The Truth About Hamas’ Tactics & Civilian Shields | John Spencer Pt. 2
42:45 Share

Hamas cannot survive this war or you will only see the continuation of violence. This is what the people in the West don't get. You only see the continuation. Ceasefire now means continue the cycle of violence forever. Hello and welcome to State of a Nation. I'm your host, Alon Levy. What does victory even look like when your enemy hides behind civilians and depends on you being blamed for every shot you fire?

This is part two of my conversation with John Spencer, the world's top expert on urban warfare, and it's not just about Gaza. We talk about the IDF's unprecedented operation, why Hamas's entire strategy relies on civilian casualties, and how the media keeps falling for it again and again. We dig into the real story behind the casualty numbers, the narrative war that could decide the outcome more than the battlefield ever will.

Then we zoom out, we look at Yemen, the Houthi pirates, Iran's most dangerous proxy now that Israel has cut Hezbollah down to size. What makes them so hard to neutralize out there in Yemen? And where might the US succeed where others have failed? This isn't just about Israel. It's about the future of warfare and whether the West is ready for what's coming.

So let's get back into it. And if you missed part one, go watch it now wherever you get your podcasts. It sets the stage for everything you're about to hear.

During phase one of the ransom, Israel let 25,000 trucks of supplies into Gaza. It's 450,000 tons. It's a huge amount. And we know that the Hamas government of Gaza wasn't just hijacking the trucks, it's the government of Gaza. It taxed the food in order to pay the people who were starving the hostages.

Now, Israel has cut off the international aid, cut off electricity, and it's saying it has no obligation to continue financing the war against it. International law does not require us to allow our crossings that were attacked on October 7th to be used in order to provide goods that are giving the enemy a deliberate military advantage. Opponents, of course, would say that it's inhumane to cut off a population from food. Who's right?

There are a lot of tripfalls in that from a kind of, well, who's right versus who's legal. There's have to do legally and then there should do. What does Israel have to do legally regarding international aid? It has to allow free access of aid to civilians, but it doesn't have to if it knows it's being diverted by the enemy.

Which it is.

There's a lot of nuances here. Absolutely, Israel is not under any responsibility to feed the enemy's population. But this is more than that. This is about what's in the environment, what's Hamas trying to do. Like you said, they are diverting all of the aid. They control 100% of it and distribute it when they want to the civilians. But this is also about the negotiation with the hostages. So Israel...

is in full right to say what it's going to let in. Now there's another border, as you know, with Egypt, and there could be a humanitarian distribution point just on the other side of the Egypt-Gaza border where everybody could have free access without Hamas controlling it, but that has never been an option. John, I remember at the start of the war that Israel closed the crossings that Hamas had trashed on October 7th and finally agreed under American pressure to reopen Kerem Shalom, at first for inspections of aid,

And there was a promise from the U.S. administration that it would fund an expansion of the Rafah crossing with Egypt so that ultimately Israel could cut itself off from Gaza and fulfill the objective of saying, we are no longer responsible for providing food to enemy territory. That disappeared.

I mean, that evaporated immediately, that plan to expand Rafah. So you're saying Israel does not have an obligation to facilitate the provision of supplies when we know that they are being hijacked by the enemy.

It's surreal that Israel allowed itself until now to be hoodwinked into supplying the electricity that was used to generate the air conditioning inside the tunnels and building Hamas's military machine. Can you think of any other examples since the Second World War where a country that is at war...

has provided supplies to the enemy? No. Zero. And it doesn't make any sense that that would be an expectation. Now, there are lots of examples of providing aid to civilians in a combat zone once they're out of the main combat area that the enemy you're fighting is.

That's the other thing that's so... But not to enemy-held territory. Not to enemy-held territory. Right. I mean, from an international law perspective, we're in this sort of weird matrix where they say Israel has to feed the population because it is occupying Gaza. The definition of occupation is that you have effective control, that the territory is under the

actual authority of an occupying army. And of course, if we had effective control, then Hamas wouldn't be hijacking the aid in that territory. And it definitely wouldn't have been able to use all those supplies in the time before October 7th in order to rebuild the war machine with which it attacked us on October 7th. So no, Gaza is not occupied. Israel doesn't have an obligation to feed the population because it's occupied. But you say that during wars, you get the civilians out of the intense urban areas and then there are ways you feed the civilians. But there is

No international precedent, none at all of a country at war sending supplies into enemy held territory. I mean, I want to be careful because there's always nuances, um,

Not the attacking force sending. So they're like in these sieges of like Aleppo, Raqqa, there are NGOs that have provided medical doctors without borders that are trying to get supplies into enemy health territory. So there are some nuances here, but just the reality of this situation. But back then, was there an expectation that the coalition forces would

would pause fighting in the middle of Mosul so that UN food trucks could reach. Because Israel found itself, you know, the UN saying there is no aid getting into northern Gaza. And it never said just straight to the cameras, yes, because the area is under siege and anyone who wants to leave can leave, but this is enemy-held territory. And no, UN food trucks don't get to go into the middle of Hamas-controlled territory. Civilians are perfectly welcome to walk two miles south and they can get food over there.

Yeah, no. Nobody ever said that. Nor did... I'm the military kind of analyst. That area was evacuated multiple times and there are 300 plus thousand Gazans who decided to stay in that area. Where if they moved to the humanitarian zone where they were recommended, they'd have...

better access to humanitarian aid. You agree? No, I agree with you holistically. And I know, you know, that all of this is an Israeli standard that Israel was held to, to include US administration saying the correct number of civilian casualties in this war is zero. That meant Israel would need to lose the war, and that you need to stop for this amount of aid to go in, even though the calculations and there's just so many aspects of this.

But I do believe that now is different to include even the attacks that Israel was under. Israel was fighting...

the Gaza war in Gaza while also having to defend its entire northern border against a much larger military while Iran was attacking there are so many variations that are different now but this double standard needs to stop and you're right that we keep calling it out because I don't want other democracies western militaries that do follow the law of war to think that this is the new standard because what it does is turns the standard and the law is abused the

This is the lawfare that Hamas is doing and why Israel must have victory is because if not, this just repeats itself, not just with Hamas, but around the world. Like who's going to follow international law. If you can get away with what Hamas has gotten away with and, and,

abusing every aspect of international law meant to protect civilians to include trying to get civilians killed. Interesting you say that because I actually think that Western powers are perfectly capable of hypocrisy and saying, do as I say, not as I do. That's true.

And that even if Israel is held to a different standard in this war, that doesn't mean that it's the standard that Western democracies will hold themselves to in a different war. They will find ways of doing intellectual somersaults and saying, well, that was different in Israel's case and that rule doesn't apply to us. So I'm not sure that the way that Hamas is able to weaponize international law in this war necessarily has implications for future wars by the West because they'll say, well, that was different and they'll find some excuse to say whatever they need to do becomes legal.

I will say that there's absolutely something there. And this is that war is politics by other means. Again, people that go back to me like, Israel should have done these things. You know, I know that Israel couldn't do that thing because of... War is politics by other means, said John Spencer. Well, said this dead Prussian guy named Clausewitz. Israel was... You're going to say something so profound, you should attribute it. Yeah. Israel was held to insane...

constraints because Israel is an amazing strong nation the idea

does the unthinkable every time it's attacked, but it lives in a very rough neighborhood where it needs allies like the United States and, and, and other people in that. Yeah. But I would say to a Western, if I was talking to like a Western strategy or something like that, like be careful about what you say. This won't be your problem in the future. First battle of Fallujah, 2004, four American civilians killed, uh,

Butchered, burned, hung from the bridge. U.S. President says, go get those responsible. U.S. military launches two Marine battalions into the city of Fallujah. Our friends, not our friends, Al Jazeera, sitting at the city hospital airing photos of wounded children and then attributing that to U.S. use of force. And the entire U.S. military is defeated in the first battle of Fallujah in six days of that battle because of the perception that

That was being pushed out on the American military. Later, they come back in the second battle of Fallujah and achieve a victory. But what Israel has experienced could be problematic for Western militaries in the future because war is also a contest of wills. Same guy said that, that if you lose the populations or the international community, you can lose a war even though you're winning every battle.

Right. And so even if a country thinks that it can hold itself to a different standard, suddenly when the Overton window has shifted to an understanding of, you know, the standard is that civilians must be protected to the point that must be zero civilian casualties, as opposed to all reasonable steps must be taken to mitigate harm to civilians. It means that other countries may find themselves alone as well, finding that the rules of war have been dictated in a way that makes wars impossible to win rather than...

the law of war being there to mitigate the horror of war, but still make a victory in a just war possible. I want to hold that thought and come back to the implications for the wider world, but my mind is on the hostages right now. We've been talking about the battle in Gaza as if it weren't holding hostages, but it is. As we record, there are 59 hostages still trapped in the dungeons of Gaza. 24 of them, we presume, are alive. We know they're being shackled,

and starved and some have horrific shrapnel wounds from October 7th that have gone untreated. They are all humanitarian cases. We need to get all of them out. Phase one of the ceasefire of the ransom ended with 33 hostages released. Some alive, some already murdered. It was a ransom.

It wasn't a deal. It was a ransom. There was hostage taking, there was extortion, and we paid a ransom. And I note, by the way, that the UK's own counterterrorism manual says that the UK has a strict policy of not paying ransoms to terrorist hostage takers, and that it is illegal under UK and international law, according to the UK's counterterror handbook, to pay ransoms to

to terrorists. That's exactly what Israel did and I think it did the right thing even if according to the UK standards that's a violation of international law. Not the first thing Israel has done that I support that the UK might consider to be illegal. Phase one is over. Phase two was meant to take place after a negotiation that would see a permanent ceasefire whatever that means with the Hamas jihadist army in exchange for a full withdrawal and release of all the living hostages.

That collapsed. Phase two negotiations never took place. I think it became clear there was nothing ready to talk about because phase one gave time for international diplomacy to come up with a creative solution that would allow for an Israeli withdrawal and Hamas stepping down from power. They didn't come up with that solution. The world failed. And so we're back to the war because...

Because Israel needs to destroy the Hamas terrorist regime, but the hostages are still there. And Hamas is threatening to execute them if the IDF comes close, and really if they decide that the hostages have no relevance for them anymore because they can't use them as bargaining chips. And I want your sense of whether the return to war...

gives us the only hope of bringing the hostages out because I don't believe the narrative that there is this one deal that Hamas was on the brink of signing and if only you'd given it a little bit bigger ransom it was going to sign it and we're going to get all of them out in one go. I don't think Hamas had any reason to let all the hostages go. Does the return to warfare give them a reason, give us any hope that the hostages are going to be released or does

Have the goals of the war, of dislodging Hamas and bringing the hostages back, simply come unstuck? And bringing down Hamas is going to come at the expense of those poor hostages who are trapped in Gaza.

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. It's a really hard question, an intractable situation. I personally, John Spencer, believe that the return to war after giving beyond the end of phase one, Hamas, almost two weeks of basically beyond phase one before a phase two agreement could be agreed upon,

Right. The media described this as if Israel decided to pull out of the ceasefire, not understanding what phase one and phase two meant. No, the ceasefire ended at the end of phase one. Phase one was supposed to have ended with phase two agreed upon. But there was this black hole in the middle where phase one ended and there was no ceasefire. There was just an expectation that there would be another ceasefire based on terms that had not been negotiated. Exactly. And I know from...

Putting this ceasefire in context with the other, that military pressure and actual other forms of pressure was what led to Hamas deciding in astronomical comparisons of hundreds of convicted prisoners or whatever for single people.

illegally held hostages i do believe military restart of the operations military pressure could lead to like november 23 correct they were getting clobbered and they wanted a breather yeah or when they see the light between israel and the united states because of a u.s election or something they believe they can hold out and get maximus which is their survival and they showed the world during the last ceasefire they have no intention of ever giving up power in the gaza strip

Matter of fact, they say that they're only planning to do more October 7th. I believe the start doesn't mean that it has to be a complete start with we're done negotiating, that the pressure could lead to finally Hamas coming to the table. If there are negotiations, they have to be under fire.

That's clearly what ended up happening, how Israel allowed for that not to happen and restarted operation to give a real signal, like, and the fact that there's no light between the United States and Israel, and that's very clear on you give up the hostages or the war continues and we clear the entire Gaza Strip. So it's either two roads at this point. The war has restarted. Hamas can make a decision that they're not going to get their maximum goals and they come back for whatever the next...

that they would ransom, like you said, or you continue seizing the ground and return them, hopefully, through only military force. But this is the point, even when you say that I believe Hamas can be defeated militarily, I think Hamas can be defeated in military terms

So I'm not hearing a yes.

How do we get the hostages out now, John? Please rack your brains for everything you've learned from Manila to Mosul. Yeah. Which, by the way, should be the name of your book, From Manila to Mosul. Help us get them out. How do we do it? So war is a contest of will. Hamas has been sent many signals from everybody but Israel that just hold the hostages. You got a chance. Like Qatar. Qatar. The so-called mediators. United States. You know, you can't go to Rafah. That was a signal to Hamas like, hey, you got a chance. Yeah.

Don't go here. Don't go there. Don't do this. Don't do that. Yeah, by the way, one of the bizarre things from a comms perspective is that when some journalists would be pretending that some great injustice has been done to Hamas by Israel returning to war as if...

the fact that, and you know, they should stick to the timetable of the ceasefire, as if the fact that Hamas was able to extort from Israel a ransom in exchange for only a few of the hostages and saying it might release the rest of them later meant that it didn't have to release them immediately and unconditionally and it was entirely fair for Hamas to continue holding onto hostages shackled in its tunnels for leverage in future negotiations. That was normalized. So,

So for me, it's commit, it's convince your enemy. The war is a contest of will to compel your enemy. Do your will. If Israel can convince through the restart of the operations, but also viable plans to fully restart the operation, viable plan to hold ground, govern and do what's necessary to Hamas cannot survive. That will build the pressure in my John Spencer's idea for them to come back to the table and say, we will release under these terms, uh,

So wait, let me understand. Effectively, if Israel says, we're willing to pay any price and do whatever it takes to bring the hostages back, the price of the ransom goes up and up and up and up because Hamas gets the signal that it can demand whatever it wants. If Israel says, we're going all in and you can't stop us,

we're not going to pay a price, then suddenly a room for negotiation opens up because Hamas begins to think that actually it's not worth holding out for longer, right? It's counterintuitive. It's counterintuitive, but it's almost this whole conversation about what's the plan? Hamas knows that there's

it would be very hard to remove them from power. So they have their strategy to survive in power. But when you started talking about all these other things... Even though more than half of their government have been killed. Yeah. But even the ideal of Hamas, if they think they can be the power and come out, if you remove that with viable pressures and plans, I believe that will bring them to the table. But ultimately, it is never anything they want.

Hamas cannot survive this war or you will only see the continuation of violence. And this is what the people in the West don't get. You only see the continued ceasefire now means continue the cycle of violence forever. Hamas can't survive this. So I know everything, the pressure could bring them back to the table, but it can't be that they get some way that they can stay in power. That's just not, that would put the entire state of Israel at risk.

And that's like proven by history. I would say something else. It's not that leaving Hamas in power guarantees there will be a next time. It guarantees that there will be a next time and it will be worse. And it will be worse because Hamas will be convinced that the world will save it from the wars that it started. It will be worse because Hamas will have learned how to

its human sacrifice strategy. It will be worse because Hamas will have thousands of its most dangerous fighters back on the streets and they will be able to take more hostages. It will be worse because they'll be told that hostage-taking works.

And I understand that many people who are calling for a ceasefire have the best of intentions because they just want this war to go away. But I want the IDF to win this because I hate war and because I don't want Hamas to start another war. And because I understand that leaving Hamas in power just starts the clock ticking towards the next war that will be worse. And I don't want to go there. And the debate in Israel now between the people who are saying, pay whatever price you have to pay to get the hostages out. And those saying, just finish the job is, is, is,

you know, internationally looks like there's this huge crisis and disagreement within Israel. I don't think it signals a huge disagreement. Everyone understands that Hamas has to go. The disagreement is between those who are saying, this is the last Gaza war and others who say, this is the penultimate Gaza war. Let's get the hostages back at any price and the war will resume later and we'll finish Hamas at a later date when it's no longer holding hostages.

John, I want to zoom out a little bit from Gaza because the October 7th war is a war on seven fronts.

One of them is the Houthi pirate regime in Yemen. They've resumed ballistic missile attacks at us. It is completely insane that it has become a normal part of our routine in Israel, that at a random time of the day, it could happen now while we're recording, there's a siren and everyone has to run for shelter because the Houthi pirates in Yemen are shooting ballistic missiles at us. Most of them are intercepted, but it doesn't matter because...

you know, some people think that when you intercept a missile, I thought this as well, but why do we have to run for shelter and stay there for 10 minutes? That it means that the missile falls out of the sky. No, it doesn't. You break apart the missile and then the sharp metal keeps flying at the same velocity and, and can land and has caused, caused damage. But anyway, the Houthis have, have resumed these attacks on us in the middle of the night. In the evening yesterday, I just happened to be passing a, a, a Metro station, had to grab my scooter and run, and run down the stairs. Um,

President Trump has been using some extraordinarily belligerent rhetoric against the Houthis, direct American airstrikes on the Houthis, not because they're attacking Israel, but because these pirates have blocked international shipping, allowed Iran to basically annex the Red Sea. And he's now threatening, I mean, to rain hellfire and burn the Houthi regime to the ground.

Look, it's not the first time the world has tried to deal with the Houthi problem. The UAE and the Saudis had their own campaign, which was a complete disaster, and they didn't manage to dislodge the Houthis. Why were previous military attempts to take down this Iranian military proxy unsuccessful? And what do you think may be different this time? What has the United States learned from the unsuccessful Saudi intervention? And how likely do you think it's going to be?

Or do we have the same problem as Gaza that actually you can keep bombing the Houthis from the sky, but unless you're willing to go in, hold, occupy the territory, deliver the humanitarian aid yourself, you're just going to degrade it and be in a game of cat and mouse? So it's a great question. A lot of nuances there. And each, this is why, you know, studying, I have a lot of work to do because each war has its own, what we say, um,

tone, tempo, everything. Even if we were talking about Hezbollah, the goal wasn't to defeat Hezbollah. The goals were to stop Hezbollah from...

attacking northern israel to back up to the unions for for yemen though if you know the history of yemen and why the u.s i personally think was a wrong decision took the houthis off the designated terrorists you know what maybe you can give us a broad overview of of how we got to this situation because i remember at the beginning of the war when we heard that yemen had declared war on us and we thought it was some kind of joke and they were not on anyone's radar yeah um

Again, I do urban warfare, but I definitely follow the major trends enough that the Houthis...

Like Hezbollah is almost like a terrorist organization with a state within a state. So they control vast territory, but there's actual starvation happening in Yemen. And during the Biden administration, the U S government took the Houthis who was a designated terrorist for a long time because of their activities in the red sea and against Saudi Arabia and other nations. But it is within this ring of fire of the Islamic regime of Iran. And it's,

You can blame people for falling asleep at the wheel. Most people don't realize the vast arsenal that each terrorist religion is different. The Houthis, very unique to where their position is on the Red Sea, has a vast arsenal of sea or shore to sea missile drone and capabilities like rivaling most nations.

the Islamic regime in Iran was able to equip them with this very unique arsenal of equipment to launch an attack against US military forces. Let's not forget that. That's one of the reasons, the biggest reason that the US military is attacking the Houthis. Right. It's not to protect us as some people would like to spin it. It's because the Houthis are a direct threat to American shipping, to American personnel, and because preventing international piracy is the first duty of any superpower.

Yes, but I can, I, there are, you know, if you, I taught strategy at West Point, you know, nations have many interests. Of course they have self-interests, but they have allies and have economic interests. So yes, direct attacks of U.S. military, direct attacks against international shipping in the billions of dollars since October 7th costing of the international community and attacking our allies in the region, Israel. So I can hold all those in constant.

But the previous administration didn't want to directly to attrit them of that capability. So I don't think so. It is possible. And the U.S. decided immediately that this would no longer continue. The Houthis attacking international shipping and attacking U.S. forces in the region who are also there to ensure that other people don't attack Israel, like the Islamic regime in Iran that attacked twice, upsetting international norms and being told Israel being told, take a win. I don't agree with that.

But now President Trump has said enough is enough and has started to attrit their capabilities to launch those missiles. And I was here last night and had to run to shelter as well. That's achievable. So this is where people look at wars like the war in Gaza is different than the war in southern Lebanon. The war against the Houthis is

It's clear. Stop attacking people. And if you don't, I'll take away every capability you have. And you see, there's a list of... Ballistic missile silos can be bombed from the air. They can be destroyed. That's right. Can I help Yemen as a nation deal with this terrorist state within a state? Very little from the air, right? And that's a complex situation of what is the Yemeni government? What is the Houthi? The Houthis think they are the government. I mean, that's complex. And in order, yes, you would have to

do a lot different, but you can absolutely take away their capability to launch rockets against the U.S. military, international shipping, or Israel ever again through the air. That's achievable, and this is where people, you know, I don't want any more war. Like, okay, let's be adult about this. Each war has its own goals, and the goal there is to get them that capability. I think that capability should be completely removed from them, and...

which is very important, which is what the president did, which is very important. Send a signal to the Islamic regime in Iran. Every rocket they fire is a rocket you fire because you gave it to them. And if you send them any more, you will also be held accountable. So stop sending them the missiles, the rockets, and the drones. So on the question of Yemen, are you optimistic that the threat of the ballistic missiles will be eliminated and that can be put in a box somehow? Absolutely. And they're trying. So this is the idea, too, that people criticize...

People were not trying diplomatic means, just like Israel tried for 12, 15 months diplomatically to resolve the Hezbollah attacking northern Israel. John, this is your fifth visit to Israel since October 7th. And I get the feeling that you are more committed and invested to what is happening here than simply a detached perspective of an academic who is coming to Israel.

learn lessons out of a purely academic interest. Clearly you believe that what happens here and the fate of the October 7th war really matters for the world and therefore it means much more than just whatever is going on here in isolation. And I'm wondering at root why? Why do you think that what is happening here matters so much for the fate of the free world?

That's a hard one. One, I believe that there is evil in this world, and I've never seen an evil like I saw on October 7th. And I've seen a lot of evil in the world. What the 6,000, 4,000 Hamas and other individuals from Gaza did, that's a special kind of evil. That shook me to my core, even though all the things I've seen in war. But I do believe in right, wrong, right.

just unjust. And I do believe the truth matters. So as I started studying my first time in the Gaza, watching the idea, do all these incredible things to protect civilians and the way they were actually in the war. And to come back and hear nothing but the opposite. Hmm.

I do believe the truth matters. So I objectively study war and I've done it in other wars, but this one just, the lies started immediately from Gaza's a displace on earth to Israel's targeting civilians. Like that's not right. Just from a human perspective, like why can you make up these lies about Israel and think about these things that Israel are doing? And you, especially when I go back, back home and like, have you ever been there? Have you ever,

It just defends your basic sense of fairness and truth. It attacks my values. I mean, I grew up in the military. I did 25 years in my own military service to include two combat tours. It attacks my values to include the values I want my children to have, that the truth matters, the right matters, and that if this was allowed to continue, it'd be a very violent world.

John, you're studying what is happening now in Gaza. You're coming here to learn lessons about what lessons the IDF has learned. But I wonder whether when you put together your conclusions and reports of how the fighting has progressed in Gaza...

You think that it's something to put on a museum shelf and say, well, the urban environment that Israel experienced in Gaza is unlike anything that has ever happened and is unlike any urban battlefield that will ever be created in the future. Or you think that the situation, the scenarios that Israel is fighting in in Gaza, something that actually will be replicated in future? Yeah. I hope that we never see another Gaza to include in Gaza.

I hope... Which is an important point. Which is an important point. I hope we don't see enemies in other areas of the world building this human sacrifice strategy of underneath their own cities, not investing in their cities. I hope they don't... While the United Nations facilitates it. That's right. Because Hamas was able to build this necropolis of tunnels because the United Nations took...

of education and healthcare and welfare off its hands and allowed it to then divert

all the money that it had siphoned off from taxing international aid into building its military machine and that meant that the UN and the world has subsidized Hamas's October 7th war machine from beginning to end and I guess terrorists will do that again if they realize that it works. That's right. And you called it like it is. This is a strategy that could be validated by this terrorist organization and then the Islamic regime in Iran is like, well, work there. Let's do it everywhere.

But from an urban warfare history, I do two things. One, I try to recreate what happened because even in short amount of time, there's a lot of urban legends about urban warfare, like what happened in that battle. And I do case studies where I'll write what happened. And that's why I was so quick to go. That's not what happened in Mosul, Belugia, you know, all these Stalingrad. I can do all that because I've done the case studies. But absolutely, there are tons of lessons learned.

that Israel facing the greatest military challenge any military has faced in modern history of immense value to other militaries who will not face a Gaza, but they'll face dense urban warfare as kind of the urban warfare guy. It's not just me saying that, but it's the character of modern warfare. Like what? If you're putting together a delegation of foreign generals who are coming to

to learn about what Israel is doing and how it may be relevant to future battlefields that they're fighting in. What should they be paying attention to? What can they learn from Israel? That's a long list. Number one, bulldozers save lives. Everybody's lives. Why do bulldozers save lives? Because they lead the formation. They create the mobility into the contested urban environment. They take the first shot of the defender. A bulldozer is not vulnerable to... I mean, there's a person sitting in the front of the bulldozer. Israeli bulldozers can be remote control.

Remote-controlled bulldozers? Yes. Wow. You didn't know that? The D9 can be remote-controlled. Okay. So the first bulldozers save lives because they go in before the troops in order to clear IEDs,

that have been placed under the tarmac in roads. Okay, bulldozers save lives. Or the ambush that's coming for them because... Invest in bulldozer stocks. Well, this is the thing, and most people don't get this. When the United States started restricting things from Israel, of course, everybody followed the 2000 bomb bomb, which I wrote about, which is ridiculous, but they also started withholding bulldozer replacement parts. Wild.

And knowing that that's the critical asset in the urban warfare, it's saving IDF lives and saving civilian lives. Of course, because they thought that if you don't have this way to protect soldiers going in, then they will be forced not to go in. The other one is drones. I studied drones, of course. I've studied Nagorno-Karabakh, Ukraine, everything. Israel developed a way to...

take the drones and actually search around the house and search in a house before even going near it. And we all saw this in the death of Yaya Simwar, but that was an actual drill

honed in battle by the idea of using these cheap expendable drones to go into the house, look around, and then if you see a guy, also use an explosive drone on that guy. If other militaries adopted that, it would mitigate the advantage a terrorist would have from taking the urban terrain.

Because you don't need human eyes on the ground. You have robot eyes flying around. That's right. And it's cheap, expendable robot eyes. Bulldozers, drones. What else can the world learn from the October 7th war? The ability to communicate with the civilian population that Israel has done to do civilian harm mitigation. Israel has not only done the phone messages, the text messages, but they flew drones with speakers on them. They parachuted drone speakers out of helicopters and dropped speakers telling civilians where to go.

Being able to communicate using facial recognition is an innovation. I can remember as a soldier in battles holding a book full of faces, looking at people and trying to find their face in this book. And you don't even have to be a dinosaur to have memories like that because this technology is so new and innovative. Right. Now, as you saw, why is Hamas wearing masks and sunglasses now?

Because Israel's facial recognition technologies have advanced during this war to where, like I said, when they surround a hospital because the enemy is using it for military purposes, war crime, and then evacuate everybody, they can pick out every Hamas member. That's an innovation that will be very helpful to others in cases where the terrorist is not wearing a uniform and trying to blend in. In many cases, like al-Nasir, the terrorist was in a wheelchair carrying a baby.

And the facial recognition was able to identify those and achieve the goal, which is to kill or capture the enemy without civilian harm. Other areas of improvements, what Israel has done, medical innovations. Israel has taken the, usually most soldiers, the most death on the battlefield is soldiers bleeding out from blood. Israel has found a way to mitigate that, to change the statistic. They do things like

freeze-dried plasma into soldiers warm blood bringing ICU beds to the battlefield the medical innovations that Israel has done in the last 18 months will save American soldiers lives the next battle that we're in and I'll say just as a teaser we recently recorded an episode with a combat medic from an elite unit and that is one of the next episodes that will be coming out after our conversation here and he will be talking about what it's like to rescue people undercover under fire and and and deliver

medical aid. I guess also from the question of formations, how you take a city, how you fight when, you know, multi-level, when there's tunnels underneath you. The first military in modern history to attack the enemy on two planes. So Israel figured out how to use Hamas' tunnels against them. By Khan Yunus they were doing this. How? How did we do that?

I do unclassified research, but they, Israel, I wrote an article about how the 98th division started analyzing the tunnels through multiple sources of intelligence, identifying which tunnels were the most important to Hamas, identifying objective to attack and entering a tunnel complex from multiple directions and

And as soon as they get into the tunnel, they know what tunnel it is. And then using commandos and all the capabilities you need to see, shoot, breathe, navigate underground, which have all been development actually with Israel and the United States for over a decade. Most people don't know that working on this tunneling capabilities and

But Israel is the first ones who took the enemy's tunnels, attacked into it, and attacked it to surface at the same time, completely overwhelming the enemy using its own tunnels. Another innovation that will benefit Israel

the future of warfare. Yeah, one can only hope that the world is standing in front of an era of unprecedented peace and therefore Israel's lessons from this war will be irrelevant and the world doesn't need it. But unfortunately, we know that we're living in a very dangerous world where the tectonic plates are shifting, authoritarian powers are ascendant. There will be wars in the future. Crises will come. Democratic nations are going to have to fight and if they don't fight, they will at least have to know how to fight in order to prevent wars from happening and therefore the

That exchange of information with the Israeli military, learning from the lessons on the ground, not from Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International, but from the soldiers on the ground is going to be absolutely critical. And that's how Israel will make a really cardinal contribution to the security of the free world by sharing knowledge with allies around.

who want to learn from it. And I can only hope that nations that want to learn from Israel's military experience to keep themselves safe will support Israel as it continues to dismantle Hamas and bring back the hostages instead of attacking it, attacking it, attacking it and hoping to get...

John Spencer, you said that there are many urban legends about urban warfare, and I'm sitting in front of an urban warfare legend himself. John, how can people follow you and your work and read more about what you've been studying and what you're learning? So my website, johnspenceronline.com, is where all my publications, and I've written almost 40 articles since October 7th.

I'm on X, Spencer Gard. The Modern War Institute has a website. I have a podcast myself about urban warfare for over three years on every angle of the complexity of urban warfare and urban areas, to be frank. Okay. John Spencer, thank you so much for coming on State of a Nation. Thank you.

And that brings us to the end of today's episode. As always, please subscribe on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Give us a like on social media platforms, state of a pod, and send the link to friends you think will be enlightened and entertained by our conversations taking you beyond the headlines and between the lines. I'm Elon Levy, and thanks for joining us.