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Radio War Nerd EP #494 — The Gaza Resistance, feat. Jon Elmer (Patreon)

Published:
2025-01-18 22:56:19
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2025-01
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Content

Guest: Jon Elmer, Electronic IntifadaRecorded: January 17, 2024

We talk to Jon Elmer about the Gaza resistance forces, structure, strategies, tactics and weapons — one of the central stories in the Gaza war that's been completely ignored by the western media.

*Check out Jon's weekly Resistance Reports at Electronic Intifada. Follow Jon on Twitter.*Links to some videos of Qassam hand-delivered sticky bombs inserted into Israeli armor here, here, here, here.*Read Jon's articles including "How Gaza-made weapons are impacting the battle against Israeli armored vehicles" 

Total time: 1:42:07Direct link to this episode's mp3 here

*

Subscribe to Radio War Nerd at patreon.com/radiowarnerd

Sound production by Telescope Audio

Check out the Radio War Nerd Merch store here!

Order your print or ebook of John Dolan's new book Erdogan Pizza: Dispatches from a Violent & Grotesque World

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Comments

William

I think I’ve been waiting for this one

Pay

Elmer rocks

William

So happy to see blinken’s moment ruined

C-Web

Love John Elmer, so excited to listen

Bryan Nicholson

I was gonna eat my vegetables (part 2 of the series on the history of US intervention in the ME), then you guys drop dessert (John Elmer’s resistance report). I’m only human! 😭

cogandbal

Yep this resistance will be put Into books and studied. Flaws and success

Peter Z

Excellent stuff. Certainly noticed the mention of "ghetto" and "knocks on the door in the middle of the night". Never forget.

a clash of purple

wth is wrong with the Israelis that they don't have infantry support for their armored vehicles? Are they just too cowardly to walk around on foot? Even if Hamas didn't have anti-tank capabilities (which they clearly do) an isolated tank can be incapacitated just by point-blank small arms fire. An American tank in Iraq I think was machine-gunned by insurgents to the point that the crew inside passed out from the noise of bullets hitting the hull. The crew members survived, but it goes to show how vulnerable armor can be against infantry. The IDF's show of incompetence and cowardice against the resistance in Gaza should never be forgotten. Things might have gone their way more in Syria and Lebanon, but the Israelis have really shown themselves to be terrible fighters. Without American aid their recent adventures probably would have been a truly shocking disaster.

Tristan

I feel like it goes hand in hand with the discipline. You need real discipline and respected command to get people following orders they feel are more dangerous. Wildly firing at buildings and looting destroys that internal discipline

blazed uncle

Jon Elmer’s such a great guest. Also it’s wild how much you learn about the physics of shaped charges when learning about Al-Qassam tactics.

Dies Irae63

Really good interview. Jon Elmer and Electronic Intifada have done so much great work for the right reasons . I’m glad I listened til the end. The Palestinian martyrs might turn world history. Courage can be contagious.

DumbDumDumbDumb

The first fully urban guerrilla movement, and a shocking success given this particular niche’s history— the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the Red Summers in the US come to mind. This success of the resistance in Gaza should be a harbinger for the coming climate refugee waves, and I expect all major militaries to develop doctrines of suppression and elimination based on Israel’s failure to ethnically cleanse the city with traditional military force. Love Jon Elmer, great stuff

a clash of purple

The sheer cowardice of the IDF is more appalling and disgusting to me than anything, especially contrasted with the heroism of the Palestinian fighters. They're too afraid to actually engage Hamas, so they brutalize the helpless civilian population, journalists, and aid workers instead. They would rather die huddled in their tanks than walk the streets of Gaza on foot or clear the tunnels. The idea that anyone could feel anything other than complete contempt for the state of Israel is incomprehensible to me.

a clash of purple

What "doctrines" do you expect these racist idiot cowards to come up with? The Palestinian resistance is a consequence of years of compounding abject failures of Israeli counter-insurgency. And I highly doubt any current "major" militaries are any more smart or competent than the Israelis. Organized resistance is what happens when counter-insurgency fails. When a restive population is being successfully suppressed, there's no meaningful armed resistance movements to speak of, like black or native Americans. The fact that such resistance is allowed to exist in a place already shows that the rulers have become too weak to crush them anymore. At that point it's a foregone conclusion.

George P

Who knows if those Israeli weasels will hold up their end of the deal but you’ve gotta feel for the real victims of this ceasefire: the libs who were hoping Trump would raze Gaza and the West Bank to punish the lefties who wouldn’t vote Dem because of the genocide. They just can’t stop taking L’s.

Mac

All the israeli tanks have the Trophy active protection system on them. It's basically a radar controlled shotgun used to shoot down incoming rockets and missles. It's an automatic system so if it triggers and there is infantry around, the infantry get shredded by the projectiles. It's also not a perfect system and needs the rocket to be launched from a good distance away to give the system time to react, hence why we still see tanks being blown up by RPGs as they are usually launched from fairly close up. So between the risk associated with standing next to the trophy system, and general Israeli cowardice, we don't see much infantry support.

Schaeffer Mallory

I think given the insane and to my mind historically unprecedented asymmetry of power, and the fact that Gaza is an open air prison, it seems safe to say Hamas is one of the most effective armed resistance groups in history. Simply that they still exist and have actually grown during the genocide seems to really cement that

Josh

Been waiting for this one!

a clash of purple

Yeah, Elmer mentioned that in the interview... Are the Israelis somehow unaware that *infantry* are the "active protection system" of armored vehicles? People figured that out in World War I, when guys would pop out of a trench and toss a stick of dynamite into a tank's gunport. This is ridiculous. Weren't the Israelis watching when their Saudi friends got repeatedly humiliated by a single Yemeni fighter with a Kalashnikov popping out of a trapdoor and capturing a tank by jumping on top of it and yelling at the guys inside? I'm sure some defense contractor got rich off selling the Trophy system. I'm not exactly unhappy that Israeli military hardware sucks, but it really goes to show they're stupid as well as cowardly.

a clash of purple

The balance of power isn't as asymmetrical as it seems, I think. Israel has a very *expensive* military, but that doesn't mean it's worth anything in a fight. Through ingenuity and resourcefulness, meanwhile, Hamas has actually developed a very effective arsenal against the IDF, and it seems like they have a lot of weaponry stockpiled. The training they've received from Iran (and possibly North Korea?) has clearly been extremely well-suited to the situation, and their morale is incredibly strong. That means a lot more here than having a bunch of tanks and airplanes.

Schaeffer Mallory

I take your point and basically agree with what you said, however I think the asymmetry of power boils down to one side having an Air Force + nukes and the other side not, and that's kind of a concrete asymmetry . Hamas is clearly adaptive ingenius, but that is because of the asymmetry of power, it doesn't balance out the scales

Jimothy Realname

They lost a war against their concentration camp. It's a new world

Christopher Small

Yeah, I was glad to hear the point that, militarily Hezbollah held up fine. After the Lebanon ceasefire people immediately went to talking about it like their whole military had been crushed, which didn’t seem to match what seemed to be happening on the ground. And in the end, what’s really been accomplished? They took out a lot of the leadership, but it brought few if any tactical gains. The war didn’t seem to endear the other factions of Lebanese politics to Israel. And while the collapse of Assad hurts Hezbollah, a lot of the problems it’s brought are just problems they’ve had before. And frankly, the HTS government seems like a terrible bet for pinning your geopolitical machinations on. So, all and all Hezbollah’s probably going to be fine

THEKILLERWHALE

Since you mention it, I have a question about the "tunnel rats" in Vietnam. I have never understood the strategic importance of tunnels in this war. The image that I have of Vietnam is a primarily rural war that centered around controlling the Ho Chi Minh trail. So, in Gaza, I can see immediately why you need these tunnels when it is an urban war with an enemy that has a massive firepower and airpower advantage. How were they deployed in Vietnam and to what strategic end?

THEKILLERWHALE

Seriously great episode gang. It would really funny if Gilad Shalit entered Palestinian captivity a meat-headed, rub some dirt on it type and through direct contact with the Palestinian's and their struggle softened his stance and discovered the power of sports analytics.

Meh

Absolutely excellent episode. Make it free.

Alex

This guy rocks. He absolutely refuses to be demoralized as a matter of political principle.

JoR

Wasn't it because the US was bombing every square inch of the country (to put it simply)

Bradley S

I literally thought of it the exact dame way ahahaha

William

Leadership can be replaced; that said, you can’t deny the importance of transcendental leaders like nasrallah. Killing both Kennedy, MLK, and Malcolm x permanently halted the leftward turn of liberalism in the US and Iran losing such an important commander is a big deal. But, the irony is that Isreal and the US are keeping the environmental conditions near-perfect for new generational leaders like solemani, nasrallah, and the Hamas guy I can’t think of atm. So if they spent 15 years having a negligible impact on their leadership with the pager project, it points to further isrally impotency imo

William

Russia is the only one who has successfully avoided the need for a counter-insurgency. People can point and laugh at the slow pace, but by keeping some form of “hope” alive in the form of the UAF achieving victory, no resistance has taken root and there has been more than enough time for the population to shift in a way that would inhibit insurgency. I don’t think they did this knowingly

Ben

One of the all time great RWN episodes. I wish more people could hear/would listen to this information.

IRIDYSCENZIA

Awesome job! Keep it up! 👊💯❤️

a clash of purple

What JoR said. Anything aboveground would be bombed to the stone age, and possibly blasted with Agent Orange and napalm too. Going underground makes it harder to track your movements from the air, and makes it much harder for the invaders to fight you.

a clash of purple

You're right, of course. I'm simply pointing out that things aren't as asymmetrical as they *should* be, seeing as Israel, on top of its overwhelming superiority in terms of firepower, airpower, and manpower, theoretically has complete control over Gaza and its borders. This outcome is honestly even more ridiculous than if, say, the Warsaw uprising against the Nazi occupation actually succeeded (or achieved a stalemate). Frankly, the Polish partisans had much more powerful and motivated allies than the Palestinians do, and the Nazis' hold over Warsaw was not as tight as Israel's hold on Gaza.

a clash of purple

It remains to be seen how things will turn out for Russia in Ukraine, I think. It depends on what they do with the territory they've occupied, what they're looking to achieve with the war, and what sort of regime holds power in Kiev when all this is over.

Miko

Off topic but Ryan Grim looked at rump's "return to segregation" policies and anti-DEI crusade and decided to come down in agreement with Trump and the loonies. Was there something in the water at the intercept that all those guys eventually turn into contrarian apologists on behalf of the very worst people in society. His post on twitter or bluesky on this was every bit as bad as Taibi's heel turn recently.

Logan

You are misunderstanding Ryan's stance.

Miko

No I understood exactly what he meant. Just like when Lee Fang shoved his entire ass into his own mouth during the Floyd protests. Fuck both those guys.

Mark Ames

Your wish is our command: show reposted free & unlocked to the public

Dominic Lane

You'd think after listening to this that Hamas had won a conflict, rather than been the government that has overseen the enormous destruction of its polity.