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Resistance Report — 8 Mar 2025

How the resistance defeated the Israeli military on 7 October, with Jon Elmer

In the resistance report, contributing editor Jon Elmer breaks down the 7 October 2023 raid by the Qassam Brigades on the Nahal Oz military base, using the Israeli military’s newly released investigation and Qassam’s own footage of the operation. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHEvpbppx_4rb9lCZ9fRyQiTc5A7eS9FA&si=3LUnjClF4_hFjFnT

This is a segment from The Electronic Intifada’s livestream on day 47 of the Gaza ceasefire. Ali Abunimah, Nora Barrows-Friedman, Jon Elmer and Asa Winstanley were joined by Sarah Leah Whitson, the executive director of DAWN, three Columbia University students and Abubaker Abed live from the Gaza Strip. You can watch the full show here: https://youtube.com/live/CzKb9-so3hk

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Full transcript
so this is the resistance report for day 517 uh since October 7th it's the ceasefire day 47 uh like I said I'm going to be reporting on the Israeli military investigations into the October 7th raid on the nul Oz military base um the Israeli military investigation was released on Monday March the 3D and I am reporting this on Thursday March the 6th if we just pull up this full map of Gaza uh nah Oz in the north it's across from Shaya um and just to note that the entire Gaza envelope runs along that red dotted line that is the Border there the Gaza envelope is a series of villages and military bases Kuts mhav that are all along the border that literally envelop uh the Gaza Strip um if we look at the next map we can see it up close uh where we're talking in Northern uh Gaza that area all along the um Gaza envelope is remains a closed military zone there has not been reconstruction in the Gaza envelope um 4 kilometers deep is a closed military zone today and nahaz Kuts is still uh has not been rebuilt along with many of the other Kuts um the base is not functioning and much of the base was destroyed by air strikes if we look at the next map even closer um we can see the sh the the proximity from shu which is east of Gaza City to nah A's uh military base um this is this map doesn't have the main Maps don't have you can go to Google Maps and look and you don't see uh nul A's base but it is a uh principal base a core base uh for the military it is the home of the Gaza division's Northern Brigade and the combat intelligence collection Corp um so it's a key base and it is uh it was one of the main bases targeted on October 7th the Israeli military has held up these investigations for more than 6 months they didn't want to release these investigations during the war because um these the ones that have been released so far are underscored by uh devastating cowardice and failure um and they didn't want that while their soldiers were fighting in Gaza to be shown uh how badly and how comprehensively the Gaza division was dismantled and the idea at large uh on October 7th the nah Oz example is a uh really strong one and it matches with um videos released by Kasam which allows us to compare uh both of those um so Kasam has made a complete video of the nah AZ raid which I'm going to show you in a moment um uh and the reason why we know about what we know about October 7th is from the civilians because it was more difficult to keep the civilians under wrap but the military bases themselves have been covered by a strict military censor and none of the information from inside the bases has been released um since October 7th um and so this is the beginning of that um and yeah like I said we know about the civilians because they had the WhatsApp groups and they were communicating and um they spoke to the media and spoke amongst themselves primarily um after and during October 7th so we have heard from them but we have not heard from the Israeli uh military and just to note the October Council families Forum which is the um bereaved families of October 7th they are not impressed by this investigation um they called the specific internal investigations into October 7th are only the tip of the iceberg and do not replace full State commissions so these are preliminary investigations they looked into 40 different battles um and the families um of the bereaved families uh are not impressed by these um by these reports if we look at the next frame you can see nah a um this is from Cam's video you can see on the left uh of your screen is the base um and up at the top uh to the right with that cluster of trees that is the kabut nul and again this is how um Israel is built this is the uh making military positions uh civilian positions in order to gain legitimacy for them to use them as human Shields um the history of nul AZ is a very telling story of the Gaza envelope um it was built in 1951 after the ethnic cleansing um of Southern Israel um and people were pushed as refugees into the Gaza Strip in 1951 it was a military position for the nah Brigade um and two years later the Kutz was set up um and again core ammo to create human Shields to cast legitimacy on Military positions um and establish as Israel likes to call it facts on the ground by moving in civilians nul AZ was initially uh was it was initially named literally in Hebrew Nal soldiers across from Gaza that's what its literal name was um and after a raid in 1956 from Gaza on the uh nahal a Kuts uh Israeli military Chief of Staff Moshi Dian talked about uh the Gaza envelope and nahal Oz uh specifically and I'm going to read to you uh from his eulogy for a security Chief at nahaz that was killed in a raid U by fighters from Gaza he said uh in the eulogy let us not cast blame for eight years they have been sitting in the refugee camps in Gaza and before their eyes we have been trans forming the lands and Villages where they and their fathers dwelt into our estate how did we shut our eyes and refuse to look squarely at the fate and see in all its brutality the destiny of Our Generation have we forgotten that this group of young people dwelling at nahal a is bearing the heavy weight of Gaza on its shoulders beyond the furrow of the Border a sea of hatred and desire for revenge is swelling awaiting the day when Serenity will dull our path to the young security Chief who left Tel Aviv to build his home at the gates of Gaza to be a wall for us um the gates of Gaza weighed too heavily on his shoulders uh and overcame him so right away right from the beginning of the creation of the Gaza envelope it was a target for raids um and it was put very bluntly that this security officer who was killed was being a wall for Israel and that is the nature of the Gaza envelope so the target of nah a uh is rich in in symbolism and history um and let's take a look at that raid right now because kasan put together a full video on the raid which I will walk you through right here we're seeing the launch of the rockets that began the raid the dropping from drones onto the Sentry Towers the watchtowers watching now a drone strike on a patrol along the border and again the launch of rockets throughout the day more than 4,000 which is more than the 2014 War here we're seeing Fighters driving with literally Rockets flying over their heads there's the breech and the paragliders famous uh sites from there from October 7th again a very clean breach I'm going to break these down you'll get a chance to see them again but um they move quickly but I'm going to break them down one by one after this video you can see the fighters breaching here um there's breaches in more than 114 spots uh in the fence and Israel talked a lot about how uh 5,500 people terrorists they said crossed uh the crossed into Israel on October 7th but the real raid uh on nah o is 162 Israeli military soldiers at nah o base versus 65 Noba Elite Kasam forces that you're looking at here these are the 65 forces that overran this base um and they overran this Base According to the Israeli report within 15 minutes of touching the perimeter and they touched the perimeter 10 minutes after Crossing uh the fence essentially dismantled the Gaza division within minutes uh of this operation you can see the fighters moving through the walls um that they knew about they understood the layout of base um and one part of this story that's important to note is that the first people to flee were the Golani Brigade staff officers um who up and left uh and ran off from the base and left uh their soldiers to fight um So within minutes again they're at the at the base um they reach the base and you can see here they have captured all those Vehicles that's one of the automatic machine gun Towers there's the captured soldiers that would be Tak back into Gaza and there's the photo uh from the Drone that I showed you before now we'll break these down uh one by one because there was three waves but we're going to focus on the first wave that was 65 nobba Special Forces Kasam Elite forces uh that carried out this raid there was a second and a third wave of 50 and 100 more that came at 900 a.m. and 10: a.m. but the raid itself is the raid that starts at 6:30 so let's look at number four this is the covering fire this was critical um to the functioning of the entire operation um Israel captured in Gaza Kasam document during the war according to this investigation um that detailed the attack on nahaz that said a steep trajectory of Rocket fire will chase the soldiers into their shelters um which is exactly what happened the soldiers fled into their shelters left their positions which was the purpose of the rocket fire the rocket fire had two purposes it also o uh was fired at uh the Air Force um airbases which prevented uh planes from taking off and helicopters from taking off and confusion uh created confusion but these Rockets were fired at the bases to get the soldiers to hide which they did according to the IDF investigation the IDF failed in the battle to protect nah A's base the battle results Express a systematic failure in the idf's base Readiness for a widescale Gra attack accompanied by rocket fire so Kasam knew what it was doing with this rocket fire 146 Rockets between 6:29 a.m. on October 7th and 7 am. when the raid uh uh inside nah Oz had begun if we look at number five the other critical part of this was the blinding operation the blinding operation of the towers um you can see the way the drones are used to take out the towers um that's a critical aspect of this because it left the Israeli military blind it took the um electromagnetic spectrum away from them with all of their U uh technology that links um and communicates they dropped all their Communications um you can look at number six the use of the AL goul sniper rifle which we saw all through Gaza uh during the war being used to take out there one of the automatic machine guns of course according to the Israelis all Towers but one were destroyed uh in these minutes these 10 minutes less than 10 minutes um after 6:29 a.m. when the operation uh began if we look at number seven this is the breaching video um this the rocket fire starts at 629 at 6:34 a.m. um the first breaches are happening and you can see them there with a paraglider going across um this breach is very clean um and there's 114 of these breaches up and down the um the Border uh of Gaza um and the Israelis because of the blinding operation the Israelis didn't know this part was happening uh only 40% uh there was only 40% awareness of the 114 breaches by 7:30 a.m. 60% by 10 a.m and 85% by 11:30 a.m. so by 11:30 a.m. when effectively The Raid was over um Israel still didn't know how many breaches uh in the wall there were um if we look at the next slide you can see the clear um is this the next yeah this is eight um you can see how clear the um how clear clean the breach was and this is something that Kasam trained years for under Israel's eyes and there's all through the report about how they watched this training happen um previous to sino's leadership the core training in Gaza happened at night um the fighters would Train by and large at night um senoir changed that um under his leadership in the late 2010s they started training out in the open and the the women surveillance officers of the IDF talked about how they watched these operations these breaching operations Kasam would build replicas of the fence and tar and blow it up um in the exact way that we saw and you can see that breach right there is so well done that the truck that you look at in the bottom right hand corner the truck picks up the fighter who laid the breaching charge and he hops in the truck and the trucks drive through there uh nahal A's base is only 850 meters away from Shaya so they were able to reach the base within minutes at 6:45 am the brief the military study by the Israeli military said that the Kasam Fighters had reached uh the perimeter of nahal A's base and and that breach that you're seeing on your screen right there according to the camera of Kasam was at 637 um so a rapid approach uh if we look at number nine I just want to show you the way they use drones to do this um you can see the Targets in this one and then the next slide you can see it launch um these are and then the this is the video of it up next you can show that one tomorrow number 12 um these are Kasam drone uh uh grenades these are m67 clones that Kasam built this goes back to Adnan Al goul uh creating these uh weapons and they just used the hand grenades from the drones and you can see here um you can see the soul the Kasam Elite forces waiting at that breach and the Drone is pushing back the Israeli soldiers at that breach um so there really is a combined operations you see these soldiers you see them scatter and then watch when the camera zooms out down in the bottom left you see the S the cassam soldiers waiting there so they're using air support they're using a combined arms uh operation here to get through uh it's pretty remarkable um and this video shows it uh very very clearly um this is a combined arms oper operation uh in other ways too in Elsewhere on October 7th um because we know that Kasam Fighters went uh in paragliders they went uh by sea um so Land Air and sea but I ironically not by tunnel which is what Israel thought the invasion would if an invasion happened it would be small scale and it would be through a single tunnel and that's what the wall uh the Iron Wall that Israel built is intended to stop tunnels um and the Palestinians just cut right through it okay this next slide is going to have audio in it uh and just as a heads up it's got gunshots in it so um just be warned about that but this is the breach of the base uh with the soundtrack from the video number 13 so you can actually hear the the incoming and outgoing rounds going by the heads of the soldiers in these remarkable this is remarkable footage of an historic event um and you can see that they knew exactly where to go um and like I said earlier senior staff officers had fled the base at this point um by 7:05 a.m. cam is inside the command center of the base um and by 8:30 a.m. they have it encircled um according to the report uh by the IDF the level of detail in the document found in Gaza about nah Oz uh is better than IDF Special Forces dossier the IDF probe found the document detailed the exact layout of the base including the bomb shelters Barracks generator rooms communication antennas surveillance cameras and the War Room Kasam knew where the commander slept how effective the shelters would be against rocket fire how how many soldiers had weapons and where they stored those weapons this is a tier one special operations Force raid that's my commentary the quote had ended my commentary is this is a tier one special operations Force raid uh if we look at number 14 this still is a a um a memorable still because this is the tower um and fence that is all around Palestine and when Palestine gets a modicum of Justice um the these towers will fall and this is what is all wrapped around in the West Bank um and this moment where the fighter is um reaching this uh reaching this Tower and he speaks uh this fighter he says um here are the sons of Kasam here are the sons of shikh Ahmed Yasin here are the sons of the Palestinian people they are reclaiming what is called the Gaza envelope these are our lands our brothers these are our lands that's what the fighters say in that moment of that still shot so Fighters obviously uh keenly aware of the Gaza envelope uh in the exact same way that Moshi Dion the Israeli uh Chief of Staff in the 1950s uh uh portended number 15 um this is another still of them entering the base um and again you can see how few Fighters it is um how well organized they are they had studied nah o from from afar for years prior according to the study um they knew where every room was so complete the study said uh was their assessment from social media descriptions often simply post that soldiers snapped next to the different buildings in different rooms on their first or last day in that position as they rotated in and out um the Israeli military official probe of the battle has concluded that Kasam did not need a single spy to pull off its highly specific infiltration uh plan they just did it with uh idf's Tik Tock soldiers Tik Tock soldiers did it uh before they went into Gaza and tick toed um they allowed their for they contributed to their forces being dismantled by their Tik toks inside Israel um the uh interrogators and physical evidence that the IDF found that Hamas had built uh that Kasam had built uh mockups um of of thef position and they were able to build scale mockups and rehearse the attack and note the professional tactics used and the scale of the Weaponry carried by kassam their anti-armour ambushes were able to take out three main battle tanks and two armored personnel carriers um so this is consistent uh with the result uh on the base if we look at 16 you can see the captured equipment um Kasam had all of those vehicles um you can see the Merk of of a tanks in the top right corner um those are ashit uh armored personnel carriers um that you see along the bottom there and NR troop carriers um as well um at 8:09 a.m. uh the Israeli military had a Counterattack in place tanks and apcs arrived at 8:26 a.m. the three tanks were disabled and destroyed by Yasin fire one tank hit by two uh Yasin strikes and the tank was destroyed inside the base at 10: a.m. soldiers from inside that tank were captured and taken back to Gaza nah AZ according to the Israeli military n's base was subject to the most Israeli Air Force air strikes 14 drone strikes inside the base six helicopter strikes Hellfire missile strikes and 140 150 Apache 30mim chain gun strikes uh inside the base and this is something that upset the families uh of the bereaved um the family said that the Israeli military tampered with evidence destroyed audio files after five a uh critical audio files that talked about what was happening in the communications between um 500 am and 7 a.m. when this raid happened and that the bases were destroyed and that is the case with many of these bases on October 7th um Israel Blew Up The Bases so that there wasn't uh evidence uh left for um in the same way that after they handeled all the cars they buried uh the cars and took away that evidence if we look at number 17 you can see the use of the Drone strike on the leftand side of your screen there um aerial drone strike on a merkova tank um that disabled that tank um and again there's three tanks taken out during uh the attempt to rescue if we look at number 18 you can see the soldiers captured here in all 53 soldiers Israeli soldiers were killed inside the base at nah o 10 soldiers were abducted um and brought to Gaza in Israeli military Hummers um so that is the video matching up pretty much uh exactly with the numbers um and if we look at this one last video nah Oz has a history I showed this before but I want to show this this is 2014 Kasam raid during the 14 Roar on the nah Oz pillbox um this is nine Kasam fighters who were in a tunnel for 17 days waiting in position um they pop out of this tunnels and again it's not very many fighters it's a single Squad nine Fighters one team um able to use the tunnel to get close to the nah Oz pillbox this pillbox was also destroyed after this raid Israel denied that this raid happened at the time and kasan released this video a few days later and um the Israelis uh looked like the Liars that they are consistent um without these videos of the resistance you can see an early scene there in the uh with the fighter right there with his helmet cam um this is a foreshadowing of many of the operations of this past War U from 2014 and this is uh up till this point uh was one of the most significant raids carried out by uh Palestinian forces and they came very close on this raid to capturing an Israeli soldier um they timed this raid they had an internal clock of 10 minutes before because they knew also on October 7th they knew how long and Israel found this in their documents that they knew how long it would take for each type of vehicle to respond uh to the attack they knew that at nah Oz and that's in 2014 um and that's what times their raid here and they knew it on October 7th um and that's why they were able to Ambush that rescue force that came on October 7th um they they knew it was coming they knew the timing and they had part of their squad waiting for it to destroy it so um these are Elite forces Special Forces they're called NBA forces in Kasam but they're based um these this raid is principally carried out by the Shaya Battalion um and there was three waves I'm just focusing on the first wave of October 7th but there was three waves that we'll get into more uh in the coming weeks as more of these investigations come out so here they are entering the pillbox um you could see in a moment here a soldier uh who tries to flee um it it is in the process of being captured had he been captured this would have been um uh a story that everyone in the world would have heard about like when the tank Gunner that everybody knows his name was captured in 2006 and it became a story and thousand prisoners were released including Yahya sinir you can see there where the blur uh is blurred out there they have a soldier captured um and one Israeli fires from the tower and hits one of the Kasam Fighters but they don't murder they don't execute the soldier uh on the spot they move they take his gun here they took his tavore x95 which we've seen in um many of the prisoner exchange uh releases videos where you see um the cam Fighters holding there you see the weapon there um at this point this was the only one that was in Gaza but October 7th they captured a whole bunch of them uh so this is a historic raid all nine Fighters emerged back into through the same tunnel safely um they brought their injured comrade back they didn't capture the soldier but they captured the gun um and so nul a has a long history from the 19 uh from its creation uh right through um the last two important Wars in Gaza so that is the resistance report for this week the nah Oz raid and I will be reporting on um more of these Israeli military studies uh that come out uh there was supposed to be 40 of them coming out um just the tip of the iceberg as was said [Music]