Military Expert on Reality of Urban Warfare inside Gaza | John Spencer
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Hello and welcome to State of a Nation with me, Alon Levy. It's 18 months since the start of the October 7th war and it is back with a vengeance after the ceasefire collapsed.

Are we back to the same or will it be different this time? Does the return to military pressure doom the hostages to execution at the hands of their Hamas captors? Or does it offer the only hope of getting them out alive? Today we're diving into one of the most fiendishly difficult wars that any democracy has ever had to fight.

Because Israel is fighting in the most complex urban battlefield in history. A battlefield deliberately designed by the enemy, the Hamas terror regime, to maximize casualties on their own side, to make it impossible to dismantle their military in a sterile way, and to generate images of suffering for the cameras. For 16 years as the government of Gaza, Hamas transformed Gaza's cityscape for war.

It built a necropolis of tunnels under homes, schools, mosques and hospitals. It embedded its command centers underneath and among civilians. And it made sure that any attempt to fight back would look like an atrocity. Civilian deaths are a tragedy. They're also inevitable in a war that Israel didn't want, didn't start, and is fighting in a battlefield that Hamas designed. And they're happening because Hamas wants them to.

And this is the moral trap that Hamas set, and the trap that the world has walked into. The ceasefire has collapsed. Phase 1 ended with 33 hostages returned, some alive, some already murdered. That was meant to lead to phase 2 of the ransom. A permanent ceasefire. But there was a fatal contradiction. Hamas demanded a permanent ceasefire that would leave it in power to do more October 7th's again and again.

Israel demanded a permanent ceasefire that would remove Hamas from power so it could never do October 7th again. Those demands were mutually irreconcilable. And in the meanwhile, Hamas was enjoying a de facto ceasefire, still holding onto hostages without paying any price. So now the war has resumed. But while Israel fights on, the world has basically written it off. Nobody is seriously asking whether Israel can win. World leaders are just asking when it can stop and how to make it stop.

With the exception of President Donald Trump, who has promised to give Israel whatever it needs to finish the job. Israel's other allies just want the war to end, even if that means that Hamas stays in power to plot another October 7th. So can Israel win? And at what cost? Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar recently told European Union foreign policy chief Kaya Kalas in Jerusalem, "...we're now fighting the war of the free world."

Iran, Houthis, Hamas and Hezbollah, they attack us because we are nearby, but make no mistake, their war is against Western civilization. Against its values and its way of life, it's only natural for us to expect more support from Europe. So said Gideon Saar. And that's where today's episode begins.

Because this war isn't just about Israel. The October 7th war is about the rules of modern warfare. It's about whether democracies are allowed to defend themselves and it's about what happens when the world decides that one side isn't allowed to win against an enemy that strategically violates international law.

My guest today is someone I've been trying to bring on the podcast for a long time. John Spencer, chair of the Urban Warfare Studies at West Point, US Army veteran, one of the most influential voices today on how militaries operate in cities. At a time when Israel's prime minister is on a collision course with parts of the IDF general staff, Spencer seems to be Netanyahu's favorite military expert, and he quotes him at length. And Spencer claims something that many observers reject.

that Hamas can be destroyed militarily. But he's also clear it won't be easy. So today we're going to unpack that claim. We'll talk about what Israel has learned, what it hasn't, and whether anyone in the world is learning the right lessons. We'll talk about the hostages, the collapse of the ceasefire and the ransom, the aid dilemma, the tanks, the tunnels, and the political endgame. We're diving in with John Spencer, who joins me now in the studio. John, welcome back to Israel. Hi.

Elon, thanks. And thanks for having me. Finally, despite your efforts, definitely to get me on. It's an honor to be on. There we are. I have you besieged in the studio and now there's nowhere for you to run. John, let's start with this question of whether Hamas can be defeated militarily because so much of the world has basically written off the

prospect that there is a military solution to the threat of Hamas. And by the way, in the same breath, they also say there's no political solution to dislodge Hamas. I've never heard of any diplomatic plan for making Hamas relinquish power. But the war is back on. And some people will say, you know, insanity, the famous saying is, is

the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, banging your head against the wall. But there's a sense that maybe this time it will be different. So tell me why you think this time will be different and how Israel can defeat Hamas militarily. It's a great question. And I've been writing about it for a while as in Israel was always winning, but that doesn't mean they were going to win. And people want to use a different framework to understand war. Like war has a framework to understand who started it,

what is winning or losing look like from pursuit of political goals. War is always the pursuit of political goals. What's different now is everything. Everything is different as this war has restarted, especially Hamas. Hamas is different. It's not the military that it was on October 6th.

Israel was successful at dismantling the military. Yes, they had lots of fighters and the recruit teenagers to be Hamas fighters, but the actual military that is holding ground in Gaza is different. The political environment is completely different. With the election of President Trump, the United States backing Israel, still within the laws of war and protecting civilians and everything, but to do what's necessary to achieve the goal.

Furthermore, Israel's goal, which was the challenge, right? Israel set three very clear, definable goals for the war. And I asked, as you know, Prime Minister multiple times and others, what are the political goals? And then I would visit Gaza to see if that was being translated into the execution of the war. Return the hostages, destroy Hamas military and remove it from political power and ensure that no threat comes from the Gaza Strip ever again.

In order to do that, there had to be something else than Hamas, a new power. For the entire 18 months of the war, Israel hasn't yet been willing to say that we will occupy Gaza and be that power until there's another solution. It seems to be this time there is more discussion about that, as in, no, you need to have

We have this saying in the militaries, and you probably heard it from your time, even from the beginning, about clear, hold, and build, which is both a tactic and a strategy for basically conquering something that you are achieving in war. Israel, up to this point, did a lot of clearing operations. They actually did a lot of raids, and I visited many of those. But they weren't willing to hold the ground.

And then definitely not willing to replace the power. But that in this case, for Israel to achieve that one, which is what everybody talks about, the battle of the ideal. You can't kill the ideal of Hamas, which I rail against from a war studies. Nazism was defeated and the Imperial Japan was defeated. ISIS was defeated.

They're still around, but they don't hold territory. They don't hold weapons. They don't have armies to hurt people. Right. I like to say ISIS is now targeting concerts in Austria. It no longer holds territory the size of Austria. That's right. So now there seems to be a little bit difference on, of course, you have the President Trump plan, which...

is also something that's different. And we can talk about, and you mentioned it in the monologue, about the worst military challenge that any nation has faced in definitely modern history, if not, depending on how we talk about it, in any history. One of those being the political constraints put on Israel and the IDF.

Like the fact that Egypt, which should never get an out of what it's done in this war, it has caused a lot of civilian deaths by saying not one refugee comes out of Gaza, which is very not normal in international norms.

Egypt is the signatory to the refugee convention, multiple actually, that all nations do that, let people out of a war zone, at least passing through. And the fact that Egypt said, not on my watch, build a new wall, send an armor division down there,

That seems to be, at least there's a conversation now to that being different in Gazans who want to leave, not being forced to leave, Gazans that want to leave the combat zone being allowed. So just on every variable, this time, everything's different. But that very vital part about holding and being occupying, if you want to call it, is something that would be necessary to protect

bring something else before de-radicalizations can start and all of that. Hamas is only is in order for it to win. It's pretty easy. Hamas just has to survive. And it tried to show us during the ceasefire that they weren't planning to go anywhere. Their fancy uniforms and their trucks and their, you know, military weapons is everybody has these ideals about the war. Like, you know, just stop the violence now, which only continues the violence now.

And Hamas believes it can win, which is just survive. So you're saying what's different this time, 18 months into the October 7th war, three fundamental factors that have changed. First of all, Hamas is not the same military that it was at the start of the war. It's much weaker. Israel isn't facing the same army. The second, it's not facing the same set of political restraints from the United States, from the rest of the world, in a way that it can therefore fight more freely. But the third thing really intrigues me because...

The IDF did phenomenal work clearing out Hamas, but then it found itself in this game of cat and mouse where it had cleared Hamas from an area but then ended up going back in because Hamas had regrouped in an area. And you're basically saying that the prospect for Israel to totally destroy Hamas is now that any territory the IDF takes, it would. It starts governing. We place under military occupation. What prospect does that allow us to...

be able to disengage. We don't want to be in Gaza, governing Gaza, but you're saying that really the only option, the only way that Hamas can be removed from power is for the IDF to hold Gaza until we can think of a better idea for who should govern it?

I'm Imogen Folks, the host of Inside Geneva, a podcast where we tackle the big questions facing our planet. Can UN investigations bring more criminals to justice? Does the world need a pandemic treaty? What about climate change or refugees? Should we ban autonomous weapons? Some call them killer robots.

Get the answers you need with me and our expert guests twice a month on Inside Geneva, free with your usual podcast app. I think the thinking should have already began so that we can get to that point where you're like when after October 7th, visiting the war, when when at the very beginning, Israel said they would not occupy Gaza.

before even entering it, meant that achieving that goal of removing Hamas from political power was going to be near impossible. I mean, there's...

That's the thing with war. If you ever have anybody on your show who can tell you what the future is, then you shouldn't have them on again because war is uncertain by its very nature. I couldn't have predicted what... Scrap last question. What comes next? What President Trump said about the actual moving of Gazans to other areas, which is the logical thing to do. But yes, I'm saying...

In order to remove Hamas from political power, you have to hold the ground. Even if it's, you know, there are other ideals, right? The tribal clan leaders that they tried and Hamas would just chop off their heads. You have to provide the security for whatever comes after Hamas. There are other ideals. And if it was an Arab force, the same thing. I mean, even the Palestinian Authority couldn't go into Gaza today and survive because Hamas would just chop off their heads like they do everybody else's.

Israel would have to go in and the IDF should cure the ground and possibly govern it for a certain amount of time before a Palestinian or Gazan organization. This is very historical, this part. But what Israel had been doing up till now, which is even if you say that you think they were clearing ground, they were in some areas clearing. It really wasn't until the end of the

you know, the end of the, before the ceasefire where they are actually clearing house to house, tunnel to tunnel, major areas before they would withdraw and then go back in. Right. And that I guess was the fundamental flaw of the strategy until now that if the goal is to remove Hamas from power, either you put someone else in power or all that remains is anarchy and anarchy and a vacuum simply sucks back the terrorism. So you're saying IDF needs to hold territory in Gaza and,

until there is someone to whom it can be transferred and the political options for who that territory can be transferred to or how it will be governed are going to look very different when Hamas has been completely routed. I'm interested though from a comparative perspective, I've been looking at other conflicts around the world about, you know, the battlefield that Israel entered on October 7th was unlike anything that the world had ever seen.

But I also get the sense that the rules of the game that Israel was forced to play by were also unlike any that had been forced on any other country. I had Jonathan Conricus here, former IDF spokesperson here on the show, and he described how in the early days of the war there was a meeting with UNRWA, with the United Nations, and the IDF was imploring them to help facilitate the evacuation of civilians from Hamas strongholds to tent cities...

And the UN refused. And it insisted on keeping civilians in areas of active combat. I mean, I guess the closest comparison is to ISIS, the battle against ISIS in Mosul and Raqqa. I mean, when that happened, how would you compare it to what the IDF was trying to do? Was there a demand that civilians should remain in the heart of Mosul and the UN food truck should continue driving right into the middle of Raqqa? Or was it understood ISIS has to be burned to the ground?

And for it to be burned to the ground, the civilians are going to have to get out of harm's way temporarily until it's safe to return. Yeah, it's a great question. And I, as you know, from the beginning of this war, tried to help people understand, although there was, I had to actually write this, stop comparing this to everything else, because for all these reasons, Gaza, which isn't one city, it's, you know, multiple cities, very large cities against one city like Mosul, Raqqa, Aleppo, Mawari, others.

Interesting with the Battle of Mosul, which was a horrific, destructive battle, 100,000 Iraqi security forces to remove 5,000 ISIS fighters from a city of over a million. At one point, though, the Iraqi government did tell the civilians, just stay put, because they didn't have anywhere for them to go. But eventually, they make the call for the 850,000 trapped civilians in the city of Mosul to evacuate to displaced persons camp. So

Absolutely. There's no comparison. Is that what normally happens in urban wars, that the civilian population is encouraged to evacuate temporarily for safety? I mean, I know there's nothing really that this can be compared to, but are there other examples of counterterrorism battles where you're trying to dislodge an enemy while being told civilians have to stay put and they have to be protected? Yeah.

Very few. Very few. Interesting you said counterterrorism battles, because I tried to rail against people comparing this to counterterrorism battles like the ones the United States went through. Like, one of the biggest was the Second Battle of Fallujah, which we actually did for six months evacuate the city up to 90% of the civilians. Yes, that is, in most cases...

the right thing to do is to evacuate civilians and then for there to be a displaced person place completely out of harm's way. But it's also, I don't want people to think it's very normal to, if somebody attacks you and then you're, or you're on the attack of another city, enemy city or something like that, that you stop and wait, Hey, I want to give your time for your civilians to get out. And most invasions, you've looked at Russia's invasions, Ukraine, American invasions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Panama. If,

If you tell the enemy you're coming, it's going to go worse for you. Right, but Russia's invasion of Ukraine is barbaric, and we don't want to compare it to that. We want to know what do, you know, civilized nations do. How do they wage war when they're forced to? I mean, again, this is difficult to discuss because for so long the world has enjoyed this long peace where countries haven't had to face these sorts of dilemmas that Israel is facing. So, Fair, from an international law perspective, there's no requirement to give advance warning to civilians that you're coming.

Now you get that balance of the humanitarian concern. In this case, Israel did the right thing and gave time. And I remember those early days when Israel said for the northern Gaza to evacuate. So that in the entire world, which is the double standard that I hope we get to talk about, said to include the United Nations, you can't do that. They literally said you can't evacuate civilians.

from populated areas where the enemy is holding ground. That's the problematic part of this, is that from day one, even after October 7th, these groups like the United Nations or these interpreters of international law said, well, you can't evacuate civilians. I mean,

That was the right thing to do, was to evacuate the civilians. It would have been the right thing to do to create a displaced person camp just on the other side of the Rafah Gate in the Sinai Desert, where the United Nations could have had free access and Hamas would not have had its main center of gravity, which is the human shield, and what it does is human sacrifice, which I've been very clear on that I can't find other historical examples, not even ISIS's.

whose entire strategy rested, by their own words, on getting their civilians killed. And that's what Hamas has said. Nobody's listening. Like, I need all my civilians to die so I can achieve my goal, which is to destroy Israel and to kill all the Jews on the planet. ISIS didn't have that goal. The Japanese, the Germans, nobody had that goal of getting all of their population killed. But this is what happened with Hamas, which

and it doesn't want its civilians to evacuate. So it also stops civilians from evacuating. Right. How do you fight an enemy that sees its own victory as being, by definition, a Pyrrhic victory, right? Their version of victory is that ultimately everything is in flames and smoldering ruin. I'm interested by this question about double standards in particular. Yeah.

I don't like being those who complain about saying it's not fair, we're being held to double standards. But in this instance, it's absolutely clear that if the reality is international law doesn't even require you to give civilians advanced warning before moving into territory.

For the international law gods to then claim it's actually a war crime to give them a warning and tell them that they should leave, that it is a violation of international law to exercise the principle of precaution, telling them that we are coming and in order for you to stay safe, you need to get out of the way. I think they have blood on their hands and I think that people are dead.

Because Israel was not allowed to fight within the rules of the game. And a whole new set of rules were invented to try to make it utterly impossible for Israel to fight. And you see this with the way that Hamas puts its people in press vests and has them dress up as doctors and puts them in hospitals thinking that it will gain permanent immunity because it violates international law. By violating international law,

international law is going to reward it. It's not what international law says, it's not what it should say, and I wonder from your perspective, looking at other battles, wars, what was the double standard? What were the rules of the game that were imposed on Israel that were unlike anything that any army had to deal with? And did that basically doom the first part of the war because victory just became impossible within the rules of the game that the world dictated?

Yeah, that's a big one. I will say, and I've been very vocal and I stand by this from a historical analysis, that Israel has done more, as in implemented more, what we call civilian harm mitigation measures than any nation in the history of war.

Not just the giving notice and how they give notice and the phone calls, the text messages, the voicemails, the daily pauses, everyday pausing for multiple hours saying we will not conduct operations, handing out their own maps to the civilians and the enemy, taking all of these things to protect civilians and put their soldiers, the IDF soldiers at risk because losing the element of surprise in the interest of humanitarian concern is

I can say definitively until somebody can try to challenge me and show me the army who did more measures to prevent... Of course, it doesn't look like that because Israel is implementing measures to try to keep civilians safe when their own government strategy is explicitly out loud to sacrifice as many as they can. And that's the other example. Again, I can do comparisons to Ukraine because I studied Ukraine so well.

There's over 400 miles of tunnels in Gaza, over a billion dollar investment in that infrastructure, not their own infrastructure, like water or sewage or anything. Yeah.

All 2.2 million of the Gazans could fit in those tunnels with ease. Just like in Ukraine, when Russia illegally broke all international law and started bombarding cities like Mariupol, the civilians sought refuge in the subway tunnels and all that. Not in Gaza. Not one civilian is allowed in the tunnels. But you asked me, what is a double standard? One of the biggest double standards, which I have been railing against because it's not a standard, is what is your civilian to combatant ratio?

That became the standard in which Israel was assessed to from the beginning to include U.S. presidents reiterating Hamas' Gaza health ministry number and then saying the civilian to combatant ratio is too high.

That has nothing to do with the standards of war. The standards of war is do not target civilians. Hang on. I get the impression that it's Israel that brings up the civilian to combatant ratio. And the world isn't looking at the civilian combatant ratio because if people are coming and saying your civilian to combatant ratio is wrong, no, because far more civilians per combatants have died in other wars. It's Israel that brings up the civilian to combatant ratio to try to defend itself from the charge that too many civilians have been killed. And of course, too many civilians have been killed. Of course.

I mean, every civilian death is a tragedy and there should be as few of those as possible. But as for the total number of people who have been killed, every Hamas militant death is exactly the purpose of the war and there should be more of them. There's three types of lies in my work. Lies, damn lies, and statistics. So from the beginning, Israel didn't start with...

I actually had to go looking in all the case studies I've written in all their battles for that exact ratio. Although I catalog, it has never been asked. That's the double standard. What is the civilian to combatant ratio in most wars?

Because my understanding is that no one counts civilian deaths in wars, and therefore it's impossible to find the numbers. No. So I will say that it isn't impossible. And eventually, which Dresden is a really great example, right? So Dresden, there's a U.S. senator that tried to say that the bombing of Gaza is worse than Dresden. Because he didn't know that at one point the bombing statistic of Dresden was 200,000. And 10 years later, it was dropped to 20,000.

I can tell you for a fact, there's no war that I've ever studied where they can know within hours. If you're the Gaza health ministry, somehow you know in minutes how many civilians died. And of course, there's no combatants that died. I can give you the ratios of different battles, like the Battle of Mosul or Fallujah or... How many? So in the Battle of Mosul, which is the biggest battle since World War II, it's a single city, right? Gaza's, the comparisons are way off. In that, there's only 5,000 defenders and there's 10,000 civilians that died.

But a year after that battle, Alon, there was somebody on the ground. PBS was on the ground. Like how many civilians died here? We don't know yet. You don't know in real time. And in,

So that's a major problem. I don't want people thinking that the standard of war is that you know daily. And we think that in Israel, in Gaza, I mean, as best we know, it's approximately one-to-one. We think, but I think that's being generous to who is a combatant. This is where I've had to go around teaching people what war is. What do you mean? You're either a combatant or you're a non-combatant. If you're a civilian who partakes in the hostilities in any way, you're a combatant.

So if you're a civilian in Gaza and you're holding hostages, like when they did this amazing hostage rescue and immediately within minutes, the international media reported 200 civilians dead. No, if you're a civilian holding Israeli American hostages, you're a combatant. I've had to teach people what combatant or non-combatant is. So the ideal that,

Anybody can go into Gaza and go, okay, that person, look, that's a civilian. Right, and as far as double standards, I remember the whole, you know, the international law gods again, the human rights industry, people immediately saying that hostage rescue missions are illegal and they should, in fact, have given advance warning as if that didn't mean they were going to execute the hostages.

and that they couldn't have gone undercover, and basically the only type of hostage rescue that would be allowed is if you arrive in uniform and give them 24 hours notice. I mean, it's just so ridiculous that you see how the rules are being designed by people who have a vested interest in Israel losing and keeping Hamas in power, and there's no pretense of objectivity here. Yeah. For some reason, the number, though, and this is where it didn't matter when we, the researchers, or even Israel said, look, this is what the combatant ratio is, and it's low.

That's not the way they wanted to spend the biggest number they could come up with. And the number just kept growing. Even statistically, methodologically, it didn't make any sense how much the number was growing. It didn't matter. That's the only number that the international community and those who supposedly are the assessors of the standards used.

That's the biggest one. That's not the way that war works. I mean, I can give you all horrific numbers of like 300,000 civilians killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's just not that civilian to combatant ratio is not the way that works. The law says do not target civilians.

And then you have the proportionality assessment of the value of the target to what you've done. Again, Israel's done more to prevent civilian harm than others, but the value is still high. This is an existential threat to Israel. So stop comparing it to some battle that,

you know, a Western military was in thousands of miles away from home. That wasn't an existential threat or holding hostages. The one battle that I, I think you heard me. Right. I like to, I like to say that, you know, if the closest comparison is the battle of Mosul or Fallujah or Raqqa to try to take down ISIS, uh,

ISIS didn't have hundreds of American hostages and firing rockets at the American home front with a population that had to some degree, at least largely bought into its jihadi mission. I mean, just completely incomparable. Can I give you one example that, so the battle of Manila, 1945, there's over 3000 American British and other internees. So some of them were presbyterians.

prisoners of war or people that had been left behind when the americans withdrew from the philippines in 1945 we hit the beaches to return and macarthur at the time hits the beach in the philippines it says go get our people from the city of manila which is a very dense large city of over a million there were about 37 000 uh japanese defenders but there were

So we have a similar case where, okay, there's hostages or internees there. MacArthur told the army to go to that city to free our people, but he said you can't use any air bombings. So this is the fallacy that people think that bombing, if you don't bomb, there'll be less civilian harm. And actually, it's the opposite. If you don't hit the enemy before you get there, then it's just a protracted war. Yeah.

So the U.S. Army does it without bombing Manila, frees our people, kills all the enemy, but 100,000 civilians died in that battle. And nobody said, but that's what was your civilian combatant ratio? It wasn't that wasn't the news story at the time. John, I mean, you look at war from a comparative perspective and I understand the World War II comparisons. Definitely, when Israel says this war is existential, counterproductive.

compares it to Nazi Germany in that sense of the need for a total crushing victory. But there is a sense that, look, the rules of the game were different back in the Second World War. It was before the evolution of modern international law. Everything was on a totally different scale. It was a world war. It was a different time. And actually, we shouldn't be looking to wage modern wars by the same standards as the Second World War. That was a chapter that we've rightly built a whole...

strata of international institutions so that those horrors never return. It's a great point. And I get that when I mention World War II because I can go to Stalingrad, Berlin, I can go all those. World War II, Hiroshima, Nagasaki. Okay, well, that's not going to happen again. Or the firebombing of Tokyo. We killed 300,000 people, 180,000 people in one night of bombing Tokyo. Even without nuclear weapons. Right. But the reason I choose Manila is because it was a battle which we did not use any air force.

because we didn't want to destroy. And there's still lots of civilians. And guess who killed a lot of those 100,000 civilians? The Japanese defenders. So they were slaughtering the Philippine civilians as they were defending the place. So if you want to do post-World War II, so post-Fourth Geneva Convention, because you're right, we changed the rules. Because we don't want to go back to that. We don't. We said you can't bomb civilian populations to try to convince their governments to give up. So then I'll take you to the Korean War.

So in the Korean War, there's a large battle for the Battle of Seoul to liberate Seoul. Almost the same numbers, and there's no record of civilians. So in the 1950 Battle of Seoul to liberate Seoul from the North Koreans...

I know how many people were attacking. I know how many people were defending. And there's no record of how many civilians died. There are 2 million civilians that died during the 37-month war, Elon. You know how many that is? 54,000 civilians dying a month for that entire war. It's post-World War II, though.

There's no record in that urban battle, though, of how many civilians to die. The number, war is killing. Like you said, yes, civilians are going to die. But what is Israel doing to prevent civilian death? And what is Hamas doing to try to get civilians to die, to include killing civilians themselves? Yeah. War is hell. And that's why this war has to end with Hamas never able to start another war ever again. And the best way to minimize deaths is...

is for Israel to win as quickly as possible so that Hamas isn't able to drag out a war in which it's deliberately trying to get its own people killed. I want to get a sense from you, John, about...

How you think that this war is going to proceed now? Okay, you said don't ask anyone to make predictions and you don't have your crystal ball. But the IDF has had time to prepare and to regroup. And this war, the strategy, the tactics may look different. Netanyahu recently told new recruits, he was quoted in Jewish Insider as saying, to defeat our enemies, we must break through with crushing force. The tremendous crushing force is the tank corps. So help people who don't understand war, like me.

because I wasn't a combat soldier, understand how tanks are going to help in Gaza in a dense urban environment where many of the terrorists are going to be hiding inside tunnels. What does the military operation on the ground actually mean? I mean, what is left to bomb? Yeah. So one is a recognition that there's all...

30 plus percent of Gaza that Israel, the IDF haven't been into once yet. Why is that? Because of the concern for the hostages in places like Darablah or in the humanitarian zone. And where did Hamas immediately put their leadership in the humanitarian zone that Jonathan Karik has talked to you about the Al-Muassi where, where was Muhammad deaf killed?

These human shielding which has not been criticized by the international community every day. Stop going into the hospitals, Hamas. Stop doing these things. Right. I often wonder whether designating a humanitarian zone is the quickest way to smoke out Hamas's leaders because you know they're automatically going to flock there and indeed that's where they were found and that's consistent with Hamas's strategy of trying to violate international law as a way to get immunity for itself under international law. It's crazy. It's crazy.

It is. So back to the question, which is, I get this a lot actually in my, over a decade of studying urban warfare, people think that the

They have ideas of how it will go, you know, infantry clearing house to house. No, you actually need that mobile protective firepower of interesting, unique to Israel. And Israel gave it to the world. And we can talk about all the benefits that the U.S. military get from Israel's lessons in blood and treasure, how that has helped the U.S. military for years. To include the bulldozer, the D-9 bulldozer of the Israeli military, we used it in the Second Battle of Fallujah.

Because when you're entering a defended urban area that, like you said, Hamas has prepared for 17 years. Again, no military that I know of has faced that. Even Manila and all those other battles, the enemy usually has months. Mosul went really bad because he had two years. ISIS did. But...

Almost two decades to prepare the urban terrain. And even during this ceasefire, what has Hamas been doing? It's been collecting up the unexploded bombs, creating new roadside bombs. The bulldozer, the tank, the armored personnel carriers get the IDF into the urban terrain to take it.

to take the ground from Hamas, to take their weapons, to take their power. You don't do it by bombing it. You attrit them so you can get into that area. And of course, if, which people discount the Hamas rockets, uh,

that are coming. You still want to bomb where the rockets are coming from, but you need a complete combined arms package to enter contested urban terrain like all areas of Gaza in order to take it from Hamas. So the tanks are going in. Yeah. They roll into an area that is under Hamas control. It,

And explain what the fighting looks like, because often when people discuss the war in Gaza, they simply have absolutely no understanding of what the urban battlefield is like and what the fighting actually means. So what does a tank actually do? Let's really start with the basics. Sure. So a tank is mobile protected firepower. A tank is 120 millimeter cannon that can punch through a building wall. That's one of the biggest things that it is. And it can take shots from things like RPGs,

the common weapons of a defending urban terrain or the urban sniper. We call the urban terrain the great equalizer because if you're the attacker, there's millions of windows. In Gaza, there's a city underneath you.

The tank is that mobile protective firepower that gets you into the urban terrain. Usually it's the bulldozer leading the way because in Gaza, and I've been in a lot of urban warfare and going into places like Khan Yunis with the IDF, that's stuff I've never seen. Just the rubble and the density of the buildings.

So when the bulldozer leads the way with the tank behind it, usually there's bombs going off that the Hamas fighter has put in the roads and in the buildings, in the walls of the building. And then there's RPGs or snipers firing out of the walls as Hamas is trying to attack whatever's coming into it. And then the tank will direct its

Once it knows where the enemy is and have a bullet that can actually punch through a wall to take out the enemy that is shooting at them with the infantry, then following through as well to move forward and take the buildings and do some of the clearing operations.

But with the tunnels, it's... Sorry, just so I understand. The tank is going in and shooting at the sources of fire using its cannon. Yes. And then the infantry are able to come behind and go house to house once the enemy is already weakened through that artillery power. Get them close enough to where they can use their capability. Because the infantry can't just walk in. They have to enter a place that is at least partially cleared. Yeah.

So I actually wrote a book for Ukrainians at the beginning of the war on how to turn every street into a battlefield and how to turn every street into what we call the meat grinder. I think Hamas has read your book. No, actually, I know they didn't. But they had prepared a lot longer. So there's a hasty defense and there's what Hamas has built, which is what we call a deliberate defense. And the tunnels are a real big part of that. That description was absolutely right. But the infantry actually protect the tank as well because the tank is vulnerable to things like

People walking up to it and sticking a bomb onto it. So the infantry helped protect the tank and the tanks protecting the infantry, but providing that firepower. So it's a whole suite of things that many military struggle. Israel is very good at it because they have to, but they've even innovated from now. This is the other thing. The fourth thing that we didn't talk about that's different this time is that the IDF is different.

You can't do the fighting that the IDF had done and not learned, adapted, and become much better at fighting Hamas. Even protecting the civilians, Israel got better at protecting civilians, such as handing out their maps to communicate with the civilians better or using facial recognition to pick out the Hamas fighters who are hiding in the hospital as patients. And the Nukpa fighters, like in al-Nasr, that they use facial recognition, like, well, that's a Nukpa fighter, that's a Nukpa, and just...

grab them out of the crowd without a shot being fired. So the IDF are different. So the IDF, now you leave with that tank and you had the infantry coming in who have a drone that's in front of them. So they're not going into buildings and,

hoping, you know, with the ways we used to do it. Now they're sending a drone inside that building before they go into it. Like we saw Yaya Asimov find his ending was through the use of tanks, drones, infantry, artillery. It was a combination of IDF efficiency. Hmm.

So you've been clear how you think that this is different and that Israel can win this militarily because Hamas is weaker. The IDF is stronger. There are fewer international constraints, at least from the part of the United States. And the fourth thing was... IDF is better. The IDF is better. Hamas is weaker. Fewer international constraints. And... The possibility of moving civilians out of harm's way, but...

Is that is that I mean, how do you understand what is happening with that? It's not even a plan. It's a statement. It was a proposition that his Trump has sort of partly walked back several times. So that goes into the political restraints, though. So I will say I think the fourth thing was a change in their approach. When I was before this term, you have a new idea of leadership who says that we may have to occupy.

That was off the table after October 7th. I remember hearing, like, we will not occupy Gaza. That's different now. What does that mean in practice? You occupy area that has been cleared of population entirely and you're holding an empty field or you're occupying area where there are civilians there and IDF soldiers are responsible for handing out food parcels? Can be. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

And you know, I know you know that the IDF did try that. The IDF did try to be the deliverer of humanitarian aid and that led to these attacks of the humanitarian convoy that was going in there. Absolutely, it means moving forward, clearing an area of Hamas, holding it.

And then either there's no civilians there and you continue to clear. I don't think people understand what it takes to clear a piece of ground, the time it takes to find tunnels, to destroy tunnels. I think the whole world is not understanding. I don't think I understand it. Explain it for me. Most people don't believe me when I say there's 400 miles of tunnels.

in Gaza. It's a strip that's 200, you know, 25 miles long, five to seven miles wide. How can I have 400 miles? Because there are layers of tunnels. Every step you take in Gaza, it's more likely than not that there's an enemy tunnel underneath you. And like when I was in a Netrin corridor, they have a map and they found thousands of shafts and tunnels and they have to destroy those in order to

mitigate them in some way. Right, that's how there's so much destruction above ground because Hamas built an entire military base underneath the whole of Gaza and that thing underneath street level needs to be destroyed. So obviously there's going to be destruction above ground. Absolutely. Your question about occupying, absolutely what you said, that's what it looks like. Holding the ground, IDF forces on the ground,

At one point, if the civilian population is there, then they are governing. That's the governing part. They are in order. Either they're replacing the government and think back to Iraq and Afghanistan. No matter what you think about the campaign, we brought the people with us. We thought would be the new governments. And sometimes it worked out. Sometimes it didn't work out. But the ultimate goal is that somebody has to govern. You said that there would be anarchy. There's never anarchy. There's always power.

whether it's a shadow power or not. So the IDF would have to hold the ground, be the security force, and then be the governing force until something comes in, whether it's tribal, another faction, a multinational faction, whatever it is. But if you want to remove Hamas from power, you have to replace that power.