Aviv um Tel Aviv is about 110 kilometers 105 kilometers from Southern Rafa um which is where these Rockets were fired from from Rafa um and we know that in the 2014 War these Rockets shut down benan airport um but if we go to the next clip number seven tomorrow we can see the um uh kassam Arsenal the family the Arsenal of rockets and the family of each rocket and we can see that they all have different colors and we saw the rockets that were just fired we saw them have a gray tail um so these are the first ones named after isin alkam they go 30 they have a 30 kilogram Warhead and they travel 20 kilm um Kasam is the obviously the man named uh named for the group um and he was a militant leader in the late 1920s who formed the first militant cells that would become the modern armed struggle in Palestine he went underground and fought in the hills of Janine in a very well-known and inspiring operation uh before he was killed and his death was sort of seen as the crystallizing moment um of the Arab Revolt of 1936 which was truly the first inata um and that war in 1936 was um was put down uh by the British in in in a brutal campaign um that destroyed Palestinian life in many critical ways and allowed for the 1948 nakba uh because the fighters of 1936 were jailed and their movements destroyed uh by the British so um each one of these uh Rockets is named after a fighter I got caught up in the isid alasam one but when we're going to Loop this one more time and I'll show you uh who each of these are named after this is abdulaziz ranzi with 100 um kilometer uh payload in 170 kilometer distance and they call it the r170 the rany abdulaziz ranzi was a a founder and key political leader and this is uh Yahya aash and he gets the best rocket it's the 250 highest payload highest distance um and uh Yaya aash was of course a the the chief bomb maker mandes the engineer um of the cassam Bri Gades and you can see those Rockets let's do it one more time tomorrow and I'll give people who the middle Rockets are named after you could see the size of them um Yaya aash uh y aash was um he what he did was popularized bomb making using um basically kitchen using household items and making them in your kitchen and he worked with Al Adnan Al goul um to to uh maximize the capacity of the Kasam brigades armed system so that's the Kasam rocket that's what you heard about from years back um that that in the old days they fired one in 2001 um and up to um more than 12,000 have been fired in this war um so this is the M90 named after Ibrahim Al madma and it's got a 50 kilogram uh Warhead 90 kilometer distance and he was the founder from bar Camp from the middle camps he's a Kasam commander and this is uh Ahmed jabber he was assassinated in 2012 and he was the real professionalized of the Kasam fighting force um he was assassinated at the beginning of the 2012 war and this is the rocket they fired you can see the gray tale um this is named for ryad alatar who was assassinated in the 25 uh 2014 ceasefire negotiations when he was the key player in those ceasefire negotiations and presumably Egypt gave up his uh his contact and he was assassinated immediately after um and and so I did rany and so um ryad Al atar to fire an a120 which is what the Rockets they fired from Rafa were is a s it's a signal it's a signal they're firing on Tel Aviv it's a signal they're firing the rocket named after the B the Brigade Commander um from Rafa and ryad Al atar was famous for handing over galad shal in the Shalit Handover along with Ahmed jabri and um in that exchange Yahya sinir came back to Gaza and well the rest is history after that and they um the Kasam Kasam yeah let's show the next two so this is the this is ryad Al atar and you can see the gray rocket so Kasam doesn't say in their field reports that this weapon or that weapon were used most of the times especially for Rockets um espe especially for the long range Rockets but they just showed us the orange uh the gray tail um when they were loading that um when they were loading the one of the eight Rockets into the long range rocket um launcher and if we look at the next one tomorrow I just gave you a free a freeze frame here that just shows you the scale of the missiles so the iash on the end standing beside a person so you can see the height of the Rockets and the family of rockets these are Gaza built weapons these are all built in the Gaza Strip these are not imported Rockets they are built by the engineers of the cassam Bri Gades that began in the early 2000s to create a a ballistic um response to being besieged in your territory with the keys like the the doors locked and the keys thrown away with a risk averse Army you're fighting the Israelis who are scared to go in and fight on the ground they're scared to get out of their tanks which is something that we always see and have seen all throughout this war and so to build this rocket program is a significant part of the resistance uh program but it's not I will say to to go back to the beginning it is not a distinction if you don't see long- range rockets for a couple of months it doesn't mean that the capacity uh the fighting capacity of the Cassandra Gates has been degraded in any way um but Kasam throws these out every couple of months to remind us of that and to make Israelis uh stop their cars on their highways and run and dive into the ditch and hide in the ditch and run all through the town for their uh you know in t Aviv looking for bomb shelters um because you have a bit of time if you're in Tel Aviv to find a bomb shelter um whereas in the Gaza Envelope as we know from October 7th people's uh rooms their safe rooms are right in their house they're often their bedrooms um because they don't have time to to deal with the rockets on the far left there those smaller Rockets um they end up in the envelope in like 15 to 30 seconds sometimes even less um so that's why um on October 7th the world learned about the safe rooms that Israelis have and how most of them are in their bedrooms because it's the fastest way to handle that situation so that's the report from Rafa thanks for watching this video please subscribe to our YouTube channel hit like leave a comment these engagement 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