Yemen’s Yafa drone strike on Tel Aviv, with Jon Elmer

I wanted to move to to Tel Aviv actually to Yemen because this weekend the Yemeni armed forces and Ansar Allah managed to hit the aimed at and just missed the American Embassy in Tel Aviv. They call it the American Embassy branch because the Embassy was illegally moved to East to West Jerusalem during the Trump administration. But this is the original American Embassy in Tel Aviv that was hit by this drone. It was hit by a drone that the Ansar Allah movement is calling the Yafa drone named after the original name of Tel Aviv, the area that became Tel Aviv. Yafa is still a predominantly Palestinian area just north of Tel Aviv. So let's watch this footage here because the we got this footage from flying over the beach here. So I I won't talk and I'll let you hear the Maybe we don't have audio. Oh yeah, Yafa is south of Tel Aviv, my bad. Good call. Um So you can see the drone coming in across the sea and and hitting that building. Maybe we can loop it again just so people can see it. You can see the the drone come in. It's the size of a car. It travels at the speed of a car. It's about the the cost of a car. Carries 10 kg of explosives. Um but you can see it here rip across the beach. Um if we see it right there. And then it hits the building right here. The first strike on Tel Aviv from Yemen in history. This happened at 3:12 a.m. on Friday. And the according to the Israeli probe into this Um Ansar Allah said the drone traveled 2,000 km and had stealth and electronic jamming capabilities that dropped it off the radar for the Israelis. The Israelis did a report. The Israeli Air Force did and they said it flew 2,600 km for 16 hours traveling 130 km an hour, about a third of the speed of a plane on approach. So they shouldn't have missed this, but there was no warning signs at all. This is one of 200 drones and cruise missiles that have been fired by Ansar Allah and the Yemeni armed forces in the Red Sea since the battle in the Red Sea began. One had hit a lot early in the war, but as I said, Ansar Allah says that the Siyaha drone has jamming and stealth capabilities, which is why no alarms were fired. And if we look at it on the next one tomorrow, we can look at this drone. It's got CFTs, conformal fuel tanks, and that's how they've made this drone be able to go the 2,600 km because it flew out over the route was to fly out over Sudan Eritrea and then fly north over Sudan and Egypt. You can see this made in Yemen and have named it after Yafa. So it flew out over Eritrea, then north over Sudan and Egypt reaching the Mediterranean Sea and then coming in from the west across rather than coming up from the south. But it's important to note that just last week the USS Eisenhower, the aircraft carrier that has been defending Israel, as we know defending Israel is what happened during the Iran attack as well. It's you Israeli allies, Americans, British, and French that are shooting down these these Ansar Allah drones. But, the USS Eisenhower aircraft carrier had returned from a 9-month trip. We can loop that one again cuz it's nice to look at the drone. It's it's a a very interesting piece of work um to add the conformal fuel tanks. If they didn't have that, it would have a weapons capability to be deployed as well. Um so, the USS Eisenhower, they returned from a 9-month mission where they were shooting down all of these that were aimed at Israel. It's not Israel downing with their vaunted multi-billion dollar aerial defense array or their multi-billion dollar F-35 platform, the most expensive platform in military history. It's not those flying at $40,000 an hour that are shooting them down. It was actually the Americans. It was the Americans on the Eisenhower that threw a that flew according to the Eisenhower, 14,000 sorties. So, that's 14,000 combat missions. 10,000 jets were took off 10,000 takeoffs of jets from the Eisenhower during that period. They fired 300 standard and cruise missiles, 60 air-to-air missiles, and 420 air-to-surface missiles. And they are proud of that. They marked their planes with victory marks where they mark off the number of drones that they had shot down. And so, that's an interesting thing to see that they as soon as they're not deployed, Ansar Allah and the Yemeni armed forces is able to get a drone through to Tel Aviv. And the IAF, the Air Force, the Israeli Air Force, they describe this as a very difficult situation because the drone is small, has a small heat signature, fiberglass as you can see. And so, it gets confused with birds, they say. And if they were to calibrate their radars to catch more of these, then it overloads their their radar systems because it will pick up birds. And along the beach, it will pick up you know, kite kite borders and and stuff like that. It will pick up clouds. And so, Israel's in a real situation with these. We've seen that in the north. 300 drones by Hezbollah in the north have been fired. And Israel hasn't shot those down. They've shot down a a tiny tiny fraction of the 300, including this week we saw multiple drone hits from from the north, which is the same more or less the same signature. That's a bigger drone, slightly bigger, larger wingspan than the Ababil drones that that Hezbollah has been using to hit, but pretty similar. And it's clear because constantly from the north we hear that no air raid sirens were released during that time either. So, this is something we're going to keep our our eyes on because it's going to be a significant part of this war. The Israelis, this is the first time the Israelis have had to deal with aircraft of this type in a war circumstance. The 2006 war with Hezbollah didn't have these capabilities weren't deployed in this way. The 2014 war, Palestinians deployed a number of Zouari drones, but in their infancy, and they were shot down. But the we're seeing Ansar Allah being able to hit and being able to hit Tel Aviv. And they said they have a target bank in Tel Aviv that they can continue to hit. So, that is the resistance report for this week. We went from the south of Rafa, um went even further south um to Ansar Allah in Yemen, who are saying that they will continue their war in the Red Sea blocking Israel's ports until the siege on Gaza is over. Slightly different than what Hezbollah says. Hezbollah says if there's a ceasefire, they will they will abide by the ceasefire. Um but Ansar Allah is said until the siege ends, their blockade on Israel will continue. So, that is the resistance report for this week. Wow, thank you so much. Uh there's so much that happened and um you know, what's your take on Yemen saying that that this is only the beginning? Um I mean Yeah, I mean those drones can be built quickly. That's one of the things about them. They can be built quickly. They can be adapted. You can take parts that already exist and put them on those. They're fiberglass frames. They they can be built quickly. Um those conformal fuel tanks is a very interesting development to allow it to fly 2,500 km means that you can attack from any direction. You could fly out and around and come back. Um it's very it went over Tel Aviv, right? Like all the way from the east and then over and around the beach. and out west over Africa and then and then in over the Mediterranean across the beach and hit from there. And we should talk about the Israeli retaliation. For the first time Israel carried out a direct air strike on Yemen, which I think is a sign of how serious Israel takes this. Uh this was unprecedented. It's it of course it killed someone, but it it's symbolic in terms of hitting Israel in its commercial and cultural center and really the area where I think most Israelis feel safe or safest uh given that um uh Lebanese security zone now extends uh quite deep into uh northern occupied Palestine, so to speak. Um and of course the so-called Gaza envelope. So, uh to to be able to strike in the heart of Tel Aviv uh prompted Israelis to retaliate and to attack uh this these fuel storage tanks for the electricity plant at the uh port of Hodeidah in Yemen and killing uh six people, mostly civilians, and injuring dozens of others in Yemen. So, that uh is a very high price that Yemenis paid as well. Uh but those retaliatory attacks that that Israel carried out are not straightforward. I mean, the drones, as John, you've pointed that are very uh cheap, easy to manufacture, uh the Yemenis can probably make a lot of them. Uh Iran has similar types of uh drones as well. But the uh Israeli attacks are actually logistically very difficult and very expensive because Israel doesn't have long-range bombers. So, to to outfit planes to carry out uh long-range strikes, uh the the they have to travel more than 2,200 km one way. So, the Israeli planes have to fly around 40 4,400 km roundtrip carrying a significant enough payload of weapons. it it's likely, you know, the Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant came out and made a statement after that uh revenge attack on Yemen saying, you know, everyone can see the flames uh, because of course we saw those fo- uh, video of the fuel tanks burning. So, in a sense Israel wanted something very visually striking and they relied on the explosive and combustible power of the fuel to supply that because probably the amount of weapons they can actually deliver to Yemen is is quite small. Yeah, and they and they wanted they basically wanted a social media they wanted a response that could go on social media that looked like, "Look at all the flames." Um, yeah, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi said the the leader of Ansar Allah said that you could have made the same fire by throwing a match, right? He did it wasn't a sign of military capability by the Israelis. They tried to create a spectacle um, that would fit on a, you know, fit on a tweet um, and and and fill the sky with smoke um, to basically to there's no deterrence for Ansar Allah. There's no deterrence for the Yemeni people. It's just a message to the Zionists in in Israel that you know, look we can make it burn. Um, but that's that's definitely the uh, the the secondary part of the story that uh, Ansar Allah has shown a capability and tactical deployment of that that has successfully uh, reached the center of Israel's commercial um, project and we know that Hezbollah's been doing that in the north as well. um, I think behind the scenes the Israelis are scrambling a bit on this one. And and and then just sort of final point on this if this is what Yemen can do from 2,200 km away, what can Hezbollah do from, you know, a few dozen kilometers away, basically? Yeah. And and Hezbollah could could launch dozens, right? That that's the thing is that uh the proximity of Lebanon gives drone swarms a possibility, which is something that Ansar Allah used against uh the Saudis during the war uh with the Saudis, where you launch a drone swarm, a number of them, similar to what Iran did, uh where you try to overload the air defense systems um and tie them up and send so many in that they can't get them all. That's something that Hezbollah can do because of the proximity. And we've seen them get one in. Um if you can get one in, you can get 10 in uh a lot easier. So, these are these are harbingers of a future warfare um that I think would be very significant in Lebanon. There'll be a significant drone warfare component to the war in Lebanon, should it should Israel be insane enough to to try to do that. Yeah. Well, uh obviously, we're going to be watching that very carefully. 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 electronicintifada.net and clicking on donate now. Thank you.