Resistance fighter behind iconic battlefield video, with Jon Elmer

You are watching and listening to the electronic atifat. I am John Elmer. This is the resistance report for day 832 of Israel's genocidal war. Today we are going to go back in time a bit. We're going to go back to the early days of the first battle of Kununis around the end of December 2023, the beginning of January 2024. the ceasefire and prisoner exchange had ended and Israel um didn't want to continue the ceasefire and prisoner exchange because they didn't want that to somehow curtail their genocidal frenzy in Gaza. So they reneged on the extension of the ceasefire in November. Um and the ground war resumed immediately in northern Gaza and Gaza city and expanded to communis in the south uh several weeks later. I'm going to show a combat video published by the Cassam Brigades in early January 2024 showing a series of operations in Kununis. The fighters are of course blurred as they were throughout the war and we are watching the battle scenes um through the basically through the eyes of the fighters. The cameras on their heads that's their pe their point of view of the fighters themselves. The operations are of course as followers of this program know deeply complex. um but they are shown especially early in the war um as a tightly edited sequence of operations. This was a common way um that Kasam presented their operations. So let's go to that January 2024 video now and this is how these videos um these videos start. We have seen various different ones especially later in the war we saw the more um of the complex detail in the operations but early in the battle um this is how the first videos were released and this was the first one from Kununis and it's an iconic uh series of operations we just saw there a fighter emerging from a tunnel um to hit a tank that's basically within spitting distance of the uh Kasam tunnel. Now we're watching a series of Yasine strikes versus armored vehicles. And it's just one after another. Uh one event after another. Again, we don't see the fighters. You see their hands because you're uh essentially uh looking at it as if you're uh I mean their cameras are on their foreheads, so you're seeing it really right through their eyes. There's another uh tunnel operation against a Puma engineering vehicle. This one here, if you watch down in the bottom right corner, you're going to see the fighter sneak up there and attach a gorilla action device underneath the turret um of that uh Israeli tank in Ununice. Um and the tank explodes around that time. The Israelis um acknowledged a number of deaths in uh an incident similar to that. Unclear if it was exactly that one. um but a gorilla action device placed in the turret and that is a Yasine strike on a uh Puma engineering vehicle that's carrying a demining rocket uh launcher set and here's the captured uh equipment from the Israeli soldiers. So again not a lot of detail one after another tight edit and that is what we uh we came used to know that's what we know of those operations at the time. Um, this was a single video published by Casam. And often on the resistance report, I parsed out these videos uh in individual operations so that we could break down as it uh as each individual operation rather than the way Casam um presented them one after another. But we know now that this was the western battalion of the Conunus brigade because this week the Kazam brigades for the first time began recognizing the names of their soldiers that were killed in the battle of Al Axa flood. Their policy during the war was not naming their fighters officially um out of operational security but also out of safety for their families. something that um I think in retrospect seems perfectly reasonable considering the massacre of civilians that defined Israel's uh what they called the iron swords operation. There was two exceptions to this. The Kasam brigades acknowledged the um the commander of the middle campsman Noful was killed and the northern uh division commander Ahmed Gandur were killed early in the war and Kasam acknowledged both of them but no fighters were acknowledged. And so what we're seeing, what we're going to see on the show today is the first look at the first soldiers um and the first time that we have seen the faces of the fighters that are behind the videos that we are watching right now. And the first um the first soldier that they acknowledged was Albara Abdul Karim Abu Hatab. And we can go now to the picture of him uh number two. And this is how they've been releasing them. It's called the moons of the flood. Um, and this is one of the first of six fighters that they introduced. Albera Abdul Karim Abu Hatab was a squad leader in the Kasam Brigade's western battalion [snorts] uh in the communist brigade. And it has been revealed here for the first time that the name of the western battalion is the Hudafa Iben alyaman battalion which is another nod to the battle of Ahud um and the mountain of archers that have been weaved through Kasam's messaging for these past two years. Suva ibn al Yamam was a companion of the prophet who remained on the mount of archers and did not retreat and was a soldier and a commander throughout many key battles in early Islam and also known for his operational security and secrecy. So again uh really strong messaging by the Kasam brigades in the few ways that they have to do it. [snorts] Um, Albar Abu Hatib Hatab, uh, it says here, was born January 1991 and died in battle in February 2024, which is about midway through the first battle of Conunus that ran from late December to early April. Um, people may remember it ended in Conunus. The first battle of Conunus ended with the night of power during Ramadan. uh a detailed operation that drove Israeli soldiers from communist the first time. Um and Abu Hatab was 33 years old when he was killed. His first his final testament was one of the first uh of the six that were released by the Cassam brigades this week under the banner of the moons of the flood. Um as in the battle of Alaxa flood. The testaments are recorded before the battle. Um and this is a standard thing for resistance fighters to do um for operatives as well. Sometimes they take simple photographs um for example during the second inifatada these martyr posters were um the centerpiece uh of the wall coverings all over the West Bank and Gaza. But sometimes the fighters record longer messages as is the case in the moons of the flood series. So, let's watch Abu Hatab's uh testament and that martyr video that was published just this week number three. And the the video has a music uh soundtrack to it um that I have left out so that I could describe what is going on. But the music is um a resistance song saluting the martyrs describing their place in the national project and on the road to alkuds which you can see there on the screen and that is the um the the look at alara Abu Hatab in u that we just broke down that says he's a squad commander um so in charge of a group of somewhere between seven and 14 fighters uh and they've shown him for the first time here. They're showing him in uh photos here addressing in video here addressing his troops um in training. Here we can see him training with his troops. Um and this is this is something that we have seen. It's it's common for martyrs to have videos like this. During the war, operational secrecy um prevailed, but after the war uh they salute their martyrs. And that is him there giving his testament. and his testament is deeply thought out. It's poetic. He weaves the scripture through a poetic pros. Um but he's addressing in his u testament which is playing in the background uh of the footage that you're seeing him here addressing his troops. He addresses two people principally. First his people, the Palestinians who have suffered throughout this war and for decades before. And he says that your blood is precious. Your cries of pain and suffering is foremost in the fighter's consciousness as other fighters have said. Uh the people are the jewels in the crown of the nation. Uh and they remain steadfast and patient. He said remain steadfast and patient. Uh he says because the dawn of victory will emerge. He then addresses his fellow fighters calling them knights. And he said, "Who stood tall with unceasing determination and unwavering resolve that displays your dignity and which does not and will not disappear or set like the sun. Persist in your quest even if the goal seems distant." And he repeats that the emerging of the dawn of victory is near. You can see him there uh on the footage on the screen there addressing his troops. Um and here we see battle footage. Um here we see him in battle. Normally when the Casam videos came out, this would be blurred. We would just see their hands. Um but for Albara, we see um all the detail here of him wiring up um a television anti-personnel IED and concealing it here. Usually we would see this in their videos at least briefly um but we see it here um uh in long form which is something that we haven't seen before. Um, as he's wiring up these IEDs, he's talking about how the prisoners will be freed and that the usurping enemy will be returned to Gaza in boxes. We see him here now in a tunnel. Um, and he's addressing his squad. He says, "Praise be to God who made us fighters and guardians of this land." You can see over his shoulder there um the Yasine 105 and his fighters with their blurred faces. um potentially they will uh they have survived and that's one of the reasons why the blurring continues. Um he says that uh he tells the fighters in effect that your brothers before you have fulfilled their promise and remained steadfast and now this is our duty too. Um and he comes up here you see him through the tunnel on the way to this operation um that we saw at the beginning of this segment. Um you can see him here and he says that today is the day of of revenge and it is victory or martyrdom as he moves up the tunnel and out onto the battlefield. Um you can see them here. This is a a battle by a greenhouse um against Israeli troops. We saw this footage and I tracked this footage down and we'll show it to you after. But there you see um the archer who launched from the tunnel at those two Israeli vehicles was Albara. He is the man behind uh the videos in both of those. Um so these are sort of missing pieces in the puzzle that we have been putting together of this battle and it obviously provides a much deeper insight uh into uh the fighters that took part who had been anonymous to us uh up until this point. Of course, that is part of the resistance strategy, and you can see it uh prominently displayed in Abu Odeta. Um it's the opposite of a cult of personality, but the e each individual representing the nation in the battle. So, we're going to go watch those videos again, but we're going to watch them with the audio in. And so I just want to warn people that you're going to hear gunshots and explosions in these next two videos, but I think that the authenticity of the audio track uh on this is um is necessary to play. So we're going to do that. Let's start with number four. These are the two tunnel operations. I almost got his So that voice that you heard was Albara and you can hear him saluting Salah Auri. Um he salutes Shik Salah and this operation took place in western communist just a few days after the assassination of Salah Auri in Beirut. Um and so that's Albara himself. That's the voice that we heard and it's his voice uh saluting uh Shik Salah for that operation and saying God rest that may he rest in peace. Um and then there's one more. This is the battle of the greenhouse that we saw just briefly in his moons of the flood video. Let's go to number five here. And again audio is in. Someone Allah >> [snorts] >> So, that greenhouse battle scene was what you briefly saw in um in Albara's martyr video, and I went back and and looked for those operations and tracked them down. And this week's release is just the first of the fallen uh Palestinian resistance fighters. It's only the beginning. I suspect we'll be getting these for quite some time and I will continue to follow these and put these pieces together uh as we did on this show today for um Albara Abu Hatab. So this has been the resistance report for day 832 of Israel's genocidal war on Gaza. You're