Resistance steady as Israeli troops draw down, with Jon Elmer

You are watching and listening to the electronic inifatada. I am John Elmer. This is the resistance report for day 678 of Israel's criminal genocide. I am reporting this on the 14th of August. Um we'll bring up the first map as always just so people can get uh their footing and uh understand the areas that we are going to talk about. I've told you on previous shows that Operation Gideon's chariots had been um essentially ended um more than a month ago. I reported to you that there was no uh the satellite imagery showed no advance of troops during um the second part of Gideon's chariots which focused down in the south there in Kunis. Um 80% upwards of 80% of all structures in Gaza have been destroyed. Gideon's chariots operation was expressly an operation targeting buildings and not the resistance. But the resistance mounted more than 200 operations, qualitative operations um against the Israeli military in Conunus alone. That is the second battle of Conunus. And of course, um, as I've told you, June, uh, and then July was even, uh, more costly for the Israelis. Those are the two deadliest months, um, in the past year of this battle. Um, the Israeli military has now drawn down um, its force in Gaza by more than 23, have withdrawn um, after the end of Gideon's chariots. Um there are now five brigades of the IDF in Gaza, which amounts to a single division. Although although they are spread out across three divisions, um they just began a new operation in Zetun in southeastern Gaza City that you can see up there on the top of the map. One of the areas that uh right around Gaza that you see, that's Gaza City. Um and Satun is just um to the souththeast uh of Gaza City. It's a neighborhood in Gaza City. That operation began um yesterday and already we're getting field reports of multiple Yasine strikes versus tanks and D9 armored bulldozers in Zetun. Um there are still Israeli troops on the two corridors that I've broke down over the past few months. the Morag corridor that divides uh Rafa and Conunis down in the south of the map. Now there we're looking at um just north of Egypt and also the Magen O uh corridor which is cutting Conunice from east to west and the uh Moore corridor cuts Rafa uh from Conunis. Rafa in the south, Conunice in the north. Um the major troop withdrawals this week have been from the eastern edge of Gaza City where um destructive operations were carried out over the past weeks uh in Tufa and Shajaya in particular. Um, and this week, at the end of last week, um, just after we went off air last week, the, um, Israeli security cabinet met in a 10-hour meeting to discuss next steps. Um during that meeting, actually that meeting was preceded by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, doing a media blitz in the United States because that is the most important audience uh for the Israelis because that is the country that is protecting Israel, supplying it with its weapons um and giving it its free hand to carry out this genocide as we all know. Um, but that media blitz by Netanyahu was saying that they were going to occupy Gaza, that they were going to attack Gaza City, western Gaza city, the Shotti refugee camp, um, areas that they have not been, the Israeli military has not been in since late 2023 when of course they said they had operational control over that area. Um I mean Israel started saying they had operational control over areas in the north of Gaza within two weeks of the ground war. These have been absurd statements that are um always rebuked by the uh resistance at every turn because each of these battles now in Zetun, this is the seventh battle of Zetun that is going on um beginning today. But the 10-hour um security cabinet meeting um the IDF chief of staff presented at that meeting. He and his forces are against the um occupation um of Gaza City. Um they're not interested in the fighting. They're exhausted. Their troops are exhausted. They have had 20,000 troops taken off the battlefield. That's more than two full divisions uh taken off the battlefield through injuries. Um and the uh security cabinet meeting ended up being um an argument between the IDF chief and the political uh and Netanyahu's uh extreme right-wing government. Um IDF chief of staff Al Zamir um was pushed back apparently hard against the operation. Um, and it's again, like I said before, it's the exhaustion of the troops and their gear. It has nothing to do with uh uh the fact the massacres of civilians or these aid trap massacres. Um, but earlier this month, 19 exid chiefs, chiefs of military intelligence, Aman, um, Shabbach, the internal security and Mossad, external security chiefs. 19 of those chiefs uh made a video uh directed at Trump um where they spoke English in the video and uh a couple salient points from that video of those ex- chiefs uh a number of um ex IDF chief of staffs um they said we are on the precipice of defeat um we are now mostly offsetting losses u to the resistance is the implication and of course offsetting the losses is what they're doing with the demolitions Um so the plan to invade Gaza City is going to be slowwalked um while they give troops a break. Um and in this interim period um some talk about the operation launching on October 7th. This is the kind of um psychological uh approach the Israelis are taking to this kind of battle. Um drawing it to October 7th. Um and so we may have here um a number of weeks uh of aid massacres, massacres from the air um but limited military maneuvers on the ground. Um during that 10-hour security council uh security cabinet meeting, Netanyahu told the IDF chief that his methods had failed to achieve the goals. Everybody is very consistent in Israel, in the security establishment, in the political establishment and across Israel that the operation has been a failure uh a genocide but a military failure. Um um ch uh senior uh senior IDF officials sharply criticized the security cabinet meeting to channel 13 saying um that the military is sinking into the sands of Gaza. Something that the Cassam brigades and the resistance has promised since the first day of this operation. But there was an article in Yio Aeronote this week uh that caught my attention that had uh the main source of it was Michael Milstein who is the former head of uh Israeli military intelligence and the Palestine file. Um and uh that article in Yeti Areron said nearly two years after Israel launched a war aimed at dismantling Hamas following the October 7th attacks, the movement remains the dominant force in Gaza. Despite the devastation of infrastructure, the assassination of top leaders and a crippling blockade, Hamas continues to govern, fight, and even pay salaries. The endurance that Yedon Areronaut said is not a coincidence. It's the result of an organization that has embedded itself deeply within the fabric of Gaza society, adapted militarily and evolved its financial tactics to survive one of the most intense conflicts in the region's modern history and one of the most brutal u live stream genocides that any of us uh have witnessed in our lifetimes for sure. That's my uh point that was not in the Yeti Areronote article, but that is just to give you a sense of where we are right now. Major drawdown by the Israeli military in Gaza, which will not affect the number of massacres because those are done through air strikes and artillery that Norah reported on uh so well at the beginning of this show. um that won't change, nor will the massacre at aid sites change, which are um as Norah pointed out, more than 35 a day. Um, but in terms of resistance and face-to-face combat between the Israeli military and the Palestinian resistance, I think we're going to see a period here um of a slight lull in comparison to the 200 operations in Kununis alone in less than two months. Um, and dozens if not hundreds of operations in North Gaza uh during that period as well. Well, let's take a look at map number two, cuz I showed you this map last week. These are the genocide maps. These maps can be uh sent right to the HEG. And for anyone making files on this genocide, um this map was updated this week. This is the United Nations Food and Agriculture Association map. And you can see damaged, it's showing you damaged and um damaged crop sites, uh areas to grow agriculture that have been intentionally destroyed by the Israelis during this battle. This map is a little bit clearer than the one I showed last week. They published follow-up details to that this week. So, I'm going to dig into that a little bit to show you just uh another way that uh Israel has been destroying the sustainability in Gaza um that has been built over the last two decades of an intense uh military siege and blockade on Gaza and Gaza making itself uh self-sufficient in many of these um agricultural areas. Um um and and that's what you're seeing on this map. I'm going to show you um the two next slides uh show you the the the exact breakdown. It's really remarkable total damage to crop land as of the end of July in hectares uh northern Gaza 93.7% of North Gaza has been destroyed. North Gaza was a major hub of agricultural activity, particularly Beth Hanoon and Beth Lahia. Um but all across eastern um the eastern areas of northern Gaza were uh heavily relied on agricultural areas. The Gaza um the Gaza governor itself 91% destroyed. Darabala in the middle camps area also an agricultural area more than 85% of it has been destroyed in the south again wide um spread out uh governor it communis is and its major agricultural areas uh 81.3% wiped out Rafa it it's also in the south um agricultural areas have been destroyed by 80% and it's only not more in Rafa uh uh right now because it's under uh Israeli control and surely before they withdraw from there they'll destroy uh the agricultural land which is something they have done in every war um of the past two decades uh destroyed the crops as they were leaving we've watched this all throughout the war uh the way Israel has destroyed green houses as a goal of their operations and this next slide will show you that um zero you can see the whole areas. North Gaza has zero uh accessible crop space that has not been damaged. Zero accessible crop space in north of Gaza in the in the north with Beth Hanoon being an agricultural uh village town. Um they have zero zero in Rafa is accessible. Um and zero is also uh accessible that has not been destroyed. The key messages from the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization, 8.6% less than 9% of crop land in the Gaza Strip is still accessible, but only 1.5% of that is accessible and not damaged. Another 12% of crop land is not damaged, but is currently not accessible. So, you're talking about a maximum amount of 12% throughout the Gaza Strip. 86% of the total crop land damaged as of the end of July. Um, so this is a tally that gets worse every day. Norah reported on uh an excellent program that shows you what could be done uh with this land and what people in Gaza do with this agricultural land to allow themselves to be self-sufficient. And that's part of the heartbreak of seeing these um aid massacres is that the Palestinian people are self-sufficient people um that have been through the genocide forced um to go and risk their lives to pick up aid uh which was previously distributed by the United Nations in dignified ways that allowed all people who needed aid to get it and not just a race uh against the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. And let's look at the next slide here because there's a couple um slides that I saw this week that I thought I would bring to people's attentions because we've talked about these aid massacres on every single show. Um every single day in the news you're getting 35 plus uh people killed, hundreds wounded because they're just spraying ammunition. But we haven't really shown the mechanism for how that works. And if you're looking at this map here, um if you look down on the left side of the map at Rafa there, um all the gray area is the evacuation zone. So all of Rafa is under evacuation orders. You can see on the coast up at the coastline. Um there's a distribution site number one. Then you can see beside it, distribution site number two, and distribution site number three is on the Morag corridor in Rafa, uh on the border with Kunis. But you can see that the sites, all three of those sites are in the shoot tokill zones. They're in the no-go evacuation zones that are free fire zones for the Israelis. Those red dots there are showing you where the checkpoint is that they Israelis ask people to come to to gather at. It's the mustering point. And you can see that all three of those mustering points are also in the shoot tokill zone. So, Palestinians are being asked to walk for kilometers through the shoot tokill zone. Um, and Israelis could spray them with ammunition and as we've seen from the whistleblowers, artillery shells, mortar rounds being fired to use as crowd control to use as direction um for the pe the thousands of people that are coming to try to get the aid. And the aid only goes to the strongest people because you have to traverse that multicolor uh area. You have to survive the mass shootings. Um and then you have to get all the way back through the uh closed zone to get back to your family in the uh Moasi um camp, which is what you see along the border uh with the Mediterranean Sea. The white area in this map at the top of the map is the Mediterranean Sea. So that's Moasi on the sand dunes there. That's the middle uh camps uh area where you see under evacuation order. Um it's the evacuation order is between Darl Bala and the south um and between uh the middle camps and the north in Gaza. But you can see the other um site up in the north there is also um it's below the Netzarim corridor. Uh it's across uh from a closed military zone. It cannot be accessed from Gaza City. It has to be accessed from the middle camp. So, there's none of these sites truly in the north. Uh, and I just wanted to show you how that mechanism works and why we have 1,900 uh people killed since this uh GHF um death trap uh system was set up. 13,600 wounded in these uh aid uh distribution sites. These are just appalling crimes on every level and the fact that the world is participating uh in this and doing these airdrops to um to back this uh program up um is a deep shame uh and justice needs to be served on those. Let's look at the next slide because you can see the actual satellite imagery of the distance that people have to walk. You can see the red area. The red area marks the shoot tokill zones and the above that red area you can see um those dots are tents. Those are thousands tens of thousands of makeshift tents that people are living in along the coast in Milwaukee on sand dunes with no infrastructure. Um and then they're told to walk from their displacement camps down these multicometers. You can see on the map it's showing it's 2.6 6 kilometers from the muster point which is already in the shootute tokill zone 2.6 km to the aid site. Um and on the other one it's 2.7 kilometers to the aid site. And you can also see with this uh satellite imagery, this is from the economist. Uh you can see why people are being shot where they're in their tents because the Israelis are spraying ammunition along this uh area and it's right bordering against people in their tents. The tents obviously have no way of stopping incoming rounds or shrapnel. Um and people are coming into the hospitals uh in Kunis every single day at the same time every single day with the same injuries every single day um from being hit while in their tents minding their own business um through these Israeli massacres of the aid sites. So I just wanted to put those uh maps in people's mind when we're talking about uh what it looks like to collect those aids. Let's take a look at the resistance. Here we have audio track in the first of this. So, I just I wanted to leave that audio track in there just so you could see what what is going on when these fighters in the artillery unit here in the rocket unit are setting up uh their rocket launches. This is Sarah Aluds. This is an operation from this week and this is the kind of operations we're going to see for the next few weeks. I I'm I am predicting because uh the Israelis just aren't in areas to fight. they have withdrawn into defensive positions in all of their spots. Um and so that's when um I mean these artillery and rocket units are constantly working. But these are the kind of operations that we're going to see uh in the coming days. This was a a launch uh at the Gaza Envelope by Saral Kuds Islamic Jihad launching Kud's three Casam rockets um that you could see there. Um uh the artillery man uh in this operation he says, "Oh cowardly Zionists, we are in the rocket units have shelled you before the operation you called Gideon's chariots and we shelled you during the operation you called Gideon's chariots uh in the heart of the infiltration axis. And now we are shelling you after the end of Operation Gideon's chariots." Um, and so, uh, these fighters telling you they're still on the battlefield before, during, and after this military operation. It doesn't change, um, the way that these rocket and artillery units operate. Um, you're going to get a chance to see the rocket launch controller in this one. And you're going to see um Sel Kuds has their two uh famous rocket commanders um and overall commanders Baja Abu Alata and his brother Muhammad who were killed in the 2019 and 2021 wars. This is where the fighter is saying that you're cowards. He's he's saying this to the camera uh right now that we've targeted you. But if you watch the controller here, you can see there are two faces of the brothers on the controller. Um and that is um the those two were assassinated and um like all weapons that the Palestinians use um there's a link to a martyr on them and there is on these rocket operations as well. Just a note on these operations. Um these videos were this was this week. The video was published this week. Uh and the Israelis responded um in their military communicate that the that two rockets were fired at the southern at southern Israel in the Gaza envelope. Unsuccessful interception attempts were made. Uh so they failed. Iron Dome failed to hit these uh to knock down these rockets. these successfully landed in the Gaza envelope, continuing to target the Gaza envelope uh 678 days into the war. Um and then Israel bragged that an Israeli fighter jet bombed uh a lock, they call it Hamas, they call everybody Hamas. Um bombed a Hamas rocket launching position in the Shijaya neighborhood um that was firing rockets. The next day they fired uh two missiles at the uh launch uh tripod at la a day after everyone was gone from the scene of this operation. So just gives you an idea that Israel is still unable to knock these down. Um and the uh the significance there of the two brothers that you can see on the launch controller. um the link to the struggle that has been happening and we have seen all through this battle. Um so that is uh and then the next one we have another rocket operation here. Um this is showing you rockets u getting set up to be launched. This is um um an attack on Nahul Oz. Nahul Oz was the key Israeli military base that was overrun on October the 7th. overrun in minutes um that collapsed the Gaza division um on October 7th. And you can see the launch of those uh two rockets as well. The Israelis didn't talk about failed interceptions on this one. They pretended these didn't exist. They did not say they knocked them down, but this was also this week uh as well. Um and you can see there maybe maybe go to the next slide. Um you can see it even better on the next slide. Um there you see it uh on their rocket it says 2025 made in Palestine. So here we have Islamic Jihad Sarah Alkud's artillery and rocket unit showing us in that just in that brief moment that they always do. They didn't linger on it. I just did a freeze frame here to show you that they want you to see that this rocket was built in 2025. These are um an ongoing uh construction u the military manufacturing is ongoing um and I think we will probably see that uh if the u invasion of Gaza city happens uh as well we will see that we have seen it all throughout the war I think um that they've been able to manufacture during the war um also just a note um about the third battle of Tufa um a field commander in SAL Kud said that after the partial withdrawal of the enemy from the areas east of Gaza City in recent days and after reaching pre pre-prepared combat zones rigged with the um and other anti-armour landmines. Um the are the EFP of the Saral Kuds. It's like their shawad. Um as well as reverse engineered return to sender explosives from enemy rem uh rem remnants. Um they were able to this commander says able to target 52 IDF vehicles with Yasine strikes and IEDs and return to sender operations over the two and a half months uh of the operation in eastern Gaza city that is Shajaya Tufa uh and Zetun. Uh the next slide shows you I made a little uh uh compilation of these because I don't show you these week in and week out because um there's so many videos to show and the um artillery guys here, the mortar units, you don't see much. Um and so I usually leave them out, but just to say, and I've said it before, they always get short shrift. Um but there's 10 of these videos a week from all factions. Um these are Kasam that you're watching here but all factions PFLP's Abu Ali Mustapa brigade the DFLP's national resistance brigades the popular resistance committees Nasser Sahadin brigades the alammoodi brigade of the alaxa martyrs brigades and of course the heavy lifting is done by um the Kasam brigades and Sarah al- Kuds. These are 60, 80, and 120 mm mortar shells uh mortar bombs that are fired um that are built in Gaza as well um that you're watching here. And all factions released these videos. There was um a PFLP operation with Saral Kuds. There was a popular resistance committees um um art mortar video um with the Alammoodi brigades. Uh so we see these constantly and you just saw there that that was a Sarah and uh Casam joint operation and just this past week alone in Kunis there was 12 artillery operations. Um that's operations not amount of ammo fired because you can see here they're going to fire half a dozen per um per mortar launch in eastern Gaza city there was 14 uh artillery operations. Um, also this week, um, the Cassam brigades, uh, two days ago, they hit two Merkava tanks and two, uh, bulldozers with Yasin 105 shells in the Kunis area. Um, an Al Ghoul sniper operation in Tufa in Gaza City, um, seriously wounded a soldier from the 401st Armored Brigade, which the IDF u confirmed that wounding. Um, and I said today there was two Yasine strikes in Satun, a Yasine strike versus a tank and a Yasine strike versus a D9. So, these artillery men um and rocket units are uh hard at work. Um, they just don't always get on the show because there's so many other operations. I'm just going to take a quick look at Yemen. um just give you the map here and you can see that's a country 2,000 kilometers away from Palestine can impact it greatly and you can see many countries in between Yemen and Gaza that are not uh doing what Yemen is doing in support of the Palestinians. Um the Yemenes fired a the Yemeni armed forces fired a ballistic missile, the Palestine 2 ballistic missile with more than a 2,000 kilometer range. Um they targeted Bengurian airport overnight. Um if we take a look at the next slide, you can see the way that um that they have been uh showing us their work, their information operations. Abdul Malik al Houthi here saying there was 14 operations carried out last week. This is last week um including missiles and drones. This takes the tally um since the beginning of the war to 1,700 plus missiles, drones and unmanned uh boats, unmanned drone drone boats that they use, surface vessel uh robot surface vessel boats that they have used. You can see the two there. That's the Yafa drone on the bottom right. uh and it's overlaid on top of the Palestine 2 ballistic missile with the uh very notable Kafia nose cone uh on that missile and we've seen that missile strike uh within feet of the uh airport um the airport lounge at Bengurian airport. Um Abdel Malik al- Houthi uh said that um he said that the support operations from the Yemeni forces this week were carried out um he's talking about last week with 14 missiles and drones including targeting Bengurian airport as well as Yafa uh Hifa Ascalon um and of course the Red Sea blockade continues the naval blockade continues is successful effective and impactful he said and the port of Umrash which the enemy calls Elat that remains closed. Uh and that is still the case today. There was 10 Yemeni operations in the last week. Um if we look at the next slide, you can see how they do their information operations. Um Yahasari the spokesperson comes out and he gives uh an address. Whenever they every single time they carry out an operation, Yahasari comes out and gives a uh an address. But they also put out these um info cards that tell you what happened. So in this one they're talking about Tuesday's operation. It says the air force of the Yemeni armed forces carried out four military operations using six drones targeting vital Zionist enemy sites in the areas of Hifa, the Negev, Elat, Beerva, um and Bengurian airport. Um, the continued execution by the Zionist enemy of its plans to liquidate the Palestinian cause through genocide, starvation, and displacement will have dangerous repercussions for all Arab and Islamic countries and peoples. The liquidation of the Palestinian cause will be a prelude to the enemy's violation of other peoples and countries unless these countries move to support the steadfast resistance in Gaza, which is the first line of defense for the entire Islamic nation. Um that's what Yahasari said. And if we look at the next slide, you can see um this is an edited video uh that I put together of these weekly demonstrations in Sabain Square and Sana. Um these million men, million person marches that happen every single week. Abdul Malik al- Houthi gives a speech every single Thursday and at the end of his speech he calls on people to go to these demonstrations. Um and the on his Thursday speech last week um Abdel Malikal Houthi said if there had been widespread popular movements across Araban Muslim countries it would have influenced the decisions and positions of the rulers of those regimes. From the American perspective the land that belongs to Israel isn't just Palestine. It is the entire region. The Israeli and American powers are genocidal in their ideology, behavior, and practice. They are a danger to all human societies, Abdul Malik al Houthi said. So that is the resistance report for day 678 of Israel's criminal genocide in Gaza. [Music]