Resistance in Rafah inflicts heavy losses on Israeli military, with Jon Elmer

thanks Nora we are going to begin the resistance report in the South uh this week in Rafa where the main battle space at this point in the war is Israel is claiming to be attacking the final four battalions as they call it in Rafa um we've been talking about this all throughout the war these numbers are arbitrary numbers that don't have anything to do with the number of Fighters uh that are in Rafa um or the strength of the battalions or the ability of the battalions to reform themselves um and to move from different areas like we're seeing the map here um of all of Gaza um you could see how Fighters can move from con Yunis down to Rafa so the main battle space is in Rafa we'll look at this map uh a little closer in I want to just thank Maxwell for this map and for everybody that uh answered my call for the maps last week uh lots of audience participation and we've got uh a good map here to show us um the main areas that we're going to be talking about today tesalan is the site of the um significant operation this week but we're also going to be talking about the Philadelphia Corridor um so if we look at this map this next map we can see the way the Philadelphia Corridor runs this is a 15 kilometer Corridor that runs along the Egyptian border it divides Rafa Gaza from Rafa Egypt it's right along the border and as I've said over the last few weeks this is a demilitarized zone um so Israel Moving quickly up this line and capturing uh taking a full operational control as they say over the Philadelphia Corridor is not a significant military achievement um but what it has done is stretched their supply lines significantly along the border as I said 15 kilometer long border um and they created this border um I described on the show last week how they created this border during the second inada by demolishing hundreds of houses along this Corridor um to push the houses back uh off the border and I talked about some of the significant resistance operations um along the Philadelphia Corridor and interestingly uh the next day uh s kuds u published a poster of uh showing we'll look at number two here um this poster from uh say this poster says this um 20 years later your soldiers are still searching for their remains in the Sands so this is the result of an operation in uh May 2004 um that targeted Israeli Troop Carrier um and the soldiers very high-profile uh scene that you're seeing here that all Palestinians know this is one of the uh very symbolic moments of the second andato when these Israeli soldiers are crawling along the Philadelphia Corridor literally um looking for the remains uh of the soldiers that were in The Troop Carrier that was blown up and it's interesting that that came out uh this week because in a way it was a foreshadowing uh of a very significant operation that went down um this week along the Philadelphia Corridor in tesan um but let me just tell you a little bit about the 2004 operation this is from uh The Washington Post uh May 13th Washington Post 2004 hundreds of Israeli soldiers searched the Border area between Gaza and Egypt on Thursday for the remains of five soldiers killed in a huge explosion on Wednesday the explosion occurred around 6:00 p.m. when a militant from the radical group Islamic Jihad fired a shoulder fire shoulder launched rocket propelled grenade at a convoy of three Israeli armored vehicles that had stopped along the border to blow up the entrance of a smuggling tunnel according to Israeli officials and a statement by uh Islamic Jihad Sarah Al Goods the rocket hit an armored personnel carrier containing 1750 lbs of explosives causing a tremendous blast that killed five soldiers injured three others and reportedly sent debris flying as far as half a mile away Israeli soldiers fanned out to secure a wide area around the blast site so that Palestinian militants would not seize any of the body parts and hold them for ransom um as they did on a Tuesday attack um that killed six soldiers in Gaza City so that's from uh the 2004 the newspaper report in 2004 um and we see uh the photo here from that report and this this photo is very symbolic as I said uh every Palestinian knows about this you can see the Border there that's the Philadelphia corridor that's the border with Egypt that you're looking at there um you can see a watchtower in the background the Israelis would use that Watchtower to shoot into the camp um and their tanks and armored vehicles would drive along the corridor that you see these soldiers crawling right now um and I lived in Rafa during this time and it was um a lot of the things that we see the drones doing today um you know playing sounds of crying children or playing um know tormenting noises tormenting the population that's what these tanks and armored personnel carriers driving along the border would do they would uh taunt and swear at people inside the camps they would fire um at the homes inside the camps with Tracer bullets so you could see them flying over your head and hitting the buildings um they used this Corridor as a as a terror Corridor against the population in Rafa um and so this there's a long history um to this uh particular Corridor the Philadelphia Corridor the name is has no meaning apparently the name just came from an Israeli operation name um it's obviously often mispronounced as Philadelphia Philadelphia Corridor but it's the Philadelphia Corridor um and you can see from the poster that uh s cuds put out this week that they remember this moment um and if we look at the uh number four here um there was an operation in tesalan um with what we see there is this is the Army Radio Israeli Army Radio report there's no video from this particular operation but this is the Army Radio report and you can see down below their picture of a nomor Troop Carrier this is the up armored uh Troop Carrier that they put into uh service essentially because of the failures of their troop carriers in the second and Tata um so the history is Rich uh along this Corridor and let me just describe to you what the uh Israeli Army Radio report said um so this was an operation um that was carried out on Saturday on Saturday 11 Israeli soldiers were killed um in separate incidents along the corridor and eight were killed in this uh one particular strike on this ner Troop Carrier the IDF says uh that the APC the armored personnel carrier was hit while traveling on the axis in the tesan neighborhood in West Rafa the APC was very badly damaged and the explosion was very powerful it killed everybody uh on board the event occurred at 5:00 pm the Convoy was the Convoy in which the APC was traveling um was the fifth of a six vehicle Convoy and they were going they had just finished an attack on the tesalan neighborhood uh and their Fighters were going to a building where they were attempting to spend the night the APC was hit um in the exact same access as other vehicles the IDF says had traveled earlier which again is this is me not the IDF that's again showing you the reconnaissance intelligence and surveillance of the cassan brigades um and the other fighting groups in this particular area the IDF is noting that they believed that this Corridor that these armored vehicles were traveling on uh was safe because they had previously traveled on it um in the same day um this was a Namer combat engineering vehicle with many explosive materials in it they uh the IDF reports um that these are explosives this is me again these are explosives that we know are used to put um inside houses the Israelis are using anti-tank mines to blow up houses to blow up entire neighborhoods um we've seen them do that because it's basically a coste effective way um of destroying the neighborhoods the aerial bombardment um you know the fighter jets are more expensive the Weaponry is more expensive from the Jets um and so the Israelis have been cutting Corners by wiring anti-tank mines into these buildings and blowing them up and so we saw this happen again in the middle camps um back a few months ago when 21 soldiers were killed um in a Yasin strike um a shoulder fired rocket propelled grenade fired at a building that was full of Israeli soldiers who um and their mines that they were using to lay uh mines in that in the magazi refugee camp so they're doing the same kind of thing here in Rafa um and again because of that they are targeted they're hit with Yasin uh up close the uh the uh trophy active protection system the countermeasure that the tank has which we've been covering for the last eight months uh Israel says that it's perfect and it gets every single incoming round but we obviously know that's very far from the truth um and we have another example of it here the IDF saying that the trophy active protection system did not engage um this Yasin shooter who was uh firing from up close the Palestinian Fighters are getting into proximity close enough that the radar is not picking up um and responding uh with their counter measures in time to stop um these attacks and I've read on previous shows what it's like to be an Israeli soldier inside one of these armored vehicles when the Yassin round penetrates um and here we have just a very Stark example of it so um it took them the IDF more than two hours to actually even access the site of the explosion um and the um if we look at this next image here the cassam Bri Gades showed again intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance showing this is kassam footage given to Al jazer showing two ID F D9 armored bulldozers pulling the destroyed uh APC the Namer Troop Carrier and you can see that the Israelis have actually it's coming into the screen here um the Israelis actually covered over the vehicle you can see it has no tracks uh the tracks have been blown off and they have put a cover over the vehicle um to hide the damage uh inside this vehicle there was eight soldiers killed and it took them two days to identify the last two soldiers um they couldn't tell who was who um in this uh in the aftermath of this operation so you can see um the it takes two bulldozers to pull it and it's pulled without tracks and this is something that the Israelis have done with all of their armor they don't leave the vehicle behind as trophies um they they literally drag them even though they have no tracks they're just dragging the vehicle you know the 60 ton AR armored vehicle uh just dragging it um along we could Loop this video maybe one more time and give people another chance to see it um so the Israelis at first they they they don't the Israelis continually deny the effectiveness of the Yen 105 despite uh the casualty reports that they have uh all over and in this situation here uh these were the 22nd uh acknowledged Cas 22nd killed in Rafa in 40 days of battle um the Israelis acknowledged um those eight soldiers killed on Saturday and they always call these situations uh a difficult event and people knew about this event um again because of the buzz uh within Israel but the military sensor because of that buzz is sort of forced to be honest about these particular difficult situations um in a way that they're uh they're less able to cover up these large events than they are um the individual events uh along the way um and so uh let me just uh so the Israelis after this operation um called for the IDF called for a tactical pause U throughout the course of the day so the mil Israeli military said that there would be a tactical pause in military activity in areas in the southern Gaza Strip to enable humanitarian Aid to be delivered to Palestinians the IDF says the pause will take place between 8:00 a and 700 p.m. every day along the road that leads from caram Shalom Crossing uh to the salahadin road um and northwards towards the conun area so they announced this tactical pause that we all heard uh reported on the news the Tactical pause um was announced after this difficult operation uh in which uh eight soldiers were killed in this Troop Carrier and just to sort of underline the dysfunction in the Israeli uh military civilian apparatus right now the defense minister yev Gant um he was quoted in Army Radio his people were quoted in Army Radio saying that he didn't know no one told him about the Tactical pause nobody told nobody in the IDF told the government uh is the uh the statement that or the sources it wasn't a statement it was sources close to uh Gant said that he hadn't heard about that and as I said the the casualties were so significant it took the Israelis uh two full days to identify people um and they acknowledge that in 40 days of fighting in Rafa where they claim that they have uh they have operational control over half of Rafa which is just absurd um Rafa is a sprawling uh City and we know that they fought for example in conun for more than six months they fought in conun and now they're saying in Rafa fighting with half as many troops they're saying that they have half of Rafa under control in 40 days and these kind of numbers are just nonsense um but it's important to bring to you just to give you the sense of how the Israelis are building uh this narrative because we're trying they're trying to to to have an endgame where they tick all the boxes of the um the military accomplishments or OB Ives are being reached so they've been talking all war about the four battalions U that were still left in Rafa um and as I said off the top that is not a meaningful way to describe the Fighting Force the battalions are different sizes they're able to reconstitute they're able to form um with link up with battalions from conun or from anywhere else in Gaza for that matter um the battalions aren't all the same they aren't all identical they're special forces battalions um there's more more highly trained battalions so it's not just something that you can check off on a list like we have uh degraded two of the four uh battalions in Rafa and you can see that the Israelis um have paid a uh a stiff price uh for this and um just to give you the casualty numbers because they talked about it after this and they released it and again everything that we get in the Israeli media we know is subjected to the Israeli military censor and they the it's the 162nd Division that is fighting uh in Rafa right now and there's been at any given time right now there's three divisions fighting in Gaza there's one um well they pulled the one from the north there was one in the north that was fighting in jabalia and jabalia Camp U One Division in the narim corridor and one division in the South fighting in Rafa and the Israelis said yesterday in the media that the 162nd Division that has been fighting in Gaza since October 7th um that 3,800 soldiers have been wounded from that division alone 180 have been killed in combat um so 3,800 wounded just from the 162nd um Division and there's been there's five fighting divisions that have fought in Gaza admittedly the 162nd um and the 98th are the ones that uh have the most combat experience um but the overall number that the Israelis have claimed total number of casualties since October 7th is 3800 so there's 3814 um so the 162nd Division is claiming 3800 casualties just in that one division alone which matches the overall number of claimed uh casualties in the IDF which is just another one of these examples um where these numbers just don't add up because if one um division is has 3,800 casualties um does that mean that the Israelis are lying about their casualties by two three or four times because there's been four but four divisions uh fighting in Gaza at the same time in December there was four divisions fighting at the same time the Israelis used three divisions um to attack Gaza City and they're claiming in one division 3,800 casualties so again this is just another example of the Israeli casualty statistics uh not lining up with uh the official numbers which they saw their terminology is released for publication um they don't say overall number of casual they say this is the number of casualties released for publication that's their wording um so again just another example something we've been tracking for the last eight months that none of these uh casualties statistics ever add up for the IDF um and this was just a really Stark example of saying that one division has a casualty count equal to the entire uh Israeli uh Defense Force admitted number of 3,800 casualties um so that was an operation in tesan that was on the weekend um I just want to show you uh a video here that the IDF released the other day um they're showing you here raing a a house and Rafa and they're pointing out here that they that the Palestinians use holes in the wall that they use Mouse holes which is of course something that we've been covering on this show since the first day of the ground war um and we actually told you that this was going to happen even before because it's uh it's a standard uh way of fighting in an urban environment to move between buildings um through these Mouse holes that the fighters have um have cut and the IDF was really proud of these uh of these walking through walls as they called it in the second anapat they had an entire uh Doctrine based on it and they were very excited about it because they um this is an interview that elel visman did with um with the commander of the idf's paratrooper Brigade and he said we decided to look at space architecturally differently the space that you look at look at this room what you're looking at it's nothing but what you interpret it as and we interpreted the alley as a forbidden place to walk through and the door as a forbidden place to pass through and the window as a place forbidden to look out they've obviously forgot in that part of the doctrine um because weapons await you in the alley and a booby trap awaits you at the door this microt tactical practice of moving through the walls turned into a method and thanks to this method we were we were able to interpret the space wholly differently exclamation mark this uh is again an article from Al visman quoting um the commander of the idf's paratrooper Brigade if until now we were used to moving through roads and sidewalks forget it from now we walk through the walls we inverted the geometry so they're super proud of that in the second inata um I mean people wrote whole books about it um Al visman one of them um about this Israeli accomplishment but of course the Palestinians had been doing this long before the Israelis were doing it and the Israelis released this video um again yes unaware that s cuds released this video let's look at number seven here tomorrow um s cuds released this video uh the other day that uh this was an Eid video that they're showing you can see their Fighters there are grabbing the tandem 85 um this guy here is grabbing a gorilla action device um there's the shaah what Kasam calls the shaad efp uh explosively formed penetrator and then look at them walking through walls not only walking through walls but videotape walls through the walls uh so we see multiple uh uh scenes of it and of course s kuds has shown us this all along and we've pointed this out on the uh resistance report all along because the ability to move through the buildings without going outside is a core part of the resistance uh practice um and we've seen that all the way through so it was it was interesting because I do follow all the Israeli uh releases in the same way that I follow all the Palestinian releases and so for the Israelis to release that video uh this week and say this is a terrorist passageway um you know eight and a half months into the war after we've seen dozens of these videos where Fighters have used the holes in the walls Mouse holing as it's called um there we see the fighter attaching the fuse to the Guerilla action device which is the IED the improvised explosive device that is attached magnetically um to Israeli Vehicles so I just wanted to point that out the Israelis always think that that um that that they uh their military Doctrine is um again especially uh before October 7th was a worldclass uh military Doctrine the Palestinians have since October 7th and particularly on October 7th um shown that to be just uh a total myth um the defeat of the IDF is something that will take um maybe they'll never recover from but we'll we'll see we won't predict the future uh we have enough evidence right now to just talk about the present we won't uh we won't predict the future but you can you know that the Israeli defeat of October 7th is not something that's going to be uh lived down easily um so let's take a look at another operation in Rafa um this is a sniper operation that this remember what the uh paratrooper Commander said that the the windows they don't don't stand in Windows because that's dangerous well here they are just like hanging wires on the roof in Rafa uh and it cost that Soldier again these are edited you can hop over to my Twitter feed to see the full videos uh we edited this out but this Soldier um well they all ran away and left him and they left this one guy to to drag him here below the to drag him into the room the fighters with their helmets look at there's three guys here with helmets on they run into the building and they never come back out uh and they leave somebody that was in the building to drag their uh their casualty out so this is one of the 3800 casualties of the 162nd Division um in in uh in fighting since October 7th so this is uh we've seen these sniper operations of course we've been covering these uh significantly and anywhere the Israelis are they're with in Sniper reach uh of Palestinian Fighters um so that's the battlefield in the South again Fierce fighting in Rafa that makes it look difficult for the Israelis to achieve their objectives in Rafa the talk in the Hebrew media uh is about how the there's clearly not enough troops and the fight in Rafa is being um truncated it's not being fought in the same way that um that the Israelis fought for example in conun like I said where it took six months months and then we remember in conun 6 months after the Israelis fought uh in conun they were hit with the Knight of power Ambush um one of the the most spectacular operations of this war happened six months into their operations in con Yunis and they left the next day from K Yunis in Rafa we see these significant Fierce fights um significant toll 22 admitted casualties in 40 days um and following right on the heels of that um loss by the Israelis on Saturday they're announcing tactical pauses uh in certain areas and they're making it um as if that that is a humanitarian gesture um rather than the gesture of a of an exhausted Force um that's doesn't have the troops to hold uh territory at all in Rafa just like they haven't been able to anywhere else um in Gaza and these terms like full operational control or to degrade a battalion um these are nonsensical terms that don't have any connection to the actual battle on the ground so so that's the battle looking at the battle in the South 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