Resistance rockets target Tel Aviv, with Jon Elmer

You are watching the electronic andifat live stream. I am John Elmer. This is the resistance report for day 538. Uh I am reporting this on March the 27th. I am going to cover Gaza and touch on Yemen today. But there's also uh Israeli bombings as Helena talked about in Syria, in Lebanon, and of course this brutal siege in the West Bank. uh 66 days now in Janine uh of a siege um and sieges elsewhere in the north of the West Bank uh in the northern West Bank refugee camps. Um and of course also the United States which is a partner uh in this genocide with Israel has been attacking Yemen on shore in Yemen daily now for the past week. Um so we'll cover that. And today marks the 26th day of the full blockade of the Gaza Strip in contravention of the agreed upon ceasefire that the United States and Egypt and Qatar guaranteed um and could be um broken by Egypt having a border uh with Gaza. But this 26 days has blocked the agreed upon 600 trucks um of aid a day and that is food, medicine, um building supplies as well as 50 trucks a day of fuel. And the fuel is necessary for all kinds of core functionings uh in the Gaza Strip. So at this point it totals now 15,000 trucks have been blocked with aid um and 1,300 fuel trucks that are desperately needed in uh Gaza. And during this period of time, the Israeli military has carried out, according to them, 430 air strikes using uh helicopters, fighter jets, both supplied by the United States, um as well as drones. They've killed more than 830 people, including 322 children just in the past uh little more than a week since they full-on resumed u the genocide. Uh in Gaza, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs noted that there's 120,000 people displaced and as Norah pointed out in her newscast, that number is even higher and it's going up every hour. Um that's been the tool that Israel has been using right now. And if we take a look at these maps, we can get a sense of where we are. Um the attacks have been from the north uh and Bahi and Beth Hanoon um all the way to the south uh in Rafa and uh Telis Sultan in particular the Israeli military has moved into the Netsim corridor again part of it we'll get into that uh in a moment um but these troop movements are largely at this point show they're not uh fighting battles on the ground the resistance is not uh fighting the Israelis in ground war operations. The Israelis are moving through buffer zones that have already been established. Um, Israeli uh army radio this week reported that quote, "Israeli soldiers were not given clear missions regarding the nature of their operations. They're not fighting. There's not shooting uh on the ground uh between the resistance and the Israeli military. We're watching massacres. It's just massacres, aerial massacres and troop movements in the buffer zone as we speak up till now. This could of course change any day now. Uh but these are massacres from the air and from the sea. They're using their navy to carry out these massacres. And there's really not much the resistance can do about those air strikes. And that is the nature uh of Israel's air superiority. Um there's not a lot the resistance can do about it. And as for fighting in the buffer zones, it's not clear right now that the um resistance is is able or interested in that battle. Um if the Israeli military moves into builtup areas, I think we'll see the resumption of war. But at this point, um the resistance is very clear that it wants to continue the ceasefire. It wants negotiations. It wants a prisoner exchange. It wants an end to the war. It wants an end to the blockade. Um and all of those things um are not at this moment assisted by um by the pretext of a ground uh of ground combat. And the Israelis for their own part are not in uh at this point doing that. A lot of this is for show. Netanyahu had to pass a budget otherwise the government would collapse in Israel. he needed his extreme um his more extreme right-wing uh elements to come in come back into the government to pass that budget which happened this week. Um and those extreme uh coalition partners were very upset about the uh Israeli military leaving the Netarim corridor. They were crying about it and talking about the soldiers uh wasting their uh entire year and a half of the war. Um, so many of these things are messages to the Israeli public and of course to the Palestinians, it's tightening the siege by uh moving and encroaching through the buffer zones. Israel has also used the ceasefire uh period um the prisoner exchange period as we talked about on during the prisoner exchange and also in the one in November. These are very dangerous times for the resistance. Um they come out to do the prisoner exchanges. um intelligence about who is moving who. Of course, the the negotiations themselves are dangerous times because the the resistance has to communicate uh abroad to to talk about the negotiations. And Israel's taken advantage of this and carried out a series of massacres uh of political leaders in Hamas. This is something they did in the 2014 war as well when they killed uh key commanders uh from the Rafa from the Rafa brigade uh during the 2014 uh ceasefire negotiations and they almost killed uh chief of staff Muhammad Dif they killed his wife Wedad and his two children he had just uh left so it was a near miss on Dave at that time and it's using intelligence from the ceasefire and that's what Israel has done right now. And what they're doing is they're going around and assassinating government leaders, pilot bureau members. Um, and they did that, they started that a week ago with an operation that was 80 air strikes in less than 10 minutes time where they killed more than 170 kids. Um, but also killed um uh ministers, municipal and pallet bureau ministers uh heads of the ministries uh in Gaza. They killed the minister this week. They killed the minister of education along with his family. They killed the superintendent of the school system along with his wife and four children. Norah reported on the attack on Nasser Hospital. That attack on Nasser Hospital was to kill Ishmael Barome who is a Palapiro member, a university professor and they sent a missile through um the ward that he was in seeking care because he was wounded in the massacre um that began all this a week ago. So he was in that hospital getting care um and he was killed and as Norah reported the doctor the American doctor um had saved a teenager's life and that teenager was then killed uh in that strike. So these are just brutal massacres. There's nothing else to them. There is no um there's no military purpose to them. They're killing civilian open civilian leaders uh in the Hamas movement in the government on the municipal level. Um, they're killing people in their tents. They're killing people in bread lines. And as Sami Abu Zuri, who's a Hamas leader, said, and this is something we've heard Hamas say throughout uh this war, um, the blood of Hamas leaders is no more precious than the blood of Gaza's children and Gaza's youth. Assassinations will not change our path or cause a vacuum. Hamas is of the Palestinian people, and there are thousands of leaders. Um, if we look at the next map, we can see the Philadelphia corridor here. Um, and Telesultan. So, what the Israelis are doing, they say in the media that they've moved into Telesultan. Um, the, uh, Times of Israel reported from the Israeli military that Tellesan was encircled by the 14th Reserve Armored Brigade in a 4-hour long offensive. And that sounds to Israeli public um, like there's a ground invasion in Gaza, but Telesultan was off limits. Um I showed a map uh earlier on in the um ceasefire about 60% of Rafa is was a no-go zone. It was an it was a no-go zone that was shoot to kill and many of the hundreds that were killed in Gaza during the early stages of the ceasefire were killed in Rafa around the areas of the 60% of Rafa that was a no-go zone. So, Israel's troops are moving without any plan in areas that were already buffer zones and already areas that the resistance um it's a very low percentage operation to attack inside the buffer zones. And we've seen this all throughout the war. The war picks up when the Israelis move into into uh builtup areas um and the civilians leave, the fighters move in, and they battle on the ground. That hasn't happened yet. So, a lot of people asking what the resistance is doing right now. Um, the way that Israel is fighting this war at this point is a ma a war of massacres from the air. Um, and there's very little. These advances that you hear about, the army is advancing. The Israeli military wants you to hear that they are advancing, but they're not really. They're moving into no-go zones that were already established buffer zones. Um, so I just want to say that uh, of course that could change at any moment. Um, and there's more than 120,000 people pushed out of their homes um, at this point right now. If you look at the next map, you can see how that operates in the Netsim corridor. They made a big fuss about how they moved back into the Netsim corridor. This is the map from phase one of the ceasefire. And you can see that they have moved into the area that was already their buffer zone in the Netzarim corridor on Salahadin road. The main north south axis, but you can see that the coastal road is still open and the areas um through the coastal road still allow Palestinians to travel. What Israel did was move, you can see on that map, the buffer zone goes up to,00 m. um in that spot that was a agreed upon in the ceasefire. What Israel did was move a few hundred meters further than that and cut off the road where there was the international presence uh at that checkpoint. Um and this situation has not changed. the head of Shabbach, who's being pushed out, uh, wrote a letter the other day where he said, "The state of Israel is in in an especially difficult and complex period with 59 captives that are still in the heart of the Gaza Strip. Hamas has not yet been defeated, and we are in the midst of a multiffront war. Um, the annual threat assessment of the US intelligence community was released yesterday. It's a 31page document that uh said basically the same thing. uh that Hamas retains thousands of fighters and much of its underground infrastructure and probably has used the ceasefire to reinforce and resupply its military munition stocks so that it can fight again. And we know that they do that through uh unexloded ordinance. Um the Israeli American bombs that don't explode uh are repurposed. This period of building up is surely what is happening right now. Um, and if we look at the next map, you can see that moving into the Netsim corridor is at this point in the war is it doesn't take anything for the Israelis to do. The population centers have been pushed out. Um, the two villages that are in the Netsim corridor have been completely demolished for more than a year now. So, their troops move in through essentially a field area um where there's no population um on either side or in front of that. So that is the troop movements. Um, and this was the the the way that uh phase one of this ceasefire went. Um, and just to recap, ceasefire uh, phase 1, there was 33 Israeli captives released for 1,777 Palestinian prisoners, including 274 with life sentences, 296 with long sentences, and a thousand that were captured from the Gaza Strip with no charges who were tortured um, in prison camps in southern Israel. There was 700 uh 71 female prisoners and 95 children prisoners uh released as well as 41 from the Shalite deal. So phase two of the uh ceasefire is what is uh not happening right now. Negotiations um by the US envoy Steve Witco are all non-starters for uh for Hamas. The Wititov says that Hamas has to leave. they have to disarm um and that they that the um that these these things have to happen before us. He says us, Witco says us, speaking of the uh Israelis and the Americans and those are just non-starters. So um Hamas has been in these negotiations throughout. Um there's not a lot of movement on them because Israel is moving the goalpost with the help of the Trump administration and Witco who got some credit for uh making the first ceasefire uh come into place. But that ceasefire was as Helenham noted was negotiated and set in place in December of 2023. Um and Wickoff just pushed it uh to be implemented. it had already been established. And now that Witco's in charge of negotiating the actual terms of the deal, we see that there's no uh that these are that's going nowhere because his claims uh that that Hamas the Palestinians will disarm um is a non-starter. There's nobody in the Palestinian millure at this point that can tell Palestinians to disarm. they would see that the resistance would see that as an illegitimate um an illegitimate order and they wouldn't follow it. This is a national liberation struggle and they're not going to disarm. But what they have been doing is firing rockets. If we look at the next uh slide, you can see the uh Cassam brigades fired uh M90 um here we go. Yeah, M90 rockets uh on Tel Aviv. The M90 rockets uh were fired twice this week. And I've said this throughout the war that rockets are not a good measure um for understanding the viability of Casam as a fighting force, but it's of course an important message. Um we don't know how many rockets they have left. They are clearly saving them. They have not been using them in any force uh for quite some time. In the first month, we'll remember, of the war in October 2023, they fired 8,500 rockets in October. Um, and October of 2023 looked a lot like this period right now where there was massacres from the air. Um, historic levels of massacres and attacks without the army on the ground in Gaza to fight. Um, and so I think we're seeing uh some of that now the increase of rocket fire. Sar Aluds also has rocket capacity that they have been launching uh this week and so far throughout the war according to the Israeli military there's been more than 13,000 rockets fired which is far more um than Israeli intelligence believed that they had and Israel has dropped at least 55,000 uh bombs on Gaza with a 5% dud rate. So there's plenty of unexloded ordinance to uh to develop the rockets uh going forward. Whether that happens uh at this point is unclear. Um if we look at 5B tomorrow, you can see the um this is the n the rocket that they're using. This is a video that was released in the first days of the war. It's a pro it's a video for these rockets that were fired that you saw in the previous video that were launched this week at Tel Aviv. These are M90 rockets named after Ibrahim Madma who was a uh commander from Berge camp in the middle camps. Um and we showed fighters throughout the war saluting uh Ibrahim Madma who was a a key Casam leader and we saw them in the central camps brigade uh saluting him. You can see the size of the M90 rockets. Um they have a 50 kilo warhead and a 90 kmter range which means they could be fired from anywhere in Gaza. They don't need these rocket launchers that you're seeing. They can be fired uh from makeshift launchers. Uh but they could be fired from anywhere in the Gaza Strip and can reach uh Tel Aviv. But this was an impressive uh show of force by Casam making this video. So you can see it written on the wall there in Hebrew for the Israelis that says Tel Aviv will burn and Jerusalem will be liberated. Um and so that's the M90 rockets. If we look at number six, you could see the uh alerts on Tel Aviv um that disrupted the airport um and sent uh millions to the shelters um this week. And this rocket attack happened uh last Thursday. And I noted to you that at the time that Abu Oda reached uh sent out a message saying that today Yemen's missiles intersected with those from Gaza in the skies above Tel Aviv, confirming that we are not alone, that Gaza is not alone, that behind us is a free nation who will not surrender to arrogant enemies, of course, talking about the US in that case, as well as Israel. And this next uh uh video is going to be um you're going to hear sirens. This is what the sirens sound like uh in Tel Aviv when uh these rockets are launched. This uh video number seven coming up is uh a Yemeni strike uh on Tel Aviv that that happened um this week. So I just wanted to warn people that there's audio incoming of uh rocket sirens uh from Tel Aviv. So that's that's the many Palestine 2 ballistic missiles. Uh that's after the intercept of them. The A3 hit that one and knocked it to pieces. Um and so that the A3 system, air defense system has been intercepting these but only partially. Um so we've seen fragments landing uh throughout the area um that's targeted which is Bengurian airport and this is uh goes along with the sea blockade in the Red Sea. Um uh Abdal Malik Al Houthi um said that they were going to escalate their attacks and so that's what we're seeing here. They're escalating their attacks firing ballistic missiles daily now um at Israel targeting Bengurian airport in order to disrupt uh air traffic. um to match the naval blockade. These rockets sent uh these ballistic missiles, these are missiles um precisiong guided ballistic missiles um with a 500 kilo warhead. They're significantly up uh an up a significant upgrade from what is fired from Gaza. But you can see here um because of the speed, the size, and the payload, the warnings uh are all over Tel Aviv. But the a target is Bengurian airport which disrupted flight. On Friday, the Yemeni armed forces said in accordance with um Sad Al Houthi's promise of an quote escalation for escalation at the highest level, the Yemeni armed forces announced an aerial blockade on the Zionist entity while announcing multiple operations in support of the oppressed Palestinian people and in backing their noble and valiant resistance. The missile force targeted Bengurian airport in the occupied Yafa area with a Palestine 2 hypersonic ballistic missile. And there's been daily operations of these um as you're seeing these warnings. Um the they marked they fired them today to mark the a 10th anniversary of the beginning of the war the US Saudi war uh on Yemen where Yemen endured a mountainous country with tunnels um and uh was subject to 25,000 air strikes um that killed 50 thou killed and wounded 50,000 people uh over that decade including 10,000 children uh killed during that offensive. So uh a besieged people and attacked people in solidarity with besieged and attacked people uh Yemen and Gaza respectively. Uh if we look at number nine um Kasam's also been firing on Ashcolon. Uh these are uh shorter range rockets uh Kasam rockets that are being fired at M at Magal Ascalon which is the original name um of Ashcolon where many of the people in the Gaza Strip are from. So these are symbolic attacks um on the Gaza envelope and north of the Gaza envelope to the villages that Palestinians in Gaza are from. There's been five separate rocket attacks this week. uh Saral Kuds Islamic Jihad has taken part of them. They launched attacks on uh yesterday on the Israeli military's Hatsurim air base. That is the air base that is attacking the Gaza Strip with these brutal massacres that have killed over 800 people uh including 300 plus children um during these non-military attacks uh on bread lines and people in tents. And if we look at the next slide, you can see um the again the red alerts. These are red alerts that are sent to all Israeli phones and this is what makes them run to their shelters. They're put out by Kuma. Um but they're also uh handinhand with uh the Israeli military that sends them out as well. these rockets um that were fired uh the Yemeni rocket many missile that was fired at Tel Aviv yesterday interrupted Netanyahu's speech um where he talked about um uh the justification for the war uh in in Gaza and linked it to the demonstrations on the ground uh in Gaza saying that that uh that proved that the their war was going well. Um, so then they in the middle of that he had to run to a shelter. Uh, I just want to show you something cynically here by the Israeli military. We don't usually show Israeli um military videos out of principle, but we're going to show you one here. Number 11. Um, they made a big fuss this week about how they had bombed 100 pickup trucks in Gaza. This is their uh their pathological uh response to the uh prisoner exchange and the trucks of October 7th um that became a symbol of October 7th. But the trucks that uh carried out the prisoner exchanges um and so they told their population that they had carried out this valiant uh operation to destroy 100 pickup trucks. And you can see, you can't really see from the air uh what they're hitting, but they're attempting to hit the pickup trucks that carried prisoners and fighters um and that were uh very much a part of the psychological warfare of the prisoner exchanges. But let's look at the next slide, number 12, uh and look at the reality on the ground. Even uh Army Radio showed that. So these are not the trucks of October 7th. These are not the trucks of the uh prisoner exchange. These are 50-year-old pickup trucks that are people that have nothing to do with anything being bombed. But this is just I just wanted to show you this out of just to show how cynical it is because this entire thing is not a military a war on a military. It's a war on civilians which you can see in this final slide here from the Ministry of Health in Gaza that you can see the number of murdered children 15,613 martyrs. The Gaza Health Ministry published an updated fatality list this week which is 1516 pages long. uh single space with the names, date of birth, gender um of the of the people that have been killed in this war, more than 50,000. But 27 pages of this uh report were less than one year old kids killed before their first birthday. 27 pages of single spaced lines. 270 babies killed um that were born during this war among the 15,600 kids killed. So this is not a military confrontation. The resistance has no way to reach the Israeli planes. Um and at this point um they're they're reduced to um the the war has been reduced to uh savage attacks on civilian population. So that is the resistance report for this week. We will stay on top of this of course as we do every week. Um but for now that is the resistance report. [Music]