Resistance announces death of Abu Obeida, with Jon Elmer

You are watching and listening to the electronic intifada. I am John Elmer. This is the resistance report for day 816 of Israel's genocide and day 82 since the ceasefire agreement has been signed. Of course, it's been violated now almost a thousand times. 420 people have been killed. Um, 298 of them in direct gunshot deaths by Israeli soldiers shooting them uh shooting Palestinians along the yellow line. But yesterday, there was news um spoken from the new uh Qassam Brigades spokesperson announcing the deaths of senior commanders, including Abu Obeida. And I know many people were uh wondering about this for a long time. We did not report on this um because we didn't have information on it. We wait until the resistance can confirm. Um, but uh Abu Obeida was assassinated back in the summer and they announced it today. So, what you're looking at there is the new spokesperson for the Qassam Brigades. He spoke yesterday and he um he spoke about um he he spoke about something that I that I remember Rafat talking about about just uh he says that we boast uh of belonging to Gaza. I remember Rafat used to be so proud of being from Shuja'iyya. And when he would tell people where he was from, he was so proud of it. And that's the new uh the new spokesperson for the Qassam Brigades began by saying that we boast of belonging to Gaza. Um, he reiterated that October 7th was an explosion in the face of injustice, oppression, and siege that awakened the conscience of the free peoples of the world and and exposed Israel as a Nazi occupation with its sadistic crimes and genocide, making it a fugitive from criminal justice. He said that the resistance thwarted all of Israel's plans from ex- pulsion to concentration camps to the death trap aid program right through to the promise to resettle, which is of course not happening. Um, and we covered all those on the resistance report over these past 2 years, right? People remember the generals plan um that was supposed to um drive everybody out of North Gaza. Um, those plans didn't come into effect and that was because of the resistance and the steadfastness of the people of Gaza. Um, Abu Obeida said uh we denied Israel's goals to defeat that were to defeat the resistance and the spirit of resistance. Israel failed to return their captives through violence, but required negotiation and prisoner exchange after the shadow unit of the Qassam Brigades protected the captives bravely during bat- during the battle. Um, the ceasefire was because of the steadfastness of our people and our fighters who never left their posts. Um, Abu Obeida said, "Our people will defend themselves and will not give up their weapons as long as the occupation remains. They will not surrender even if they have to fight with their fingernails," he said. And he said, "In our fighters trapped in Rafa, you have the best witness and proof of that." Um, he talked about Israel's pillars are shaking and its foundations are eroding, and that is a harbinger of its demise, he said. "Justice will prevail and we will rebuild together what the occupation has destroyed," is what he said to the people of Gaza. Um, its sons will not drop the banner until victory. Um, and then he said, "I have inherited the title of Abu Obeida." Um, and that was um a significant moment. It also happened with Islamic Jihad. Their spokesperson, Abu Hamza, um the who was assassinated was replaced and they kept the same name. Um, Abu Obeida was the name Abu Obeida comes from um an early military figure uh in Muslim uh war fighting. He was a companion of the prophet and a key military commander in early Islam fighting um the first Muslim battle um and stacking victories ultimately until he became the chief of the conquest of Mecca. So, the roots of the name Abu Obeida um are are deep. Abu Obeida participated in the Battle of Uhud, um which is the uh focal point of a number of resistance videos that we've seen where the fighters um quoted poems or in other ways alluded to that battle um to remain on the mountain of archers. Abu Obeida did remain on the mountain of archers after uh the Muslim forces had fled the attack by Khalid bin Walid's forces. Um, so he did stay on the mountain of archers and he defended uh the prophet while he was up there. So, the name uh and the convention of that has deep roots and so that's why they will carry on um with that name. So, that is the first speech from the new spokesman for the Qassam Brigades. We can go to the next slide and you can see that um this is what they were announcing. They were announcing the deaths of Muhammad Sinwar, I will Ibrahim, who is the chief of staff of the Qassam Brigades, Raed Saad, who I reported on uh last show, who was the head of military manufacturing, Hakim al-Issa, Abu Omar, who was the head of the weapon support and combat services department, along with Muhammad Shabana, who was the commander of the Rafa Brigade, um and then Abu Obeida Hudhayfah al-Kalut. Um, and he was of course more than just a spokesperson. He was the head of the military media apparatus. He was uh involved in the battle. Um, and we'll see that as we uh go along in this um next few minutes. So, if we look at the next slide, um they did individual posters for each of them. That's Muhammad Sinwar, the brother of Yahya Sinwar, uh who has a long military history within the Qassam Brigades going back to its earliest days. Um, Abu Obeida described him as a man of unique intellect. He was the leader of the Khan Yunis Brigades uh before becoming operations chief for the Qassam Brigades. Um, and then after the assassination of Muhammad al-Deif, he became the general um the chief of staff for the Qassam Brigades um since the summer of 2024 and commanded the battle um without any observable impact, which I think is important to note about all of these assassinations is that these are key leadership figures that were assassinated, but at no point did we notice that in the war um that the the fighting in any way was indicate indicative of um any kind of replacement you know, chaos or anything of the sort. In fact, um there was no way of telling that at all, which I think is a tribute to the organization and to the tribute and tribute to the people who are coming up um underneath these figures that they can be replaced um and carry on the job, which the Qassam Brigades did uh fighting in Gaza after Muhammad Sinwar was killed um this past summer. Um, the next slide is Muhammad Shabana. He was the Rafa Brigades commander and he was killed along uh with uh Sinwar in Khan Yunis. Um, he when he was killed uh 26 civilians were killed along with them, which is the case uh in all of these assassinations. In fact, in all of the assassinations going back um decades of Qassam and Hamas figures, there's always civilian massacres along with that even though there's an option to not have that be the case. Um, so Muhammad Shabana was uh in an important position. He was um very close to Raed al-Attar, who was the leader of Qassam in the south. Um, and in that period of time in the south, um Rafa was a significantly important command um because of the tunnel trade in and out uh in that era. And also, there was a number of significant special forces operations that um were led from the south. Of course, most notably uh the Gilad Shalit capture, the capture of the Israeli tank gunner uh in 2006. Muhammad Shabana's fingerprints were all over that operation. Um, and he contributed across all departments. So, he was a senior figure um in media, in logistics, and special forces. Um, and ultimately, it was Shabana who purchased hundreds of cameras and hard drives for the military media apparatus um to watch it grow. Also, two of his sons were Nukhba fighters, elite fighters that were killed during the Battle of Rafa, which is often the case um with these fighters. Their families um are involved um deeply in the struggle and have for multiple generations. So, that is the case with Muhammad Shabana uh as well. We can look at the next slide was um Raed Saad, who I reported on uh last show. He was killed in an assassination earlier this month while driving in Gaza City. Complete violation of the ceasefire. The Americans uh said they were going to look into that, but they didn't they didn't look into it. And as we heard Trump uh yesterday saying that he has no problems with anything Israel's doing. So, that's a harbinger of uh uh the way that Israel plans to um carry forth in Gaza, that carry out these assassinations whenever they want. Um, which sets up a very uh fraught dynamic for a ceasefire to hold. Um, Raed Saad was the first ever Gaza Brigade Commander, Gaza City, when they were setting those up after the second Intifada, during and after the second Intifada, when they were really the Qassam Brigades were moving from an operatives based organization to really a rooted military structure. Um, and he Raed Saad was critical in that development as well. He was operations chief in the 2010s. Um, and then ultimately the commander of military manufacturing, which produced the locally made weapons that were used on October 7th and for the two-year defense of Gaza. Um, and we saw those weapons that were built in Gaza not run out for the battle and it ends up being a key part of the story. And the next slide is Hakeem al-Issa. Um, and he was an academy builder in the Qassam military academies, the military, the war colleges we would call them here, the military academies, the training of the fighters, um, you know, the theory that they fight under, the preparations in those academies in Qassam grew really significantly under Hakeem Issa. He came from abroad, brought his expertise from Lebanon, Iran, and Syria into the Gaza Strip, um, and worked with a number um, of the military academies and ultimately his final position was in the weapon, the combat weapons directorate. So, key leadership figures. Um, he was assassinated back in June. Um, and then the next one we have here is Abu Obaida. Um, and the spokesperson said, "Today we reveal his real name." And this is Hudhayfah Samir Abdallah al-Kahlout. He was, um, killed in August in an assassination in al-Remal that targeted his house. Um, he found out that his kunya is not Abu Obaida, but it's Abu Ibrahim. Um, and Abu, the new Abu Obaida said that, um, that, uh, Hudhayfah al-Kahlout was an icon of the free people of the world, the pulse of Palestine, never cut off from his people even in the darkest of circumstances. His addresses from the heart of the battle for two decades. Um, set the tone for the resistance in Gaza. Our enemies' audience often waited for him before his own people to hear his decisive word. We know that is true from the Israelis. Um, Abu Obaida was assassinated, um, while visiting his family, which is an important note because, um, this detail indicates that he had somehow outed his, um, his place, uh, of visiting his family, but not outed the military media apparatus because if Israel had access to the military media apparatus, we would have seen, um, the unraveling of that apparatus over the final um, months that we did not see. And we didn't see the assassination in, um, a bunker or in a tunnel. It was in his house. And so, the, uh, two years of war with the United States and Israel's assets flying over constantly, their surveillance, um, you know, their their most expensive surveillance in the world, and they have no idea how the military media apparatus functions. And I think that that's, uh, a real interesting detail. 11 civilians were killed, um, including a number of his, uh, children were killed in that assassination. If we look at the next slide, you could see, this is an important slide from before October 7th. This is from the Al Jazeera documentary that showed footage from the Qassam Brigades, um, of the leadership planning. Um, he's standing here over a detailed map that covers the entire table. Um, we can see that even better in the next, uh, slide where he's working here, um, planning out October 7th. He's not a spokesperson and that is, uh, something that's really important to say. He was the head of the military media apparatus, um, and that is far more than a spokesperson. So, you can see him here with Muhammad al-Deif on the left there, um, Rafa Salama there on the right, and on the far right is the head of military intelligence for the Qassam Brigades planning out, uh, this operation. And this is, um, this was the first time that we saw Muhammad Deif's face, um, or, um, uh, or Abu Obaida's. And this footage, was captured by the Israelis inside Gaza. That's from the Al Jazeera documentary. Um, if we look at the next slide, um, um, the Israelis were really interesting here and just a couple things that I wanted to point out about the way the Israelis, when after assassinating Abu Obaida, they released a whole bunch of material, um, that they said, uh, showed his role in the media apparatus. And some of it is, um, is is interesting to hear from their perspective. Um, but Army Radio said that in the background of Trump's statement last night, they, this is from some months ago. This would be early September. According to Trump, Israel is losing the public relations war in Gaza, quote unquote. Um, and that is, uh, because of Abu Obaida, according to Israeli Army Radio. They said, "Qassam's military media apparatus included about 1,500 fighters. In comparison, about twice as many as the regular IDF soldiers has in equivalent units." The IDF spokesman and influence department. So, they're they're right out here again ahead of this being like, "Oh, the reason why Qassam's media was 10 times better than us is because they had more people, uh, in the command, uh, of it." It's very interesting. And they they have a number of things that they said in here that are just plain wrong. Um, that the, uh, that Hamas publishes, videos, that they stream the videos, um, from the helmet cams, from the head cams, from the GoPros. They stream it to a central location, um, which is not true. And if they did do that, would have been the reason why they would have gotten, um, they probably wouldn't have lasted the war if they operated on that manner. But just the confidence with which Army Radio says that, um, that the the units of fighters transmitted back to a war room, um, where they would receive the mirror, the materials in real time. So, it didn't matter if the squad was eliminated, they, uh, video material exists. That's not true. Um, the video material existed. If the fighters were killed, that video was lost. And that shows you, um, the number of fighters that were, um, still in the battle. And Israel wants to cover that up by saying that, um, everything, no matter, we killed all these fighters. Don't worry about it cuz they, uh, projected their footage back to a main base. Um, he said, Army Radio said that Abu Obaida was personally involved in every every Hamas combat procedure. No military move by Hamas in recent years, Protective Edge, the Great March of Return, Guardian of the Walls, and of course of October 7th would have been carried out without the approval of being accompanied by a standard combat procedure and the approval of Abu Obaida. So, they're really, uh, setting him up as the key figure in the military media apparatus, which is interesting to note because if that is true that they have 1,500 members of this, uh, apparatus, that gives you an indication of the both the size of the organization, but also, um, the quality, um, figures that can come and replace that because they have that, uh, architecture already in place. So, um, interesting to note from the IDF because, of course, even though, even if it is true that they had Qassam has twice the number of media reporters, uh, embedded, uh, with their units than the IDF, um, it the IDF footage, you you couldn't get the same footage as Qassam because the IDF doesn't fight the same way. Um, they don't fight tactically, uh, with the acumen of the Qassam fighters. They don't have the courage, um, of the Qassam fighters. And that's why we saw from the Israeli media apparatus, uh, Israeli soldiers shooting at walls, uh, and whatnot. We can go to the next slide because it gives you a sense of how long this has been going. Here's Abu Obaida at his desk, um, back in 2005. And this is just after the disengagement. Um, and you can see a young Abu Obaida who's at this point still a teenager. Um, and the way that Abu Obaida came about to be the spokesperson was actually, um, uh, unexpected. He he was fighting in the battle at the time in northern, um, in northern Gaza, the battle of Jabalia in 2004. I covered that, uh, previously on the show. Um, a two-week battle in in Jabalia camp, Beit Hanoun, and Beit Lahia that would, uh, that went on for two weeks. It was a total siege. Um, a lot of things that looked like Gaza today, but just on a smaller, more confined area. Um, and Abu Obaida gave, uh, was in that battle, fought in that battle. Um, and was going to be the person to deliver anonymously the message from that battle. The intention was that Qassam would have, um, these fighters be anonymous and give uh the their um battlefield update. Abu Obaida did such a good job that nobody else ever did that again. And from that moment in 2004 on, uh every time the resistance spoke, it was Abu Obaida who did that uh who delivered that. Um, if we look at the next slide, you can see them working here in the media office. There the trajectory of the media office really does begin with the second Intifada. Um, the formalized, of course they released statements before in previous eras. Of course, we know back in the first Intifada in the 1980s, they would release um field reports and communiques of all types. Um, but as the digital age came about, the internet uh came about, the um second Intifada came about, all those things kind of came together, coalesced um with the growth of the um information office of the media apparatus, military media apparatus. You can see the fighters in here uh working on that apparatus. The next slide um shows uh the cameraman here. You can see um he's got the old uh tape uh video camera going back shooting um training sessions, training That's the difficulty in that era um was that your camera was the size of like a small car. Um, but as digital and the internet came in subsequent years, uh Qassam of course adapted and made it so that um the GoPro camera the car backing, the reverse camera was taken used out of cars. Um, they had thousands of GoPro cameras. Um and so as technology developed, so did the organization um develop. They went from having a single cameraman in 2001, which is what you're looking at here, to four in 2002, and it grew from there, which uh straddles the the development of um you know, of video and digital video uh along with the internet. So, they were right on the cutting edge um of that process. We can see the next slide here. Abu Obaida as a kid um at the media office. Um, and that's uh how he started. He used to start with a black mask and the red keffiyeh, the black keffiyeh first and then red keffiyeh later on that became uh his symbol. Um Um, yes. And the story um of their of their media development is really a story of Abu Obaida. He was obviously an extraordinarily uh qualified figure to build that movement. And that movement that he built is not an individual. It's a massive apparatus within each unit, within each company um even at the squad level, all the way along um through the organization, there's an embedded military media member within that organization. Um, so a long history and it will be resilient, the military media apparatus, despite losing Abu Obaida. Um, and the final slide is of course something we'll see in the coming weeks, but this was from Saraya al-Quds in Lebanon citing uh here we see Abu Hamza and Abu Obaida. Um, they speak the truth while they were alive and their positions are immortalized after their departure. Um and the new Abu Obaida signed off his speech yesterday the same way um the original Abu Obaida signed off by saying it's victory or martyrdom. So, that is the resistance report for day of Gaza of the genocide in Gaza. [Music]