Alma Research Center briefing about Northern attacks into Israel

Continuing on with briefings that we received in Israel, in this episode LCol(retd) Sarit Zehavi briefs us on the situation in Lebanon with Hezbollah. She works at the Alma Research Center which is an open source intelligence gathering agency. This was filmed on October 29th.

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Speaker A: All right, folks. And we're back. Russell here with the Canadian Conservative podcast.

In today's episode, I'm kind of continuing on the miniseries that I did while I was doing my tour in Israel.

This one took place October 29th at the Alma Research Center. It's a research center that does open source intelligence gathering for the IDF and anyone else that requires in Israel.

This meeting was conducted by Lt. Col. Retired Salit Zahavi, and she led us through about 35 minutes or so of a presentation on Hezbollah, talking a little bit about Hamas, talking about rocket capabilities, stuff like that.

If you're interested in the Israel Hamas war, this might be interesting for you. If you're interested in learning more, this person that did this presentation has a lot of valuable information, especially regarding Hezbollah.

So if this is something that you're into, I think there's a lot you can gain from this interview. And with that, let's get started process.

Speaker B: I am a lieutenant colonel, retired lieutenant colonel. I served for 15 years in the army. I was with intelligence and I specialized during my service and my center with Lebanon and Syria.

That's right, coming from Iran, Hezbollah, etc.

So you can understand that what's happening now. It's basically everything that I talked about.

Like I was meeting groups like you all the time before this war, except I was meeting them on the border. What you see in these photos is how the border will look like until October 6th.

These are all Hezbollah military operatives that were watching us on the border, preparing for an invasion until October 6th.

And we warned that this is the scenario, that this is what they are preparing for. We warned that they are prepared. They completed the preparations.

And then in October 8, the war started here.

And that day I came to the office, I remembered I knew that Hezbollah threatened to invade exactly the same way as Hamas. And I remember that they had a video.

So I opened the computer and I searched for the video. And then I found a video. And a video was a description of what Hamas heta like. Step by step, I'll show you here.

And then I did two things. I evacuated my kids because I was positive that Chris Barouin invade.

And if I want to talk a little bit about statistics, I want to divide what's happening to two parts. Until September 17th and after September 17th, until September 17th, Israel was in defensive on the northern border.

It means that the attacks to Lebanon were limited.

It means that the feeling among the Israelis that are living here, like myself and others, is that Israel is not fighting Shizbar, even though there were IDF attacks In Lebanon and there was destruction in the villages next to the border, but it was not an offensive.

Those a little bit understand warfare and understand that it didn't truly damage the organization in a way that can change the situation strategically.

And Hezbollah launched rockets every day, as you can see. And by the way, not only rockets, rockets, drones, anti tank missiles every day to Israel. What you see here, these numbers are the numbers of attacks.

It's not the numbers of rockets. Like today. What happened today it was a barrage of 40 rockets, one attack.

So the numbers of rockets are extremely bigger.

Speaker A: What do you take the variance to be or the cause of the variance between the rocket and tax is that based on weather conditions and their supply?

Speaker B: They didn't need to supply, everything was deployed, everything was there, deployed it in launching positions. They didn't need to bring anything.

Speaker A: So. But there's some variance there in the number of rockets that there firing or number attacks per day.

Speaker B: Variants are very small. As you see, it's pretty stable. War of attrition.

We had between five to 15 attacks every day, about 50 attacks every week. Just to give you a little bit of understanding what's the situation like today. We have 50 attacks every day.

50 attack like it's what we used to have in a week. Now we have a new day and the barrages are bigger and another change. So this was stable. But in June we started to see something happening.

We started to see that Hispania is launching more to areas that are not evacuated. What does that mean? If you look is right now we are here.

We are here like I don't know, 11 kilometers from the border. That's the Mohner, okay? All the white peers are areas that are evacuated and displaced people. 60,000 Israelis that are displaced and they were evacuated pretty much from the beginning.

While the main threat was invasion. If you are not evacuated, there is no intention of the Israeli government to evacuate me or any other people because of Romans, even though our life went crazy.

But the evacuation was because of the risk that Hezbollah will slaughter Israelis the same way that Hamas slaughter Vishkari. So not because of the rocket threat.

The second problem appeared later from October 8th on that Kispara started to launch anti tank missiles to the communities the NTSC from the border.

In most anti tank missiles you need a direct. Not all of them, but in most of them. The problem with the anti tank missiles is that we cannot intercept them and Iron Dome is ineffective and we don't have alerts.

So every, every hit, every launch is a hit. So you can't Bring the people back as long as they don't deal with that. I can tell you a little bit of good news.

Yesterday in the news in Israel, it was published that IDF is removing and locates and will explode on the main roads of protect the drivers from anti tank missiles. This means that IDF in the offensive that started basically since September 17, succeeded in pushing most of military operatives from the fascist.

And the risk of anti tank missiles hardly exist. And that's why what you see now is that the munition that is being used the most is the romance. And drones, it's ups and downs.

We see the climate of drones and then nothing. And then for the breath on the right hand side you have a pie chart. So does that mean that Hezbollah targets both Israeli civilized structures as well as military structures?

What is your success rate in targeting Israeli military structures?

This has not been public.

I don't know.

I can tell you in general, most of the rockets are intercepted.

Sometimes you have hits. Now, when it's a war that lasts a year, we have communities here that half of the homes of the communities were damaged.

If I can give you some data, I have data about civilian damages. And I can tell you that what was published a month ago, that we have 1300 incidents of hits.

Again, incidents of hits means that if one rocket that fell, maybe few homes were heated. Okay, I don't know.

Most of them. About half of them. Most of them is for private homes.

There are communities that half of the homes were hit. I gave you some names. Shtula Manar Ha, Metula Vivimargaliot. Kiryakshmona is the biggest town. All of these are very small towns.

Kiryasmona is the biggest town among those who are evacuated.

We are here. It's more in our is 23,000 people, 90% of there. And it had more than 200 incidents of hits.

Again, in every incident you can have more than one home that was given. And you can see in the photos just examples to symmetry interceptions and rocket seats. How does that look like in reality?

Okay.

No, it doesn't cause damages the same way of the IDF attacks, you know, okay, I'm not one chill. I want to be friendly, but at the same time, I don't have tunnels or rockets below my daughter's bed.

That's the difference. I never did a little bit about the weapons.

When I send a barrage of 40 rockets, it means that this battle used something like that. It could get to a range of up to 40km.

But I'm not sure it was launched from the border because as I've said, IDF is dead. This is a hit in the middle of Kela.

And these are a little bit of numbers inviting to the types of weapons.

Of course there is, as I said, there is an increase of the attacks since they are the offense now. It's funny, like the IDF offensive in military terms is successful, but at the same time we have more.

And how come? Because Kisbara built its power of redundancy on spreading these launchers everywhere. If I'm living in south Lebanon, you can see the yellow spots.

These are old Shiite towns, Muslim Shiite towns. It means that they are the natural supporters of Vistana. It means that every home here is something.

Before the war, I used to say it every third. And because this was the IDF state, they did every third homage. Shiite Muslim towns of South Lebanon. There is a military infrastructure today.

When our soldiers are coming back from fighting in Lebanon, they testify that they find in every home something a tunnel shell, rockets, guns, helmets, whatever. I'll give you some examples of how does that look like?

I don't know if you've seen. Stop me if you already seen this, because I don't know what we've seen or not.

Speaker A: So I just asked how much of this briefing is classified?

Speaker B: Nothing is classified. Everything I tell you is from the open sources. I don't know anything that is classified. I don't want to tell you.

Speaker A: What's your assessment of the amount of large rockets missiles that Hezbollah is still holding? The Defense Minister said most of those are gone.

Speaker B: So we just published yesterday our weekly I will send you and it's written there in a very specific way. But I will get back to that later and I will answer your question.

This was the arsenal before the war and our defense Minister said that they only have left a third of the short and medium range. So I don't know about the long range.

I believe that much of the long range was eliminated as well. And much of the PGM was eliminated as well. Clearly you don't see them using barrages of rockets or PGMs to Tel Aviv as we expected they would do before the war.

And I believe this is thanks to the early AFO frenzy.

But even when you calculate that a third was left, it means that about 25,000 rockets to 40km range, maybe 70 were left. And this is what we experienced. Now the biggest question is what's their capability to bring more?

Because I've said that everything was deployed. All these launchers are in their launching positions. Do they have the capability to smuggle more underground.

We know a few weeks ago IDF bombed the tunnel that crossed from Lebanon to.

From Syria to Lebanon. In Animal center, we found where it is. We found the openings, we showed the openings.

So probably there are more. And if they smuggle below the ground, it's tougher to find it and to illuminate it. And so that's the biggest question. What's their. How their routes of supply look like now?

And I'm not sure I have an answer, but 25,000, if this is what left and they launch between 100 to 200 rockets every day, that's the numbers like in the past month and a half.

So it means they have the capability to launch for a few months at least. Again, depends how much IDF will destroy. I don't know, but IDF is working, going back to this one.

So that's the video that I mentioned from a year ago, from a decade ago. I'm sorry, from a decade ago that you can see step by step. It's exactly what Hamas had done.

Starting from barrages of rockets to all over the Galilee. This is the plan. This is what they wanted to do. This is their invasion plan with Radhaan Brigades. Which is the elite unit of Hizvah or was the elite unit of Hizvah?

IDF since the offensive started, already killed 130 commanders of Hezbollah, 25% of them are from this elite unit from Radouin Brigade.

When IDF entered Lebanon with the ground forces, this is what they found.

Now I want to explain what does that mean? Because it's nothing like previous wars. IDF didn't go all the way off. IDF entered into Lebanon only to areas which are very close to the border in a distance of few kilometers.

So I don't know if it's five or seven.

Okay, but in a distance of a few kilometers. The goal of the ground maneuver was defined to deal with the villages next to the border. This was the goal to deal with the fisbara military infrastructures in the villages and the areas next to the border.

Because this is the areas that Hezbollah prepared to launch the attack to Israel. From the attack to sea. And all proofs were found, all the military preparations were made, all the equipment was found.

All this documentation is from the IAF publication one special documentation I chose to put here, which is this map. This is map, an original map of the elite unit of Ravouan.

It's a true translation to English, only Arabic. And yet I couldn't give you a better translation because I'm not sure what they meant in these terms. In Arabic. I'm sharing this with you because there is only one line on this map that is not the tire.

These are rows. What's that line?

It goes all the way from the border. This is a community named Zoit through a very mountains, valleys area.

And it stops here.

I don't think it's a town.

It's too complicated. It's too far. I don't know. I don't think it's a town. We have two options.

One option that we thought is that this is just a border between two sectors of the Radwan Brigades. Like, you are responsible for this sector and you're responsible for this sector.

Okay, so why is it like this? The second option we thought is that this is a route of infiltration of tourists. We get from here to here. It doesn't make sense because the terrain, it's not like in Gaza.

You can drive, you see all hills and valleys. The terrain is.

I'm not sure you can walk it, but you can't drive it.

So I don't know, but I can tell you. Yeah, from the personal point of view, when I saw that it was published in the news, in a press conference of the alds.

Speaker A: Does it follow. Does that path follow the contours of a river or stream?

Speaker B: No. Or is it. There is a river there? I'm not sure. It's. No, like the research. The river flows in Israel. The river flows all the way to the sea that way, not that way.

Now, there is a river there. There is a nice hiking route over here, but depends a little bit of spring.

It's. It's. It's. It's small streams and we call them rivers because that's what's in fact.

And so you can say it's a dry livery, imagine.

But it's. It doesn't get all the way out. Like here is hills and valleys and mills and mountains. I don't know. I truly don't know. It has to be something.

It has to be something. It is very grounded.

What you see in this video that the IVF published is the level of preparedness.

And the soldiers found everything in underground infrastructures. You see the channels and they found motorbikes, gasoline, full keys, ready to go, food, everything in the underground, even that's the motorbikes.

So that's just.

If I can like trying to, you know, make a small stop here and summarize. Since October 17th, there is an offensive the IDF against Hezbollah. To eliminate. First, to eliminate the threat of invasion against Israel.

This is what was found.

It Include airstrikes and ground operation in Lebanon. The ground operation is very close to the border with Israel. We are not getting like tens of kilometers, at least not for now.

And that's not the definition of the Gulf War.

It doesn't solve the problem. It solves one problem, which is the invasion scenario. But as you saw me this morning, it doesn't solve the problem of how do I get my daughter back to school, how do I have normal life, how do I get a situation that I can drive on these main roads here and not being afraid.

There is a reason why you don't see all Alma staff here today, because they are afraid to come. So I told them, okay, you know what? You can only come here two days a week instead of three or four days a week.

So we are only three that the staff here that live nearby. But most of my staff live in the north, but in our drive from here. So they are risking their lives if they drive.

As in any roads, simple everyday life, things that you can't do. I can't sleep pretty soon because we hear the blasts every day.

It could be hits of rockets, it could be interceptions, it could be launching of artillery, it could be jets, it could be drones. I never know which drone, whether it's the NEF drone or he's Bala drone.

So my life changed completely.

I can tell you that I feel safer. It's funny what I'm going to say. I feel safer today comparing to the beginning of the war, because I think that the chance that there will be an invasion is zero.

Okay? IDF removed this threat. Now, at the beginning of the war, I went to sleep with the pictures of the women in my head, of the women in the south and the sexual brutality that they experienced.

There was no research that was done about the women of the north. But I can tell you that the women of the north, those who are living next to the border, are living the horrors of the South.

We cannot accept a situation that our daughters and ourselves will be at the same risk of what happened to our sisters in the south. This is our nightmare. And this was a nightmare that I didn't imagine all these years before the war.

Like I was the expert. I was supposed to know and I didn't know.

And at the first few months of the war, I was afraid to sneak at home and I evacuated my kids.

And there is a reason why I'm keep telling you, don't write where I live.

Hamas came prepared. He knew who he's looking for. Alma center is threatened by Fizber we receive videos and threats against us and against myself. So I'm much more careful today.

But today I think that the main threat that I'm worried about is not an invasion, is more like the rockets. Now maybe this should take me to the. To the last part of this presentation and then we can go out.

A few days ago my daughter woke up and she said, mommy, I had a bad dream. I had a bad dream that there are terrorists in our town. And I told her, don't worry about it.

It's not going to happen anymore. IDF is very successful in Lebanon. It pushed the Frisbana away from the border.

And she said, okay, but what will happen in 20 years?

And I think that's my mission now. That's my mission. And from the most personal level, that's my mission to make sure that Hezbollah is not going to recover.

It's going to take less than 20 years.

And if we will go back to the previous international arrangements that we had, Hezbollah will recover. And I want to talk about UNIFIL for a moment. Did you hear a lot?

Everybody knows when I'm saying unifil.

Look, I want to tell you, I never thought that UNIFIL is anti Israeli or antisemitic.

I never thought in these terms, okay?

During the years and I dealt with this issue, including during my military service, I always thought that UNIFIL naturally wants to protect their soldiers lives. And that's why they are not clashing with Kisbah.

They are intimidated in Lebanon. And his bala consider UNIFIL in Lebanon as their honest agents. And they market this narrative that UNIFIL are Zionist agents.

And they blocked their way. And I don't know if you could see the photos, but some of them, they blocked their way. They beat them sometimes, they burned their cars, they throw stones at their car.

They didn't enable them. Freedom of movement in South Devon.

And this was the situation for unifil. And I truly was very understanding to the stance of UNIFIL to protect its armed soldiers. And I don't understand it anymore because UNIFIL was asked to evacuate now, and UNIFIL insists now on staying.

And Kisbala is deliberately shooting rockets at Israelis from nearby UNIFIL positions. And we have proofs for that.

Hezbollah excavated tunnels from nearby UNIFIL positions and UNIFIL did nothing about that. Now to dig a tunnel, to excavate a tunnel in a rocky area, it makes noise. You need trucks to evacuate the waste.

There is a signature. You see something is happening. It was in open territory. This tunnel specific Tunnel that I'm talking about was found in open area, not in private property.

The top right. That's top right. There's a video there.

And they did nothing about it. So they are not evacuating.

They did nothing about Kisvala military infrastructures in open areas. There is also in private areas, but in open areas as well. They didn't go in and search for it.

And it's ten thousands of them. That's a lot of soldiers that are risking their lives for nothing. For nothing for what? For protecting Fizbo.

Now in one of these debates somebody told me, but they want to give humanitarian aid, which I truly appreciate, except two points. One, the Lebanese have left these towns. As I've said, in Lebanon there are damages as well.

There is destruction as well. There is evacuation as well. Lebanese have left. To whom do you want to give humanitarian aid? And second, for those who are left, because like in Israel, also in the Lebanese towns, small percentage was left.

Few left were left in the town. Every time you don't need 10,000 soldiers for this mission. You can do it with 1,000. Take all of them out.

They are risking their life for what? For not fulfilling the vision of the mandate. And you saw in the world, the vision of the mandate was to make sure that this area is not used for any military purposes.

Now UNIFIL is saying, we didn't come to disarm, we didn't come to enforce. That's not our mandate. Our mandate was to monitor.

Okay, where is your monitoring? You can see on the wall tons of groups here that there was no monitoring. Where is your monitoring?

So I don't understand the stance of uniform. I'm telling you the truth. I wish I could understand it, but I don't understand. I don't understand why the contributing states are not ordinary the soldiers to live and not taking this risk.

I don't understand.

We have to change the strategic situation in Lebanon in general and in south Lebanon in particular. This is what our government owes to us.

We are not dealing with a legitimate army of Lebanon. We are dealing with a terrorist organization that is designated. I don't know if it is in Canada's message. In most of the countries of the world, and we have all the.

And we didn't open, we didn't start this.

And you know, when I look at my little girl, I think about the Lebanese children as well. When she complains, I think about the Lebanese children that has much more to complain.

But what's the options in order to bring a new future for Lebanese Children and Israeli children alike. We need to eliminate the threat. We need to change the situation from a very thorough point of view.

Now I'm not sure, see, tell you the truth, I'm not sure. But this is what is needed for the next 20 years since it will not happen again. Could I just check some data with you?

Did you say that 25% of Hezbollah commanders have now been destroyed by.

I'm saying that one out of 130 commanders that IDF killed until a month ago. These were the numbers a few weeks, two weeks ago. 25% of these are RAD1 Brigades Commanders, meaning they were part of the elite unit of Krizbana that planned the invasion.

I don't know what the 130how it stands versus the percentage of commanders in kisbana.

But I can tell you that in general the understanding is that the commander on control array of physical act clearly was very much damaged thanks to the elimination of commanders and to the pager's attack.

So I just want to say. So the news appears to be very good for Israel. The pager attack was very successful.

Stocks have been really depleted and much of the infrastructure in southern Lebanon and northern Israel has been disbanded. Your body language to me suggests that you're still very concerned.

I just had two neighbors that were killed. So yeah, clearly you know, that's right. Is it possible that the IDF is missing something? No, the IDF is not.

I think that there is no six days war anymore.

IDF is successful. Like it's very impressive what the IDF has done. If I'm taking it to, you know, the elimination of the leadership of his bam.

Very impressive.

But as I've said, Hezbollah tactic was all about redundancy, spreading the missiles and the launchers everywhere, by the way, not only in south Lebanon, south Lebanon, Beirut and the areas that are populated with Muslim Shiites.

And to take that off, I'm not sure we can do that only by military force because this would mean more than a year like you see with Hamas. How long does it take?

It's in order to eliminate everything that is underground. It's not enough to do it from earthquakes, especially when the underground infrastructures are excavating the rocks. It's really difficult to bomb it without roots on the ground.

I don't think that Israel has any interest to have roots on the ground in New York.

And that's why there should be a complementary process of diplomacy. Israel is understand that there are two questions around that. The first one at one point, and on the one hand, we want it as quickly as Possible because I want my daughter back to school.

But on the other hand, I want to see enough achievements, I want to see enough munition to do the limited.

The second answer is what kind of diplomatic relations like the previous one? No, I want a better one. I want an effective monitoring force. I want to make sure that Hezbollah in Lebanon is not anymore a member of the Lebanese government.

This is unheard of. Like, we all agree that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization, but it's a member of the Lebanese government. And the Lebanese government is getting assistance from the West.

We should stop fooling ourselves. We should look at reality and face, even if it's tough.

And looking to reality in the face means telling the Lebanese, that's it. It's time to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.

You want help? Lebanon is in a deep economic crisis that has nothing to do with Israel. It started in 2019.

Lebanon is a failed state. That's why Hezbollah was that successful. The Iranians and others, by the way, ISIS did the same thing. They are targeting failed states.

And if you want to see a different future for Lebanon, we should eliminate this. This should be illegal. This is legal today in Lebanon. The civilian activity of Hezbollah in Lebanon is legal.

And this is how it enables it to recover. And I'm comparing it to Hamas again and again and again. Because with Gaza, everybody knows. Everybody knows that Hamas is taking over the humanitarian aid, right?

And distributing the. The one who evacuates the garbage and the one who gives the food is there and the one who controls the people, who controls the area. If it's Kisbala, it's Khizbar.

Speaker A: If it's Hamas, what's your assessment about the potential for civil war right now in Lebanon?

Speaker B: The potential of what?

Speaker A: For civil war in Lebanon.

Speaker B: Okay, so if I'm. It's a good question. If I'm trying to look at the risks of the current process that is truly changing things from, you know, below our opportunities to have a different arrangement, to have more involvement of the Sunni states back in town.

Fully this way. I hope so.

The risks is that it will develop to a civil war. I must tell you that I was more worried about it after an asylum was eliminated.

I am not sure I'm that worried about it now because I feel that the Iranians made their choice. Like the Iranians after Nassara was killed, had two options, to abandon Hezbollah or to try to help it recover.

And they chose to try to help it recover. And I think that the fact that we saw a drone attacking our prime minister's Residency means that this was a decision that was made in Tehran, not in beyond means that there is tactical involvement of the IRGC in commanding Hezbollah.

So if this is the case, the other groups in Lebanon will not be capable in threatening Hezbollah.

The second risk, by the way, is that Hezbollah, like the Iraqi Shiite militias, will say, fine, I will be part of the Lebanese army, no problem. And then we'll end up in a situation that officially, for you, it's the Lebanese army on the other side of the border with Israel.

For me, it's Kisbara on the other side of the border with Israel. Because in the Middle east, it doesn't mean what you say. It means what stepped into the terrain.

And there is a huge gap between two or under the terrain, you know? Yes. How long does media expectations are to hope that Yizumba lies completely new from the political process in Maknae?

Not realistic.

Not realistic.

But I think maybe I'm a dreamer. Like, I think that if Israelis will not put their finger on what they want, they will never get what they want.

We need at least to talk about how a different kind of future should look. Like this is what I think. And I, by the way, I wrote a position paper to my government.

I wrote about it in Hebrew. I wrote, I think you should say what you want. I don't care whether Fizbala will accept it or not. We should say what we want.

We should say what is needed. You need to partaking of that expectation. Yeah. To try to talk about it. Yes. With the international community. So we'll get less than that.

Okay. But at least we presented what we wanted, what is needed to truly create a change.

Speaker A: Typically, Colonel, in situations like this, you'd look to the merchant class in Lebanon to determine or anywhere else where they are. Where are the merchant class in Lebanon?

Speaker B: Are they not in Lebanon?

Speaker A: They're gone.

Speaker B: The economic situation, many of them are not in Lebanon.

Before the war, I had a conversation with the colleague researcher that lives in Beirut, like two or three years before Iran covered. And he told me, sarit, everybody's leaving the situation is that bad that everybody's living.

I don't know how many of them were left. The other those who are opponents to Hezbollah in Lebanon are not strong enough to truly deal with it. Today, again, maybe things will change, I don't know.

But that's. That's how it looks like.

We are trying to see frictions in the base, in the Shiite Muslim base of Hezbollah, in those who support it, and we don't see that now. Maybe it's not published.

Okay, as I've said, I'm based on open sources in Israel. There were records this week that there is defection of Hezbollah military operatives. I cannot confirm that. That's why I didn't say to you, I don't know.

Okay? I don't.