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Resistance Report — 5 Mar 2024

How effective are Palestinian soldiers in targeting Israeli snipers? with Jon Elmer

Jon Elmer provides military analysis of the latest developments on the ground.

Nora Barrows-Friedman, Asa Winstanley, Ali Abunimah and Jon Elmer of The Electronic Intifada were joined by Abubaker Abed, our contributor from Gaza; John Mearsheimer, one of the world’s most influential political scientists, on the day 145 livestream. You can watch the entire broadcast here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykklx8iLo_0

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Full transcript
I I just want to say that what we're watching is appalling um the footage of the the King of Jordan uh pretending he's a special forces Commander pushing food Aid out of the back of a of a C130 Transport plane into the sea and having thousands of Palestinians along the shoreline mostly children waiting into the sea to get this food Aid as if uh this is some far off place that nobody can get to um but know that the Israelis can get to the border and have demonstrations that block these trucks uh and these countries was Jordan just doing these air lifts uh these air drops but now I noticed uh yesterday's air drop a bunch of other countries have tried to get in on this as if uh these aird drops are somehow showing their decency um when really they're just an appalling scene uh I can't believe we're watching um so yeah the Battle of zetune uh Israel reinvaded Gaza City um last week and you you never know when a fight uh gets to have the moniker of being called a battle um that will stay through time but it seems to be this battle in zetune is going to be uh one of the battles in the war that U that sticks around Israel is attempting to build um effectively a Highway uh cutting off the uh the southern Gaza Strip from the north um cutting off Gaza City uh and in order to do that they've been battling in in zetune for the last 10 days so maybe we'll we'll start with a a sniper operation that the cassam Bri Gades uh carried out number one here tomorrow this is uh the cassam brigades this is their 34th Al Gul operation and we're watching a sniper here setting up looking at Israeli snipers so it's snipers on snipers here and you can see that the the loopholes that the Israelis have knocked out of that building there and we can juxtapose that with the Palestinian Ian ones and here we're seeing a thermal camera and if you look at the building you can see the loopholes are knocked in both sides of the floor which just makes them very easy to see and of course uh the cassan Brigade sniper unit is on top of them we're seeing a thermal camera here that shows that there's troops inside uh that building um this week the cassam Bri Gad said that they have filed throughout the war 30 field reports um of sniper attacks of 57 different attacks so 57 attacks in 30 field reports um demonstrating something that the Cassandra Gates have said which is that after these sniper operations their snipers leave the scene and move on to a different location and report back at the end so you can see the thermal camera showing that there's Israeli forces uh inside those loopholes that they've knocked outside of the buildings um and of course these Israeli snipers have wreaked havoc on the civilians um in Gaza um they've made it the streets of Gaza a killing field um and so you see sniper on sniper here and uh a Kasam sniper taking out an Israeli sniper um the next day after this F uh the day actually before this video within the hours before this video was launched the Israelis uh claimed casualties in the north um and almost surely uh we're looking at one of those there because we can see that there's um there soldiers in behind those loopholes that we can see on this thermal V uh Imaging here um and so the Israelis did although they cover up their casualties they did report uh on this um and maybe we can show after this runs through tomorrow um I can show I I cut a clip for people because uh about whether uh the wall the cinder block wall does anything against this 50 cal uh antimaterial rifle that the AL ghoul is and we can see from this footage from a shooting range that it clears uh it goes the the round the AL goul round goes clear clean through um these cinder block walls blowing the back of the wall out um this weapon the Alou is used it's an antimaterial rifle it's used against Hardware U positions and here's another example that shows that even two cinder blocks don't make any difference so um the power of this rifle um is is a significant part U of its asset um it's also a a more precise rifle as well um but it's used I mean American troops in Iraq used rifles like this against unexploded ordinance to detonate bombs um their first use in military uh was used against armored vehicles um in the first and second world war so um it's a significant weapon and the the wall provides uh um no concealment so maybe we can go to uh the second one after this shows that clearly that's a clay um a hunk of clay that was set behind the wall um here maybe we can go to number two tomorrow this is uh Sarah El kuds this is Islamic Jihad um using a similar rifle um and you could see them going up the stairs the fighters and you can see they see window and they act accordingly uh moving around the window and we've seen from previous s KS Islamic Jihad videos and Kasam videos as well that the fighters are moving through the city moving through holes and walls moving through tunnels um and you see the Sarah Al could sniper here calibrating his uh getting his range that's on the card he's got angles distance wind things to incorporate uh when you're carrying out a sniper operation over a long distance um and again we can see in this video we've we've edited out uh the end of the video but um the soldiers drop in that video as well clearly uh being hit um and so this is s KS they have the capabilities that we're seeing um in this week's videos are something that uh we've talked about for weeks and again just to say all the videos that we're going to watch today are all from the past week um these are all happening in conun or uh in Gaza City where the main uh focus of the battle is but that's where the ground war is taking place we know that every single day the air War continues on the population of Gaza Israel is hasn't is still killing a hundred people a day in air strikes in safe areas um killing civilians in their homes uh but in terms of the Ground Battle it's been focused on conun and um and zetune in Gaza City so uh maybe we can switch to number three here here tomorrow because the way the antimaterial rifle works and the distance that it covers more than 2 kilomet um we can see here in this cassam video from zetune they're tell they're showing us here the reconnaissance that the fighters have of the medivac helicopters also something that we've been following throughout the War uh we don't have confirmation on this but it seems very clear now 144 days on um that the Palestinian resistance is not targeting these um these medacs and maybe we could do the next one after this one Rolls tomorrow because there's there's two shots that the cassam Bri Gades showed this week um of monitoring helicopters that are well within range um of the the AL goul especially in terms of um because you don't to to to penetrate a helicopter um you don't need the round to be significant so the distance um that the weapon is effective is is can be up to 2 and 1 12 kilm which we're seeing is is within range so this is Kasam showing Medevac flights Israel says that they've carried the Israeli Air Force this week said that they've carried out 500 of these medacs you can see the helicopter landing there um that's smoke that the Israeli forces put up as concealment so that the the fighters can't do what we're watching right now namely watch them um but we're also seeing in that footage there civilian ambulances so Israel feels confident that they are not that their medevacs are not being Target because you can see there in that footage that's not a um that's and there you can see the smoke screen um to try to conceal their position but it appears and again there was a field report yesterday from the camber Gades saying that they were watching these helicopters um so that footage really um gives you a sense of of how close they are the Gaza strip's only six kilometers wide at this stage if if the shoe were on the other foot John If This Were Israeli forces watching Palestinian red cres workers trying to evacuate let's not say Kasam fighters let's say a child named hind for example what do you think the Israeli forces would have done in that situation do we need to speculate about that no I mean we've seen brutal cases of Medics being targeted directly being targeted the the case you were talking about was a six-year-old girl who phoned uh Palestinian red crescent paramedics um and asked them to come and save her over the course of several hours um and the next day and they did which they always do the red crescent uh paramedics I I I'll just say they're the best Among Us um they're incredible people and um they went to to hins um to The Massacre where the her entire family was killed in front of her eyes and left in the car with her and the Israelis killed them in the ambulance and when people went the next day to to find him they found the paramedics and their ambulance destroyed um as well and what it looks to be um again we haven't talked to the fighters so we don't have confirmation but it appears that the Palestinians are not targeting um these metac uh air flights and the Israelis said they've carried out more than 500 of these Medevac flights um and although they if you remember back in November uh about 10 days into the ground operation the Israelis said that they had carried out 250 medevacs um so we know that those numbers aren't true um but we're talking about hundred of helicopter flights um that the um that the resistance is clearly uh has chosen to not Target targeting soldiers and again 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