Unseen Abu Obeida footage released, with Jon Elmer

You are watching and listening to the electronic kitifada. I am John Elmer. This is the resistance report for day 839 of Israel's genocide. Day 105 of this fraud ceasefire. Just throw up a quick graphic here before I get into the martyr statements. Um this a graphic from Hamas here that they released uh marking 100 days. And of course, everyone who's been listening to the show up till now uh knows that these numbers are out of date as soon as they're published because this is an ongoing uh situation. Ahmed just reported on 15 more uh Palestinians killed in Gaza, including three journalists. Hamas here notes, 1298 violations, 428 direct fire at civilians, 66 incursions into civilian neighborhoods, 604 bombing and shelling of civilian homes, and 483 killed,4 wounded. Again, those numbers are now out of date. Uh but Hamas remarks that the international silence encourages the continuation of the violations and complicates the chance of establishing any future agreement which as a one statement uh precy uh really summarizes where we're at. um because I don't know how um there could be future agreements with this state that um just ignores entirely um the deal that they agreed upon. And in this statement, Hamas said that um despite the conditions for which the occupation bears full responsibility for creating, the movement succeeded in locating 27 of the 28 bodies of the captives and continues to search for the final body in coordination with the mediators and the international committee of the Red Cross, achieving the results um that exceeded expectations were the product of sincere and continuous efforts. And just on the targeting of civilians um of the 483 martyrs which again is u now out of date 169 uh children um representing 35% uh are children. So uh again that's a consistent uh trend throughout uh Israel's military campaigns. It's always children. Um the number of injured 1,294 again uh it's mostly children 428 children uh 33% um are children um 10 are resistance fighters. Uh so that is just uh an update on the ceasefire uh as it stands now on day 105 of the fraud. Um okay let's take a look at uh video number two. This is Maddi Jabar Kawara. He was um commander of the Kasam Brigades uh southern battalion of the Conunus brigade, the Osama bin Zed um uh is the name of the battalion named after an expeditionary commander uh and a companion of the prophet. something that we're seeing here. We're seeing um Madi Kawara was born 1977, died in May 2025 at 47 years of age. Uh he was assassinated alongside Kasam Chief of Staff Muhammad Sinoir and Rafa Brigade Commander Muhammad Shabbana in Conunus in a Communist tunnel in May of last year. I'll get to those details shortly. What we're looking at right now is footage of Kawara uh in a tunnel um inspecting the tunnels, uh meeting with soldiers, just footage that you never otherwise would see. Um and these martyr videos are um peppered with these uh really incredible historic footage that we see here. We're seeing him there in a training session here. We see him addressing troops. Um um he was Kawara was before uh becoming the southern battalion chief in the Kasam brigades um conunist brigade. Uh he was a um he was in the weapons manufacturing. His his trajectory follows Kasam in many ways. He was a weapons manufacturing uh department operative. He was an operative um within the Nukeba force. There's footage right there of Abu Abeda uh at a meeting. We'll get to that footage after with so we can focus on it. Um uh Kawara was the Nukeba commander of the Nukba battalion of the uh Conunist brigade. There we see him with Rafa Salama who is a a top uh Kasam operative um really close to Dave. There he is there uh again in meetings with troops. Um we don't we don't see this you know back 20 years ago Kasam used to do um interviews with media and they used to wear they wear kafias and cover um their faces but you knew who they were um and they were hit with an assassination shortly after a really famous alazer documentary in 2006 and they stopped doing um that for the most part um almost entirely and so [snorts] this footage is just really remarkable uh historic footage to see um the inside of this leadership. And you can see in all of these clips, he's addressing troops, he's addressing his fighters. Um he was a a trainer and an establisher of the Nukeba Force. That's the elite special forces battalion. You know, you see him in a tunnel. You see him meeting with other commanders here. Um handing out uh and signing documents for fighters. Um and in he spoke in a couple of these. In this clip, he says that um this path, he's speaking to soldiers here. He says, "This path requires steadfastness. This path, even if it is difficult, requires men of character, strength, and determination and the courage of Casam soldiers. It's a difficult path, a path of thorns, but we are certain of victory, certain of liberation." And then he quotes from the Quran, they see it as distant, we see it as near. Um [snorts] the communist brigade has um six battalions and he was the commander of the southern um battalion. There's also a Nukeba battalion within each of the brigades. Um there's a Rafa brigade, a communist brigade, a central camps uh brigade, Gaza city brigade, and then there's northern Gaza brigade which includes um the Javalia camp and uh Beth Hanoon and Baha. Here you see a meeting with a field commander in a tunnel. Um just again just remarkable footage that each of these have uh each of these videos have. This so far Kasam has released 21 um videos um of fallen fighters from commanders. This is the most senior commander. There you see him testing fuses because he was in the uh military manufacturing department. and he's checking uh fuses for the shawad uh explosively formed penetrator. Um in in this uh in this clip he just talks repeatedly to his soldiers talking about steadfastness, talking about determination, talking about the character that it makes uh that is required to be a Kasam fighter and the importance of um of fighting the report the importance of the national liberation struggle in all of these uh clips. There you see him as a younger man. Um all out in the community. Again, these fighters um are in the community. They're known in the community. Um and in this one, he's speaking. This is a message he says to our Zionist enemy. We are a people of struggle. He's saying here, a people of resistance, a nation of fighters. Your planes will not intimidate us. Your tanks will not intimidate us. We are steadfast on this path to liberation on our land until we raise the banner over the blessed Alaska mosque. Um, this hour of victory, he says, will not come except while we are soldiers in the Casam army. In other words, nobody is handing over a state that's never happened uh before it comes out of the project of resistance. So just a very interesting um footage there of Madi Kuara. Um in this next video you can see this is the clip with Abu Oda here number three uh Ha Al Kalut as we know now. Here he is speaking side by side with Kuara uh addressing a an event. I mean this footage is new. All this footage is new. We don't see this type of footage at all of these commanders alive. Um, and with Abu Beda, we did not know um, the public didn't know him except for uh, under his kafia. These martyr videos are remarkable moment in history of the Palestinian struggle and the war pulled back the curtain on two decades of preparation and secrecy. So, seeing this footage after seeing the October 7th operation and the two-year defense of Gaza against Israel's genocidal war is a revealing of a program um, that was known in parts. We knew parts of this and we knew it was happening uh in some ways but we didn't know the totality of it until uh the operation of October 7th and then the ability of the Cassam brigades to fight for two years to never run out of weaponry uh never run out of fighters, never surrender, never leave uh you know never leave the mount of archers as they say. Um they never left their positions. They fought in territorial um defense all through the two-year war right up till the last moment. Um and Kunis of course was the center of that. In a lot of ways Kunis is the center of gravity of the Casam program over the past um two decades. Of course the the Sinoir brothers are from Kununis. Muhammad Dave was their friend from school um and in the south because of the and Rafa was an important um brigade as well because of the tunnel trade uh into Egypt that um ran until the mid2010s. Um and so in the earlier stages of Casam, the south was very much the um the center of gravity. And it's just interesting to note this this photo when you see this photo because um it's not clear how many in Casam's ranks knew who Abu Oba was. Um so when you see him addressing troops like this, it's unclear the size or who is in these meetings. Um but it was interesting because it brought to mind uh to me Immad Magna who was uh Hezbollah's most important commander architect of the development of um of Hezbollah's program. He was assassinated in Damascus in 2008 and videos like this like what we're seeing were released of him of of McNeia. There was no picture of him after 19 early 1980s like 1983 was all the FBI was using for their manhunt for him. So, it's a little bit different because uh Houdal Kut's picture was released by Israel um during the 2014 war, but still it's unclear how many people uh knew who he was. Um Gaza is of course a small and deeply interconnected place. It's a little bit different than the Magna situation, but after Magnea, these videos of Magnea were shown, um Hezbollah fighters said, "Oh, he I know him. He was in this meeting and that meeting." They all knew him. they just didn't know that that was him. Uh so I I wonder to what degree um that's happening with uh Hud Al Kalut who we see here um with Madi Kawara. Um so let's talk a bit a little bit about the assassination. If you next slide number five I think here. Yeah, you can see the assassination um that was targeting Muhammad Sinir. Muhammad Shabbana who was targeting Muhammad Sinir who was the chief of staff at that time before um the assassination of Muhammad Al. He was uh operations chief and before that he was communist brigade uh chief but you can see what the assassination was. This is in the neighborhood of the uh European general uh European Gaza hospital and Israel made a big deal about this uh tunnel being under the hospital but it was not. It was not a command center in a hospital. Um, it was a massive tunnel network that ran underneath the uh the this area in South Kunas, which is the area of responsibility for uh Kawara's battalion. And you can see Israel, this was 50 uh bunker busters dropped in a 30 secondond span uh all around uh very similar to the Nasala assassination. Um, and the the goal of the strike was to penetrate down into the tunnel system and essentially uh the explosions in the tunnels suck the oxygen out of the tunnels and suffocate anyone that was in the tunnels. Um, and so 50 munitions in 30 seconds is the the most significant strike on Gaza um throughout the war using bunker busters. And for the next 2 days, Israel stayed uh on top of this area and struck with fire belts anyone that came uh and attempt to go near any of these tunnels. And again, about the European hospital, it's not a command center in the hospital. It's a tunnel that runs through the entire neighborhood. And these strikes were um as far as 800 meters away from uh the hospital because of the tunnel network. The tunnel runs underneath every part of the city. As we know, it's a spiderweb that the Israelis now think is a thousand kilometers of tunnels. Um, but Israel used it as a propaganda tool u to justify their destruction of every hospital in Gaza. Um but again another fraud uh that they uh perpetuated saying that this was a command center under uh a hospital although they struck all around the hospital and killed as many as 48 people in that strike wounding 70. Um if we go to the next slide you can see what it looks like uh sucking a bus here into a sinkhole and that these strikes were all over the neighborhood. And this photograph is taken by Moaz Abu Taha. And Moaz Abu Taha was a photographer who was killed shortly after. He was killed in the Nasser Hospital double tap strike um that killed uh multiple journalists, killed four other journalists. Hassam al- Maserie, it was a Reuters reporter. He was killed in the in the initial strike on Nasser Hospital. Miam Abu Dhaka from the Associated Press was a fixture at Nasser Hospital. Muhammad Salamo is an Al Jazzer journalist and um Ahmmed Abu Aziz and Moaz Abu Taha were AFP photographers. So this photo uh was taken by the late Moaz Abu Taha. Um we can just look on the next slide as well. You can see they just poked through the neighborhood. Some places they knew where the tunnel was, some places they didn't. Um but the key to this operation, I don't think this is a leap at at all to say this operation was executed 24 hours after the Cassam brigades uh released the US soldier, the lone soldier um who was fighting in Gaza um when he was captured on October 7th from a base across from Kunis uh Adan Alexander. And this was on May the 12th. Kasam released him as a gesture of and as part of a deal with Witoff um to open the borders because this was the prime period of the starvation tactic in Gaza. Um and essentially what happened was uh you can imagine that uh the process of of um authorizing the release of this soldier, this captured soldier required the highest level um approval and discussion and in in the moment of the in the moment of the war at that stage of the war to have that kind of information to know that uh that Israel and the US was sending a message that the US was sending a message to Kasam um talking about releasing this um releasing the soldier um and within uh 24 hours of that um the place where the commanders were um was targeted. So it's not a leap uh to say that um that handover process of that soldier um led to this assassination. And then of course immediately after the release of the soldier uh Witito gave the soldier a Star of David necklace and then Witco went on TV and said that essentially that they had reneggged on the deal to open the border and Israel had no intention of opening the border. Um and in the next slide you could see this is the martyr poster of Muhammad Sinoir. Um this is the younger brother of Yaha Sinoir. He was one of uh the few commanders in Casam of this generation who stayed free uh for the entire um for his entire uh military career. Um he was he shared the counter intelligence gene from his brother. He was the architect of uh the tunnel project um but also the uh tunnel raids where uh in 2006 he captured he led the raid that captured um Israeli tank gunner Gilad Shalit and then set up the shadow unit which is the unit that looks after captives and kept uh the Israeli soldier Shalit captive for uh 5 years kept him safe and ultimately exchanged him for 1,027 Palestinian fighters. including Yaha Sinoir which completely changed the the trajectory of the armed struggle. Uh Muhammad Senoir um was uh command was communist brigade chief. Um after the enduring and after the second inifada he became the operations chief and after the assassination of um uh Muhammad Alv and Rafi Salama. In um in the summer of 2024 uh Sinar became the chief of staff of the Kasam brigades. And the next poster is uh Muhammad Shabbana. He was a commander of the Rafa brigade um and a senior figure within the movement. He was a key figure in establishing the military media department for years um that was ultimately led by Abu Oda Hutal Kaloo. Um and he was uh commander of the Rafa brigade involved in many of the operations in the Rafa area. Like I said, it was a key area, a key center of gravity was in the south. Um, and so, uh, the assassination of Sinoir, um, Shabbana and Madi Kara, um, was in, uh, was a a costly strike. No question about it. Uh, a lot of institutional knowledge in these three figures. Um but the showing the videos uh and we will continue to go through the videos and try to find um important historical parts to report on. Uh but this has been the resistance report for day 839 of Israel's genocide in Gaza. >> Thank you so much, John. Um, God, I I I remember that photo of the bus um just, you know, sticking out of the the ground after Israel bombed um relentlessly around it. Um and I mean just, you know, and that that was uh I mean it feels like decades ago at this point. Um how long ago was that? A year. >> May 20 May. Last May. >> Last May. last May. It was just at the beginning of the uh Gideon's chariots when Israel had returned to war. >> Um and it's just it's basically a certainty that the release of that uh Israeli American soldier was what what led to that, >> right? >> There has to be meetings to discuss releasing him. um Israel and the US is able to then zero in on those areas and see what is different in the >> um in the you know monitoring signals intelligence and you can see where those differences are >> and so they struck that tunnel and they showed that tunnel I didn't show it um you've seen what the tunnels look like um but you know these men who are the se seniormost commanders in in some ways the most important commanders in the organization Um, and they're living in like on a mattress in a room with a bottle of water and a can of, you know, spam. Um, they lived they lived and ate what their people ate. Um, and the their bodies they were suffocated in so you could see where they were um, in these rooms. They're not um I mean the the the tunnel system is brilliant um but it's not fancy. Uh these guys were living um you know a really difficult uh really difficult lives in those tunnels. Um and it's just it just shows you you know like the most important leaders are fighting in the same trench as their people. Um, and you nothing really shows that more than when you see where they were, the top commanders in a tiny little room with three mattresses on the ground. Um, a captured Israeli weapon. Um, but just very uh austere just like their people were living at the time. >> Yeah. Well, thank you for that. Um it's just it's really interesting that now uh you know all of these uh video testimonials um and uh you know kind of like these these many histories are coming out about these uh these commanders and these significant military leaders. Um and yeah it's uh I mean someone should write a book about it at some point. [laughter] It's important history to document and uh >> who will do it. So >> we are here to record the history whatever it is. People can like it, they can hate it. >> We report, you decide.