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The truth about the war in Gaza, with John Spencer
2.5k Plays3 days ago
As October 7 has faded in the public consciousness, a pervasive narrative has taken hold that Israel are the real antagonists of the war in Gaza. Western media is overwhelmingly anti-Israel (and in some instances, flat out antisemitic). There are few people with the experience and honesty to cut through the fog of war and explain the conflict as it is. John Spencer is one of those people.
John is considered one of the world’s leading experts on urban warfare, having served as an advisor to the top four-star general and other senior leaders in the U.S. Army as part of strategic research groups from the Pentagon to the United States Military Academy.
John currently serves as the Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point and Co-Director of the Urban Warfare Project.
Follow Will Kingston and Fire at Will on social media here.
Read The Spectator Australia here.
Visit John's website here.
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Transcript
Global Perception of Israel: A Rapid Shift
00:00:19
Speaker
G'day and welcome to Fire at Will. I'm Will Kingston. I was listening to the editor's podcast from National Review, merely days after October 7.
00:00:30
Speaker
Charlie Cook, friend of the show, made a comment that has stuck with me. He said, Israel have to move very quickly here because, make no mistake, the world will turn on them and they will turn on them very quickly.
00:00:43
Speaker
The conflict which is now upon us will very quickly become Israel's fault. October 7 will be forgotten. Israel will become ah prior state.
00:00:55
Speaker
They were prescient words, but at the same time, I suppose it's happened many times throughout the last 70 years.
Expert Insight: John Spencer on Urban Warfare
00:01:03
Speaker
And indeed, it has come to pass. Israel has become a prior state. October 7 has faded in the public consciousness, and the media overwhelmingly now has spun a narrative of genocide and of Israeli evil.
00:01:17
Speaker
It's very hard now to separate the fact and the fiction, which is why I am delighted to be speaking to perhaps the best person to be able to separate separate the fact and the fiction, John Spencer. John, thank you very much for joining me.
00:01:30
Speaker
Thanks for having me, Will. It's a pleasure to have you on. i don't normally ask for the guest CV at the outset of an interview, but I do think it's important in this case because, A, this is a highly emotional conversation now, and I think your experience lends a particular gravitas to which enables you to cut through that emotion.
00:01:51
Speaker
But also you have taken contrarian, well, what I would suggest are contrarian positions to the common narratives that have emerged around this conflict. So think it's important to to ground this in the experience that you have. So tell me a bit about yourself and and and your background.
00:02:08
Speaker
Sure. So I try to be short. The people say I can talk a lot. I served 25 years as an active duty u Army soldier and officer with two combat de deployments to Iraq. I did the invasion and I did the height of the sectarian violence in Baghdad to include the Battle of Sadr City.
00:02:27
Speaker
I academically started studying war, really, from practitioner to student, researcher, scholar around 2014, not earlier, where I was an advisor it to our top four-star general in the U.S. Army, the chief of staff of the Army, in really a think tank he stood up called the Strategic Studies Group, where we started looking at megacities, which really put the bug in me to focus on combat in urban areas.
00:02:54
Speaker
I moved to West Point along my you know military trajectory where i stood up a research center called the Modern War Institute. I was a co-founder and started writing, researching, field study on specifically urban battles across urban
Urban Warfare Challenges in Gaza
00:03:09
Speaker
history. So for over a decade, I've been writing books, book chapters, hundreds of articles about urban warfare When I retired from active duty, though, I began field research, which i i just love because there is a ah bit of not being able to understand something unless you go there yourself.
00:03:28
Speaker
So I write case studies on battles that have happened in the past or or recently happened And 2018, I started traveling around the world. I went into Ukraine four times to include weeks after Russia was defeated in the Battle of Kiev and wrote the conclusive really what happened in Kiev and why did Russia fail into places like Nagorno-Karabakh shortly after that war ended, India, and Israel, of course. Having studied urban warfare and tunnel warfare for over a decade, I, of course, was going to Israel often.
00:03:59
Speaker
because of their unique experiences in every one of the wars, to to be frank, from the Battle of Sua City in 1973, the Battle of Janine and Nablus and Second Intifada, all their experiences with tunnel warfare.
00:04:14
Speaker
When October 7th happened, though, as a urban warfare scholar at this point, right? So... well-known urban warfare, at least student and researcher, I saw lies starting to happen.
00:04:28
Speaker
But I also, because of my unique field of study and different research methodologies that I use, I wanted to get on the ground. And I've now been to Israel five times since October 7th.
00:04:39
Speaker
Because of all the work and research I've been doing with the IDF, I, of course, had connections in the idea, and I was able to embed with them to include going into Gaza four times, observing their operations, conducting research on every aspect of how they were really addressing what is the biggest urban warfare challenge in modern history, and if you compound all the context, you could probably say in really a very, very ah long time.
00:05:07
Speaker
And I've written probably 40 plus articles about every aspect of the misinformation that's come out about Gaza that I have been wrestling with because, of course, being in this field, I had interacted with the United Nations, the humanitarian groups, activists, all of this before these wars.
00:05:25
Speaker
of even the last 10 years because of the pervasive nature of urban warfare around the world where that's where battles were happening. That's where the conclusive battles, whether it's state on state, state on non-state actor, I was interacting with all these people, led me to these, what you say, contrarian, people say sometimes biased. I say factual. So it is it is wild. And I have almost had to play whack-a-mole on just intellectually wrong, anti-factual positions about Israel and Gaza specifically, but in Israel in general, and and have been a very vocal advocate because I had the information.
00:06:08
Speaker
And i I don't think it's right to, even as an American soldier, right? I'm not Israeli. I'm not Jewish. I bleed red, white, and blue. if they were to say these things that they're saying about Israel now, I mean, they started on October 8th, like you said.
00:06:21
Speaker
But what it would mean to just the future of any democratic nation fighting in any war, especially a war of survival like this one. So we're on the same page. How do you define urban warfare?
00:06:34
Speaker
Sure. And this is, I've had to argue with some very colorful people about definitions. Urban warfare is defined as combat that is happening in urban terrain.
00:06:48
Speaker
Urban terrain is defined by most field of study as ah man-made construction on natural terrain, a population and the infrastructure to support them.
00:06:59
Speaker
You have to have all those three things to have urban. urban And then warfare, unlike war, because war is the pursuit of political goals, and that's why we stood up the Modern War Institute to cover it all.
00:07:10
Speaker
Warfare is the actual fighting between two different actors, the actual fighting, the weapons, the technologies, the tactics, everything.
Hamas's Strategies and Implications
00:07:21
Speaker
thing which really stands out there for me is how you have grounded your knowledge in history and how you've looked at battles of the past and you said, right, well, this is a reference point point point for us to be able to assess what is happening in the here and now.
00:07:36
Speaker
With that in mind, what is it about, what are the features of this conflict that we're seeing now, which are comparable to urban warfare of the past or urban warfare scenarios in the past?
00:07:49
Speaker
And what is unique? Yeah, ah i that was one of the first articles I wrote, which is just stop comparing this because there is a heuristic of people only understanding what they've lived through. And there was some immediate comparisons to counterinsurgency battles of the last 20 years.
00:08:04
Speaker
You're right. I definitely found it. And the case studies that I write are almost like the foundation of my work. Even Going back to things that I thought had happened in major urban battles, and I'm talking from ancient history, talking about the ancient battle Jerusalem to the major ones that most people can probably list, like Stalingrad, Aachen, Ortona, Fallujah, Ramadi, Tal Afar, Mosul, Morari, you name them.
00:08:27
Speaker
And that that is a definitely a huge field of study, comparative analysis. So how does Gaza compare to anything that's come before? It does not. He just doesn't. There are similarities, especially against...
00:08:40
Speaker
similarities especially a again protracted battles where the urban defender is motivated more than just in, let's say, strategic goals of a war. Like they're radicalized, they're irreconcilable, they're irrational.
00:08:56
Speaker
There are some elements here that are similar to some of these other battles against, let's say, an insurgent, like in the second battle of Fallujah, just takes the city as an enemy sanctuary. And no matter what you, there is no reasoning with the person. You have to go in and get them out of that that urban terrain.
00:09:13
Speaker
But the uniqueness to it, well, no, more similarities is that you know urban warfare is considered the great equalizer, right? So if an urban defender can get in there, i actually wrote a book quickly after the Ukraine war started for civilians to assist in defending their nation and how you could turn the urban terrain into a really difficult problem for any military, let alone one as incompetent as Russian military.
00:09:36
Speaker
The urban terrain has similarities, especially the concrete you know structures, the urban canyons, the mitigating some of the advanced technologies. And if you can get into the urban terrain first, there are some similarities there, although most urban battles of the past, most of them big ones,
00:09:55
Speaker
are meeting engagements like the Battle of Stalingrad, Aachen, or Tona, where the defender had a little bit of time, not a long time, to prepare for a battle that was getting ready. They decided to, we're going to fight here and we're going to hold this ground.
00:10:11
Speaker
versus other battles that have become really bad. Like the second battle of Fallujah in 2004 is the largest battle for the coalition forces in the entire Iraq war because there was a first battle of Fallujah, which was a kind of a meeting engagement against enemy forces. And then the enemy was given basically six months to prepare the city for a battle that was inevitable.
00:10:35
Speaker
that The 2016-17 Battle of Mosul, which is the biggest urban battle since World War two was really bad because the government of Iraq let ISIS hold the city for over two years and prepare it, and they did a really good job of preparing it for war.
00:10:50
Speaker
Those are variables are— I can see where this is going. Yeah, yeah, you see that? So these are variables to understand just the military context, let alone the very ahistorical political constraints that on a battle, let alone a war, right? So number one in comparative analysis, people were comparing Gaza to these battles in history.
00:11:11
Speaker
Like, look, you you don't have to be a professor of college to say battle versus war. You know, war is it pursuit of political goals and can be over entire countries like Ukraine.
00:11:23
Speaker
A battle is a single point in the overall moment or terrain that in Gaza, people started comparing it to battles in recent history, like the Battle Mosul, Fallujah, and others. Like, okay, the the correct comparison would be comparing Gaza war against Iraq war, Afghanistan war, yeah you know a war where there's, even in gaza Terrain, right? It's not that big of a terrain, right? It's 25 miles long, five to seven miles wide at its greatest point.
00:11:54
Speaker
But it has, you know, four cities over 600,000, total of 24 cities. Just by that nature makes it really hard to compare. But from a military stance, right, to have a military of this size, so all those other ones I mentioned outside of Stalingrad, which was, you know, the biggest, one of the biggest urban battles in history where it's like a million man military against a million man military in dense urban terrain that had been flattened even before the battle started by the by the Air Force bombing of it.
00:12:24
Speaker
Hamas was a combatant of 30,000 to 40,000 military forces spread across the Gaza Strip in brigades, five brigades, 24 battalions, had a rocket supply of 20,000 rockets.
00:12:36
Speaker
Just by the comparative analysis of the enemy, let alone the the physical characteristics of the terrain, it was going to be so bigger than anything anybody had seen in a very condensed area.
00:12:48
Speaker
But the preparation, as you said, you you saw where this was going, that Hamas, you know, Israel withdrew, although Israel was fighting Hamas and others before it withdrew. In 2005, Hamas is elected in 2007, immediately starts launching rockets. By 2008, you have the first battle of Gaza, which I have a case study coming out on that really soon, where it had captured a soldier, launched rockets.
00:13:11
Speaker
But from then on, 20 years where the IDF never went into Gaza. I mean, even if you look at the past battles of 2008, 14, 16, 2021, the IDF never went inside of Gaza City and others, if and if not just an unlimited raid.
00:13:28
Speaker
Hamas had 20 years to prepare every inch, and it did. So the 300 to 400 miles of tunnels that people talk about, and again, I'm on an internationally working group on subterranean warfare that I've been on for a very long time.
00:13:42
Speaker
There is no case study of just the tunnel network. that an enemy built underneath its cities for the sole purpose of using the surface, their civilians, as a, not just a shield, which I teach a course in for division level urban warfare tactics. And Hamas is, of course, a case study in using a human shield strategy where they weaponize and put the civilians in front, but also weaponize what's called lawfare, know, occupying all the hospitals, the schools and everything.
00:14:11
Speaker
But the uniqueness to Hamas is this tunnel network underneath their civilians. And I used to say before visiting Gaza now multiple times, where every step that I took, whether it was in Kanyunas, Neturim corridor or whatever, it was more likely than not that there was a tunnel underneath you.
00:14:27
Speaker
Before the war, I used to say, you know, Hamas put a tunnel under every hospital, every school and every mosque. That's not true. In many cases, they built the tunnel network and then put the school and and other things on top of it as part of their overall literal de design of the urban areas.
00:14:45
Speaker
That was going to make Gaza battles, let alone war, different than anything that's ever been experienced. And the human sacrifice strategy will, and I know it's going long, but it's a big topic, is that no other combatant that I've studied, not the Nazis, not the Japanese, not ISIS, not Al-Qaeda, has ever put their civilians, the ones they say they're fighting for,
00:15:10
Speaker
and say
Regional Dynamics and Political Implications
00:15:11
Speaker
that they want them to die and then do everything possible to get them killed. That human sacrifice strategy has just never been seen and any of these other urban battles where even ISIS would push civilians towards the attacking force, but they didn't their entire strategy wasn't, I want all of these civilians to die so I can um achieve my political goal through their death.
00:15:34
Speaker
And I've heard you make a related point that this is the first conflict that you can recall where the civilian population has not been allowed to ah exit in any way the urban environment. Explain that part to me.
00:15:49
Speaker
Sure. Yeah, absolutely. So even from the tactical, although people say I talk only tactics and I taught strategy at West Point, um so I can definitely talk the strategic political goals, which is this broader context, right?
00:16:02
Speaker
Even if you studied the dead Prussian closet with, there's always a international context. there's always other wills, at the will of allies, their populations, all of that.
00:16:14
Speaker
This is the first battle and especially war right? Now, you now understand how when I make those distinctions where the civilians weren't allowed to leave the major combat areas.
00:16:25
Speaker
right And to be clear, the entire Gaza Strip, because of Hamas, nobody else, is a battle area, i may you know where they're launching rockets from, where they're holding hostages, where they're fighting from.
00:16:37
Speaker
Because on October 8th, Egypt said not one... refugees ah Even though they're signatories to refugee conventions, not only did they say no Gazans can come out of the, if most people don't know, but you probably do, that, man, of course, Gaza shares a border with Egypt.
00:16:55
Speaker
And it' on the map, there's a giant desert that separates Egypt's main areas from Gaza. It's called the Sinai Desert. But even then, Egypt launched a Brigade Plus organization.
00:17:07
Speaker
thousands of Egyptian soldiers to the border to ensure that nobody came out of Gaza. In all these other battles I talk about, there are some cases where the enemy inside tried to trap the civilians inside, but there's never been a case where anybody outside of the operating environment says, look, you can't come through us. Matter of fact, you have to stay in there.
00:17:27
Speaker
And there's one actor, one country who is has that ability. And this is the case. And there it's never been a topic for the international community or anybody. Every war, even ah that people will know about, right? Ukraine war, there's three to five million people that immediately flee.
00:17:44
Speaker
Syrian war, Yemeni war, all of these wars, people civilians leave usually on their own, if not told to, to get away from the combat that they don't want to be a part of.
00:17:57
Speaker
In all the other battles I listed earlier, like Fallujah, Ramadi, or Fallujah, Talafar, Mosul, Marari, all these, the the attacking force would surround the urban area and then call for evacuations just to do that vital part of it separating the civilians from the enemy enemy that is they're fighting against.
00:18:17
Speaker
In Gaza, because of Egypt, it's created this situation that nobody's ever faced where the civilians... before you use military force or ask to move at least out of the main combat areas.
00:18:30
Speaker
In Gaza, there's almost very few places, but Israel has been very innovative in doing evacuations setting zones for their, where they should go, all of these elements. But this thing with Egypt closing its gates and they build a new wall and they refuse and they have all this list of reasons. I wrote an article about it. Like it's just crazy.
00:18:54
Speaker
from a From a war perspective, let alone an Israel perspective, that anybody would say, no civilian, you can't leave that combat area. You have to stay in there. And that the world doesn't go as crazy as they have on the misinformation about Israel.
00:19:09
Speaker
Nobody says, hey, what about Egypt here? That's an immediate solution that's been used in every battle or war that I have ever studied. Yeah, the role of Egypt, I think, is underappreciated in the broader conversation about this conflict. and And let me temporarily pull you outside the realm of military strategy and into politics for a second. yeah ah My country of birth, Australia, has taken thousands of Gazan refugees and And you can make a very good argument that people coming from Gaza are not culturally compatible with a country like Australia.
00:19:39
Speaker
ah Only yesterday, the UK announced that they'd be taking more Gazan students in, which has led to and uproar in this country, given the ah fragile nature of the discourse around immigration.
00:19:51
Speaker
But the Arabic countries, led by Israel, have shown no desire whatsoever to help Gazan citizens. Why? So the like you said, it's it's not military, it's political.
00:20:04
Speaker
but there's Each one of the countries in long history, like Egypt's history with the Muslim Brotherhood, the idea of the Palestinian cause, the ridiculous claims of forced displacement, because...
00:20:17
Speaker
Again, definitions matter. There is something called forced displacement, which is actually illegal in the law of war. And then there is temporary displacement, which is probably the most humane thing that can be done before an urban battle happens.
00:20:31
Speaker
And then there's something called voluntary displacement, where I, as a father of children and family, want to leave and will move myself just to get away from it until it ends.
00:20:41
Speaker
Much like I said that's happened in other wars, for some reason, Each of all these countries of the world, all of them have said, look, it's not right if they can't even leave if they want to.
00:20:53
Speaker
And you're right. There's actually been lot that have left. a matter of fact, there's been over 100,000 Gazans who have left through Egypt if they pay the right price. Anywhere from $2,000 to $10,000, they can get themselves out, which is it's all crazy.
00:21:08
Speaker
Each country has their own reason, but that gets into this revisionist history, about the history of the the region, about the history of Gaza, There's so many variables here that are these double standards.
00:21:21
Speaker
And I've written articles now about, look, just so everybody's clear, like this is a long list of double standards that you're talking about that only apply to Israel. This thing about civilians evacuating, getting out of harm's way, even having the option to voluntarily say, I don't want to be here is a double standard, but there's a long list of them.
00:21:43
Speaker
Well, let's dive into the Israel double standard. And the double standard is, is as you said, everywhere. There are several people who have pointed out all of the other conflicts in the world, you know from Somalia to Piquan, where there is similar heartache and death and violence and all that sort of stuff.
Media Influence and Misinformation
00:22:02
Speaker
And no one in the West really seems to care. But people do seem to care about this conflict a great deal. Is it just because the Jews are involved or is there something more to it? So it's a hard... And I'm aware that that is a provocative one of frightening... No, no, no. it it There is no other definitive answer to... And at this is, again, I didn't start at the at like this, again, as a war researcher studying, and I'm currently studying multiple wars.
00:22:30
Speaker
There is no other single answer to that question than it's because it's the Jewish people. It's because it's Israel. Yeah. Now, I know that there are are other factors as well, right? So the as somebody who studies war, again, the ability for a war to be broadcast to every cell phone in every nation of the world, not only be just broadcast like, you know in the Vietnam War, people would watch TV every night they would see things, or you go into a movie theater during World War II and show you propaganda videos or whatever,
00:23:05
Speaker
This is a lot different and war is always political. So even the United States, when during a presidential election year, what the lies still matter because it's a social media driven narrative war where the algorithm drives the face of war. and And you can't romanticize war. War is death, war is destruction, war is awful.
00:23:33
Speaker
But to have those images viewed in small clips to every phone and in every nation of the world, we're more connected than any, is very different. That has compounded, like use like the the the quote you read, like I, of course, saw this in every one of Israel's war.
00:23:51
Speaker
I mean, 1948, five Arab nations attacked Israel. And now the revisionist history is that that was Israel's fault. In 1967, three Arab nations attack Israel. 1973, two Arab nations. And now in 2023, seven different enemies attacked Israel and it has turned into being Israel's fault.
00:24:12
Speaker
But it's that social media driven to their phones that yeah And there's a lot of stupid in the world, but then the stupid gets a megaphone. So that compounds things. And then all the definitions get twisted. And then we're in a post-COVID world, right? So don't trust anybody.
00:24:27
Speaker
So this is you have the entire world at this point trusting the word of a vicious, evil, globally designated terrorist organization over anybody else, to especially Israel.
00:24:42
Speaker
Yeah, let we will drill down on how Hamas have conducted that propaganda war, but I can't resist picking up on that little line of yours that the definition seemed to get twisted. And the big one, of course, is the genocide word.
00:24:55
Speaker
And so I guess i've I've made it somewhat of a leading question, but but is there a genocide occurring in Gaza today? There is definitively, absolutely, as strong as I can put it, not a genocide going on in Gaza.
00:25:10
Speaker
There is the antithesis of a genocide. There's the complete opposite of what Israel is doing in Gaza in trying to achieve its goals while at the same time taking historic, never done again. These things matter. The comparative analysis really matters.
00:25:29
Speaker
Doing things that no military in history has done to protect civilians in urban warfare, to feed an enemy's population, to provide all of these, everything from food, vaccinations, water, everything.
00:25:45
Speaker
there is the complete opposite of genocide. And it's crazy on how they've manipulated the definitions because there's you know this hierarchy of war crimes, wars against, crimes against humanity and genocide, how they've warped the definition, which is very ironclad when it was developed because it is such an egregious crime against other humans.
00:26:06
Speaker
This attempt to eradicate in part or in whole another entire race, religion, culture, everything. But then to actually show the facts and what is the case that's been built to say, no, no, we say it's genocide, whoever it is.
00:26:21
Speaker
It's crazy because there's the complete opposites. And it's not just don't believe my eyes, just analyze the argument that it is. and it just completely falls away. But in this part of the world that we're in now, it doesn't matter. The word has been weaponized.
00:26:38
Speaker
And it's lost its value because if the case, right? So this is the double standard about the effects of war, right? So take, no matter what the context, no matter what the even the attacking military is doing to prevent destruction,
00:26:57
Speaker
crisis, all of these other terms, just take the effects of the battle, right? Take the number of civilians or the number of people. like i mean, this is where at the point where they want to aggregate and disaggregate numbers. So claims of genocide will start with, there have been this many people who have died.
00:27:14
Speaker
Like, look, I don't mourn the death of terrorists or an enemy force that is actively fighting in a war. I mean, That's pretty crazy. But to say that doesn't matter what Israel has done, look at the damage that has been caused in the war.
00:27:28
Speaker
That means they're trying to do the damage. When all facts show day to day that what they have done is actually the opposite of the accusation, not the intent or the action.
00:27:43
Speaker
It's called effects-based condemnation. And it's really problematic because it isn't new. And I saw it in other wars, even the U.S. wars, where different organizations with really dubious accreditation or claims of not bias, and they use like multinational organization names like United Nations, Office of High Commission of Human Rights.
00:28:04
Speaker
without people not looking into their history, will are doing this effects-based analysis where they don't care the the because they don't have access to the information about any of the standards of of the actual war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide.
00:28:20
Speaker
They just take the numbers, no matter how true or not, and say, look at this number. This means that all of this other criteria of intent and actions are met.
00:28:31
Speaker
That's not how war works. It never has.
Justifications and Challenges in Israel's Military Actions
00:28:34
Speaker
and And what it would mean if it does work that way, that once you hit a certain number of buildings destroyed, so you know people, not even civilians, people killed, that means that it's genocide.
00:28:48
Speaker
Yeah, so let me try and still man this out. like I agree with you that I don't think there is any evidence whatsoever on the intent side that there is any intent to eliminate a particular ethnicity or race on the behalf of Israel.
00:29:02
Speaker
Some people would argue that whilst initially well within their rights to respond to the atrocity of October seven the response has no longer proportionate and therefore this disproportionate response would be evidence of almost, if not genocide,
00:29:18
Speaker
i an immoral response. How do you think about that proportionality argument? I look at it as somebody who has studied other wars, somebody who knows how that word has been misconstrued and weaponized.
00:29:40
Speaker
proportionality is one of the foundational principles of the law of war, which i agree that should be followed and are there to put limits on the brutality of war.
00:29:51
Speaker
And they have evolved. Proportionality, and this is where I start with, like, let's have shared definitions of what the term proportionality means. Proportionality is an assessment of a military's use of force and in a calculation to ensure it is not excessive to the goal, the legitimate concrete military goal is trying to achieve.
00:30:15
Speaker
So it can't be excessive to the goal, like survival or returning your hostages or defeating the enemy. And there's a clause of precaution in the definition of proportionality that you have to do everything reasonable and feasible to prevent civilian harm.
00:30:33
Speaker
Proportionality, has it is not quantitative. So this the craziness is of it is, well, look, I know what Hamas did on October 7th is awful and 1,200 people lost their lives and 250 people were taken hostage, but look at the number that's gone on since the war. It's not proportionate.
00:30:50
Speaker
Like you just just really quickly weaponized and misconstrued the definition of proportionate. What happened on October 7th, course, is what triggered the start of the war. And that's important. As somebody, again, teaches war, there's always underlying causes for wars, and then there's a trigger, and then there's a start of the war.
00:31:10
Speaker
Proportionality is assessed by strike, right? when you you So that's an easy analysis, but it's not the only analysis of if you have an enemy combatant or a legitimate military target and you're going to make decision on how to strike that target, is it excessive to the goal that is the actual outcome of achieving that goal, like the elimination of a, let's say a military leader, like, you know, Hitler himself, like what would be the proportionate role or ending the war, which again, is a hard analysis for people to make is again, disproportionate though.
00:31:44
Speaker
That's not in my but ver vernacular as in disproportionate to what, To October 7th? No. To reasonable expectations of how to achieve a military goal that everybody views as just?
00:31:59
Speaker
No. Okay. Again, in comparative analysis... Why not on that second piece? Because I think it's that second one, which is is how a lot of people think about it. Yeah. So this is Most people will start with, oh, yeah, of course, October 7th was awful. and And of course, Israel has the right to defend itself.
00:32:17
Speaker
to a point and they should be able to, so this there's a there's a bunch of fallacies. So it's really hard to break that one part of down to somebody who just doesn't, never studied a war in their entire life, never studied,
00:32:28
Speaker
has no idea of how war is fought in urban warfare specifically against all that context we talked about earlier, they'll say, of course, Israel's goals are just, you know returning the hostages, destroying Hamas's military so it can't launch anymore October 7th, removing Hamas from power, just like any war where somebody starts a war and then somebody goes to war against them. It's called a self-defense war, Article 51, whatever.
00:32:56
Speaker
there There are very few reasons actually that are legal to start a war. but self-defense is being one of those. And then, you know of course, to ensure that no threat comes from Gaza again, is it excessive to achieving the goal of destroying a, another military and political power who has vowed your destruction, not at the beginning, every day since.
00:33:21
Speaker
And that it, this is the case of Hamas that just like with the genocide claim against Israeli leaders, where they don't take anything they say, ah such as our war is not against the people in Gaza.
00:33:31
Speaker
yeah no No matter how many times you say, but people don't want to listen to that. They want to listen to some other war saying or whatever. Nobody will take Hamas's. The other side of this war is words on, I will do October 7th over and over again.
00:33:49
Speaker
Thank you for recognizing the Palestinian state so that I can build back to power to where I can do this right I want all my people to die. I need all my people to die. It's hard to break it down for people on how the goal in war is to use overwhelming military force to achieve your goals quickly so that you achieve the political goal and the fighting stops, not to protract it out.
00:34:15
Speaker
The destruction, though, usually what I get is John, I don't care about all that. Look at the numbers. Look at the numbers. Look at the the pictures of destruction. And they won't listen to anything that we just talked about for the last 30 plus minutes about the context of Hamas, the the context of the physical terrain.
00:34:33
Speaker
And then they had these other ideas, which I've had to write literally Wall Street Journal articles against American political leaders saying, well, there is a different way. Okay, let's I'll go down that road if you want.
00:34:44
Speaker
What is Given Hamas's history, given the physical terrain, all the variables here in the Egypt thing is very important here. What is the other way to achieve those three just goals that we all agree are legitimate for Israel to do to defend itself? And there is a proximity thing for a lot of people like this isn't a war thousands of miles from Israel.
00:35:08
Speaker
And if somebody hasn't been to Israel and sat like on the 232 road and seen just two football fields or rugby fields or whatever it is yeah away is Hamas. They don't understand. Like they wanted to negate the threat to Israel in that right of the self-defense. Like, yeah, you don't need to do this.
00:35:27
Speaker
Or the other factor is that there's another way, right? You can use special forces. You can do intelligence-driven raids. Like all the history before to this moment proves that that's not true against an enemy of this size, this this irrational actor, this context of the physical terrain. of And and we if we haven't, I think it is important to say that In my world, there aren't civilians.
00:35:53
Speaker
There is combatants and non-combatants. A non-combatant is somebody who is not participating in the hostilities at all. A combatant is a named you know organization like Hamas, and they can be targeted no matter what they're doing.
00:36:06
Speaker
A non-combatant, though, can turn themselves into a combatant and participate in the hostilities by joining the military like Hamas and shooting at or carrying ammo, holding hostages, a whole list of things.
00:36:21
Speaker
And to discount the radicalization of the population or their physical, actual support in the activities is also, to me, just not truthful in When people try to separate try to apply counterinsurgency theory, that there's there's only this small portion of insurgent, although it's not an insurgency, Hamas is not an insurgency, just to be clear for your listeners, that there's just this insurgent force and the rest of the population doesn't want anything to do with that. like If they're a noncombatant, 100%, they have to be protected. They can never be targeted.
00:36:52
Speaker
If they join in the hostilities in a wide, brarish way, they are combatants. So it all comes down to this excessive question you're asking, like, is it excessive for Israel to achieve these goals despite what Israel has done to make it less destructive? And people are like, oh that's crazy, John. Of course, they're destroying everything.
00:37:12
Speaker
And this is, again... comparatively, like, no, if you have an enemy fighter like Hamas, who's done all this preparation to include all the explosive and all the buildings and all the caches and all these things, it is very comparable to those other moments in history before now in the level of destruction necessary to get towards the enemy.
00:37:32
Speaker
And the number one thing you can do to limit that is to get the civilians out of harm's way. war is a is a battle of wills. So the goal in war, which again, is not to destroy every member of the other military or every piece of their terrain.
00:37:49
Speaker
It is to convince them to do your will. In this case, that is to return the hostages, give up power and lay down your weapons. And the insanity is that the entire, almost like 90% of the world agrees those goals should happen, right?
00:38:04
Speaker
Of course, Hamas should just give the hostages back now. They were illegally taken by every definition. They should, of course, lay down their weapons and give up power and godless. You have 22 members of of the Arab League, Arab nations, to include Qatar, which is wild, who says, yeah, of course, we we think these three things.
00:38:21
Speaker
Okay, but how? right And this is where I come in as a person that looked at the long view of this. is like yeah There's a way here. Hamas could unilaterally do that and just lay down their weapons. And Israel has even offered and others to let them flee the country.
00:38:36
Speaker
And they're not, but people won't recognize that and say, well, the war just needs to stop. But we all agree this this outcome has to happen or with the hostage returned, Hamas laying down their weapons. and given up power, but we just we don't know how to make that happen.
00:38:49
Speaker
And for Israel, it's not a choice of not achieving those goals. and And the world is trying to force Israel, like, no, that's that's the only alternative you have at this moment, is just to stop.
00:39:00
Speaker
Okay, if I stop now, will that achieve the goals? No, but that's really what we're saying for these long lists of reasons. And for me, as an analyst, like if you're saying that about Israel, would you say that about any other country at this moment in time?
Radicalization in Gaza: Causes and Consequences
00:39:14
Speaker
I can say as an American... you would be, you should go be put into an insane asylum. If you would say that is the American society would stop before achieving its goals after attack, like October 7th, because you said it should, and you've used all these weaponized numbers to warp what the laws of war say, what, what ah any democratic nation would do.
00:39:39
Speaker
So if you're saying it ah about Israel now, what kind of world are we living in and really dystopian that I would, this wouldn't apply to me. Of course, we're just saying this applies to Israel in this moment because of this list of reasons.
00:39:54
Speaker
I think that distinction that you made between civilians and non-combatants was a very interesting one for a couple of reasons. One, because it challenges this pervasive myth, particularly on the the liberal left in Western countries, that you have an evil Hamas regime that has subjugated a peaceful, yeah helpless citizenry beneath them.
00:40:15
Speaker
But also, it does have implications as well when you think about radicalisation, for now Western countries as they start to think about taking in particular members of of Gaza, as I mentioned earlier.
00:40:27
Speaker
Can you give me a sense of the levels of radicalization in Gaza? Again, this is sad. It's unfortunate that it has happened, but we need to look at the reality and then how that sort of radicalization of the, was about say citizen, the non-combatant population, how that has has impacted the war and made it more difficult for his Israel to fight it.
00:40:48
Speaker
Sure. So first, I think you hit on something that that is near to me as well as just you know in the social sciences. And there's a ah really, again, people that I respect as experts, Victor David Hansen, General H.R. McNaster, have written out of Stanford about like We got ourselves here and then as in the world and believing in all this nonsense from social sciences world about war. Like there's, there are other options you can do economic warfare, information warfare, all this, even in the midst of a war that was started like this, um there's a long road of how did we get here to where we have these opinions that are just, mean, just, just don't pass like common sense variables.
00:41:30
Speaker
Yeah. Your question, though, about radicalization, right? These are the things that people want to discount. But I will say, again, there's there's some mixing here of theories like counterinsurgency theory, which is population-centric, safeguarding the population, because there's just this very small, radicalized, terrorist, insurgent formation that relies on the support of the population to maintain its survival in the midst, whether in the, you know, there's a famous book called Out of the Mountains. It used to happen in like guerrilla warfare in the in the jungles and all that. And now that's happening the urban areas with non-state actors rising like ISIS, Al-Qaeda and others.
00:42:10
Speaker
The radicalization in Gaza is well documented, right? So for decades, the radicalization of the population from birth, that includes a summer school every summer in Gaza, over 100,000 kids age 5 to 15 training to conduct war against Israel and to kill Israel, to dehumanize Israel.
00:42:32
Speaker
The books that were actually UNRWA run schools, which is a dubious organization. and People think it's United Nations, and it's not. It's Gazans who are receiving funding from the United Nations, running schools and and aid programs and everything that are, in many cases, not Hamas-affiliated. They are actually Hamas.
00:42:52
Speaker
But the school books from birth, there is Palestinian Sesame Street teaching them from birth and But it's not just like how you indoctrinate somebody into it. It's every aspect of life in Gaza was through this prism of radicalization about their oppression.
00:43:10
Speaker
Because this is, again, what people won't acknowledge. It's like, why is it that Gaza has been in this status and they only want to blame Israel while the Hamas leadership are billionaires sitting in Qatar and the rampant poverty there in Gaza for 90 plus percent of the population is blamed on Israel?
00:43:29
Speaker
despite no matter how much money from the international community is flooded in, and that radical that supports the radicalization, like your deprivity is Israel's fault. And that narrative through every aspect of every institution in Gaza was forced and radicalized to the point where you have you know mothers saying they are or want their children to be dead to be killed and martyred in the pursuit of Israel's destruction, not their freedom.
00:43:56
Speaker
And this is the ideal that Hamas is a freedom-fighting organization and occupied and all this stuff, which is just not what Hamas says, which is the insanity right of these protests around the world to include in Australia is that you know, free Palestine, Hamas are freedom fighters. What would you do?
00:44:13
Speaker
Like, look, one, you're you're you're not even saying what Hamas says. From its first charter to its updated charter to what it says daily, it does has no goal of just freeing the people of Gaza to have self-determination, autonomy, equal rights for everybody, all this stuff. no Hamas' only goal and what they have radicalized the entire population is the destruction of Israel and the death of the entire Jewish Jewry around the world.
00:44:40
Speaker
Because of their... radicalized version of Islamic ideology, there their, their idea of a history of organization of the entire Middle East, so much of it, it can't be discounted. And why it can't be discounted is because when people start taking polls, right, again, we live in a wild world where the polls, people will be polling people in Gaza on their feelings about Israel or the war after October 7th.
00:45:07
Speaker
And that you're creating more terrorists than you're killing. It's just anti-intellectual, one, to say, okay, who are you polling? and And that in a war where the goal is, like every major war of survival, is to remove the other power, to destroy its military.
00:45:26
Speaker
Can you imagine what kind of polling would have been done of like the Japanese citizens during World War II to say, know, they thought the emperor was ah a god, a deity.
00:45:37
Speaker
They would, of course, said, of course we want the war to continue and and we're willing to die for the goals. That's the insane I don't want to put a name to it, world we're living in where that discounting of the radicalization, which is normal, right? So a radicalized population is a very big part of de-radicalization in post-conflict operations, right? There's a whole field of study in universities around the world about once you've removed the old power and they have acknowledged both in themselves and in the group,
00:46:08
Speaker
whether it's the German military or Al-Qaeda, that they're not going to win and everybody else sees that they're not going to win, then you start de-radicalization of the population where the sentiment, where the who they view as the good guys and the bad guys becomes very important.
00:46:27
Speaker
But to do it during an actual live fighting battle, let alone no entire war, it's just anti-intellectual and and you're discounting like everything. Yeah, this speaks to what for me is one of the most darkly fascinating parts of the response to this conflict. And I'm not sure whether it's a cognitive bias or a failure of imagination. I'm not quite sure how to phrase it, but it's basically how members of the Western liberal establishment think that other people inevitably think like them across cultures and that religious and cultural and historical influences in that part of the world are insignificant.
00:47:09
Speaker
It is taking a Western liberal worldview where you've grown up with the idea of human rights and democracy and all that sort of good stuff and just innately assuming that other people think the same way as you. And it's just, it's not the case. And I continue to be astounded So many people implicitly or explicitly seem to to to continue on with that particular failure of imagination.
00:47:32
Speaker
Right. Which is the, again, if you you take the time to run that circle for anybody, let alone an entire group, if they believed that there is 99% the people in Gaza want nothing to do with this war,
00:47:49
Speaker
then why wouldn't you let them leave temporarily? And then people's like, well, this ethnic cleansing, they just want the land. Despite everything that Israel's leadership says, if people are believe that that is true, then why wouldn't you want to separate that population from the evil? but Because this is what they'll say, like, yeah, of course, I condemn Hamas for its operations on October 7th. Although some will actually say, no, no, that's what a freedom fighter does. And they had the right to do that.
00:48:16
Speaker
And why wouldn't you agree that they need to be separated from Hamas and not used in this very ahistorical human sacrifice strategy that they're being used for?
00:48:31
Speaker
Why wouldn't you say, like, course, let them out if they want to be yeah ah let out and... and You'll build a humanitarian zone in the Sinai for just a few months. Because at this point, i mean, this is, again, there is a fallacy about short wars, but there's also a fallacy in the scale of of the problem that has been forced on Israel.
00:48:52
Speaker
The scale the problem is that you won't let civilians move. So yes, it's very hard to keep the civilians safe while the Hamas is trying to get them killed. That's like the paradox, right?
00:49:03
Speaker
It's really hard, and and Israel has been really innovative on how to do that. And if you're against, even for a few months, under a UN Security Council resolution guaranteeing that they can come back once Hamas is destroyed or acknowledges defeat,
00:49:20
Speaker
then you're the hypocrisy of that person's liberal ideals is very rich.
Future Challenges and Paths to Stability in Gaza
00:49:28
Speaker
I think this is a good segue to where to from here.
00:49:32
Speaker
So let's say that Israel will eventually achieve its military aims. You will have in its wake a radicalized population who, and I'm not saying this means that the war effort was was the wrong thing to do, but they will be further radicalized by this conflict, I would have imagined.
00:49:50
Speaker
You have a Gaza region that has been largely turned to rubble. You will have, I think, no doubt further terrorist offshoots of one form or another, even if the Hamas brand is down for the count.
00:50:04
Speaker
You hear stuff like two-state solution, you hear so you know all manner of different things. And I'm asking you basically to solve the problems in the Middle East, but where to from here? So if we bring it out to the Middle East, it's a a much richer system.
00:50:18
Speaker
not even more difficult conversation. The amount of work that's been done since October 7th by Israel and and allies to reduce the threat of instability in the Middle East, right?
00:50:31
Speaker
The Islamic regime in Iran's proxies, its pursuits, the threat of this massive army on Israel's northern border. mean, so many elements here that there are actually, you know, the Abraham Accords that held held up the The fall of Assad regime, thanks Israel's defaming of Hezbollah.
00:50:54
Speaker
and There's so many elements here that are very positive for the Middle East. The economic partnerships with the United States. The fact, like I said, that the all of these agreements, even the agreement with Egypt, although I strongly condemn them for their actions, the agreements the the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt has held.
00:51:14
Speaker
And that's really important from a much broader perspective. But to get me down the road of what's next in this conflict, despite all that we've talked about,
00:51:27
Speaker
is I don't know because I have the humbleness to understand I'm not a part of all the conversation, to understand that war is by its very nature, will never change. It's human, it's political, and it's uncertain.
00:51:41
Speaker
I can't tell you what Hamas is going to do tomorrow. It would be rational for them to return the hostages and surrender and and for the prosperity of the of the people. you know The ideal that you know even if you were to defeat Hamas, like you said, which will still be a massive challenge based on all things that that Hamas has done since October 7th, then what?
00:52:02
Speaker
right This is the whole ideal of the day after when there is no historical solution to this amount of the problem. There are absolutely bits and pieces that, of course, would be absolutely foundational. And even Israel says this, like once Hamas is removed, immediate transition to local Palestinian governance with international people coming in for reconstruction, aid development, security, all these things.
00:52:28
Speaker
But the problem is, is nobody will acknowledge like none of that can happen in Gaza. And of course, I separate the challenge of Gaza from the challenge of the West Bank, Palestinian Authority, Pay to Slay, another terrorist organization that won't even recognize their neighbors' exist right to exist, let alone...
00:52:45
Speaker
refused the right of return, which means that Palestinians can come back and and settle on Israel land. There's so much there. I separate Gaza. Gaza, because of all these reasons, its radicalization, its weaponization, the demilitarization of every inch of the ground,
00:53:02
Speaker
But you have to start. And that is where many nations can agree to, we all have to come on board that not only do we agree that all these things have to happen, Hamas, release hostages, surrender, lay down its arms, demilitarize the Gaza Strip, and then be a part of how you would restore normalcy for the people in Gaza.
00:53:24
Speaker
And there are, of course, a lot of history there on how to do that, not in one swooping moment, but in little bit by little bit. And we do have positive signs of actual Palestinian people in Gaza saying, I am not Hamas, and I want nothing to do with Hamas. And and they have done this to the entire Gaza Strip. You have Bedouin tribes, you have protests, you have all these things that are a sign of what could come after, but where people kind of try to fast forward to like, well, we just need a solution for all of it.
00:53:55
Speaker
We need a solution to everything that's happened up to this point. We need one Palestinian representative for all of the Gaza Strip who will take ownership and how hard that would, like it's inconceivable because there's nobody who could do that at this moment until Hamas is, its physical coercive power is reduced before you can start de-radicalization before you can start you normalizing. We call these, that's the hard thing, right?
00:54:23
Speaker
There is this ideal people try to fast forward again. I hate this. Forever wars, nation building, all these things. like Like, can we agree to get past step one? And then agreed to everybody being a part of step two, which it would be to incrementally create something that is not what Hamas created in the last 20 years in parts of the Gaza
Conclusion: Insights and Further Readings
00:54:45
Speaker
Strip.
00:54:45
Speaker
I believe that's a part of the future, but everything could change tomorrow because it is, by its nature, political. We have this massive... political theater that's about to happen in the United Nations General Assembly that's going to be, again, anti-factual, anti-historical, really the opposite of what the entire multinational order that was established in World War II was designed to do. And it's saddening, but I won't give up on fighting for the truth.
00:55:17
Speaker
Or should you? It sounds like at least for now, we should put the designs for Gaza Lago on hold, sadly. ah John, where can more people ah where can people read your work and hear your thoughts?
00:55:29
Speaker
Sure. So I post all my stuff. Of course, you can go to the Modern War Institute at West Point. You can go to johnspentronline.com where I have everything I've ever written. have my own podcast on any of the podcast forums called the Urban Warfare Project Podcast.
00:55:43
Speaker
And I do a little bit of social media on on X called Spencer Guard and a few other places. Links to all of those are in the show notes. John, as I said, I've admired your thoughts on this conflict since it started. I think you are a wonderfully important and insightful voice. Thank you so much for that. And thank you for coming on today.
00:56:02
Speaker
Thanks, Will.