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I was playing against Eldar for the first time yesterday with my CSM and we had a bit of an issue: I grew tired of Eldrad and his warlock buddies tossing spells all around, so I dropped a pair of Oblits nearby via deepstrike to pump a couple of plasma cannons shots and try to ID the HQ (It was Dawn of War, so I couldn't put them on their usual perches in the back).

However, he was screening his better units behind large mobs of Guardians. When I tried to target Eldrad's unit behind the guardians, he said I wasn't able to because I couldn't see Eldrad. I argued that, according to the rule, shooting through enemy units gives the target a 4+ cover bonus but does not mean the shot cannot be taken. He countered saying that there were a lot of them and the Oblits could not possibly see them. Asking friends around the club for advice proved inconclusive as they also seemed split on the issue.

So what is the right call?

You have to be able to trace line of sight from at least one model in the firing unit to at least one model in the target unit. If you can't do that, you cant shoot at them. pg. 16

The cover save comes into play depending on whether you have an obscured LOS to the target or not.

If your models can see the enemy models, they can shoot at them.

The exception is for times when you can only see a banner or spiky bit sticking up. Decoration is not a valid target.

You have to bend over the table and LOOK. From the perspective of the eyes of each firing model. If they can see ANY PART of the body (not weapons, back banners, wings or purely decorative bits), even the tiniest sliver, they may fire.

BRB page 16 "check line of sight & pick a target" and
BRB page 21 "when are models in cover?" and
BRB page 24 "removing casualties"

5th ED uses true line of sight, so if you can draw an unobstructed line from one of your models' head to any part of the target's body your unit can shoot. And in this unit every model that can 'see' at least one of the target unit's models it can fire.
If your unit can 'see' the target, but some parts of it are covered by terrain or intervening models they are in cover and as intervening models grant a cover save of 4+ he can this if it is better than his own save.

But take into account that your opponent may (and/or must) remove models that are either not in range, or not in sight, or even both.
So you can't position your models so that they can only shoot eldrad and force your opponent to remove him, but the other way round he must allocate wounds to all models and remove all models you killed, even if you couldn't shoot them.

So if for example 7 of your squad could draw LOS to 2 different models of Eldrad's squad but caused 11 wounds he had to allocate one to each model and remove one warlock for each unsaved one, even if this would mean he had to remove some you couldn't have targeted.

And you can't ID Eldrad with plasma anyway, he's T4.