Ask Haviv Anything - Episode 38: What will it take to defeat Hamas? With Prof. John Spencer

Episode Date: August 27, 2025

Twenty-three months after the October 7 attack, Hamas is massively degraded in Gaza. At a terrible cost to Gaza itself, and after losing hundreds of IDF soldiers on the battlefield, Israel has managed to shatter its battalions and kill nearly all its pre-war command hierarchy.Yet, as with all guerrilla groups, the bar for Hamas to remain a strategic actor is very low. It can still disrupt aid distribution at a large scale, still launch guerrilla attacks out of tunnels, still even launch the occasional rocket at Israeli towns. Hamas also continues to refuse any demand, including from the Arab League, to disarm and surrender its claim to power in the post-war Gaza Strip.On the cusp of what is shaping up as Israel's most significant military offensive to date against the terror group, the incursion into Gaza City - the largest pre-war city in the Strip - we turn to Prof. John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute, to ask if this long-delayed denial of Hamas's last major bastion and sanctuary in Gaza might finally bring this painful war to an end.This episode was sponsored by Gideon and Lance Drucker and their firm Drucker Wealth, a financial planning and wealth management firm. They asked to use this dedication to introduce our audience to an organisation called The Legion, a non-profit to help Jewish Americans learn how to defend their families and their communities. You can learn more at their website: https://www.legionalpha.com/The Druckers would also like to dedicate this episode to Gideon's former officer in the IDF, Maj. Ariel Ben Moshe, 27, a commander in the elite Sayeret Matkal unit, who was killed in the battle against Hamas infiltrators at Kibbutz Re’im on October 7, 2023. Ariel’s brother Shavit, an IDF paratrooper, also fought in the south that day and heard of his brother’s death while engaged in intense fighting in Kibbutz Holit, where he was wounded. Ariel is survived by his mother Galit, younger brothers Shavit and Adar, and his wife Yuval.Please join us on Patreon to support this project: ⁠https://www.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything⁠.If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at [e-mail]⁠.Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

Hi, everybody. Welcome to Ask Habib Anything. This episode we're going to tackle. I think the thing that is on most people's minds, the thing that worries most people right now, the question of the Gaza City operation, the expansion of Gideon's chariots or Gideon's Chariots 2 operation, possibly, whatever you want to call it. The IDF has decided to call up tens of thousands of reservists. The cabinet has re-approved a call-up of hundreds of thousands if the IDF needs it. It's not that they're going to need it. It's that these are all signals and these are all kinds of operations for what looks to be a very significant operation in this new kind of war, the taken hold kind of war rather than the raiding war that we've had before that we have talked to Major John Spencer before about. I have expressed some deep concerns, frustrations, especially on the question of information war on humanitarian aid, which besides the moral questions, and those are debated endlessly, and I've had three episodes, I think, on it, so we're not going to rehash it now, strategic questions. You know, the war fighting is to a very significant extent seen by the enemy

as primarily an information war at a humanitarian aid war. In other words, a war where humanitarian suffering in Gaza is weaponized. And just for that strategic reason, this should have been a major focus of the Israelis and a lot of the terrible mistakes and certainly what I have considered god-awful rhetoric by some Israeli officials that did not actually reflect the actual conduct of the war in Gaza should not have happened. And again, Again, all that is besides the moral questions, which I think are important and valuable. So I have had a lot of concerns about where this war is going and whether the people in charge know what they're doing. And luckily, fresh off of the Triggerometry podcast, so that's exactly where you should consider this podcast, right up there with them.

I have managed to get John Spencer to come back and to try and answer some of those questions and concerns. And just to clarify the urgency of this episode, idea of soldiers are already in the outskirts. They're already battles. And so we're talking about where things stand and where things are going to go right at the moment that this operation appears to be gearing up. Before we get into it, I also want to tell you

that this episode is sponsored by Gideon and Lance Drouker and their firm, Drouker Wealth, a financial planning and wealth management firm. They asked to use this dedication to introduce our audience to an organization called The Legion. a nonprofit organization to help American Jews learn how to defend their families and their communities. Anti-Semitism is spiking. FBI numbers tell us that the number one target of religion-based hate in America are Jews,

and we've seen deadly attacks on Jews, unfortunately, in the last two years, and of course not just in the last two years. You can learn more at their website, www.legin Alpha, spell just like the words.com. The Jurgers would also like to dedicate this episode to Gideon's former officer in the IDF Major Ariel Ben Moshe, 27, a commander in the elite Seyreth Matkal unit, who was killed in combat at Kibbutz Reim in the Gaza envelope on October 7, 2023. Ariel and his wife Yuval were on vacation camping on the Golan Heights, far away from Gaza. On October 7, he received a notification from the Army, and within 15 minutes he was already in the car on the way south to engage Hamas at Kibbutz Reh

By that evening, he had retaken with his men, almost all of Reim, together with his patrol, and at the last house where Hamas fighters had barricaded themselves, he entered first and was killed in the gun battle with the Hamas terrorists. Ariel's brother Shavit, an IDF paratrooper, also fought in the South that day and heard of his brother's death in the middle of his own intense fighting in Kibbutz Cholit. Shavit survived severe injury himself in a gun battle

Ariel is also survived by his mother Galit, two younger brothers Shavit and Adar and his wife Yuval John, how are you? Javim, I'm well. It's great to see you back home. Yeah, people should know

we tried to do this while I was on the road in Norway and failed miserably for technical issues on my end. So thank you so much also for your patience and being willing to tolerate that. I want to dive right into it. Was Gideon's chariots the brand new method that the IDF has used, moving from a raiding war where they go in again and again and again to the same place, to taking and holding and they now control slightly over 75% of Gaza? Was it a military success in military terms? How do you see it? Yeah, it's a great question.

And Haviv, we're close friends. So academically, like we like to say, we don't disagree. I just like to add a yes and context to a statement or a position. Gideon's chair interesting because it did change, although it's actually changed multiple times since October 7th. The IDF at its culture and at its core is a raiding military. It has the capability to raid in the United States. too dense urban areas like any other military with the D9 bulldozer, the Merkava tank, and infantry, and many innovations since then.

But especially at the beginning of the war, it would raid an objective in an area, like Al-Shefa Hospital, where it would surround it, empty it of Hamas terrorist, and then leave once it searched everything. There wasn't a lot of clearing, as in by military definition of clearing. Eventually by really at the beginning of late last year, they started going into areas and holding them and clearing them more methodically. Now, Gideon's chariot was briefed to be different as in the hold portion, right? So this clear hold build, which is a very military synonymous, very well-known thing that we discovered, rediscovered in the U.S. military after six years of trying our own version of, you know, staying away from areas, raiding insurgent holds when we see them.

It took us six years to figure out really a clear hold build strategy that ended up working in returning areas to normalcy. Can you explain that to us? That's very identified with Petraeus. It turned around a lot of the situation in many areas of Iraq. What is the strategy and have the Israelis done it well? Yeah. So I highly recommend a book that General Petraeus.

and Sir Andrew Roberts, just, you know, two giants of warrior scholars. And Sir Andrew Roberts, just a historian, impeccable reputation, walks you through the evolution of where do we get to this hearts and minds, population-centric strategy, but also the tactical, but it can almost be operational approach of clearing an area, like you move in to clear an area of an enemy insurgent, holding it as in staying there, and then building security and other forms of essential services around that security.

But I want to put caveats. I mean, there are nuances on how it's been done even during the Iraq War, from the Second Battle of Fallujah, which was an enemy-held city that was surrounded, emptied of 90 plus percent of the population. Then you attacked it, killed or captured all the insurgents, and then immediately brought in local Iraqi-backed security forces with the military. U.S. military held it, searched every building, like 68,000 buildings, and then started to build up normalcy, transition to the mayor.

That's different than the way it's done in Ramadi in 2006, where it's done very incrementally, called a cop in a box. But, I mean, I think it's pretty easy to explain to people about you clear an area, you hold it, and then you build up a new normal there. You put a new power. But there are nuances to what it's been done, and especially in the last 30 years, that People almost hand-wave the difficulty of it or hand-wave the history of it, where most of the time, even us in Second Battle of Flusia, had Iraqi Army services with us.

We immediately transitioned to Iraqi local leaders, to Iraqi police. Even in the counterinsurgency math, which I think really will come out in our discussion, Haville, about what's the realm of possible? How could the IDF or even the Israeli government instructed the IDF to do this differently, is it, you know, all of these other clear hold and build situations were essentially counterinsurgencies fought for the government of the new government, whether it's the Iraqi professional authority, right, a new government that they were standing up. And you had Iraqi government forces or Afghanistan forces that are with you trying to build legitimacy in the new government nuances. But even the, what we call the counterinsurgency math, right? So which really gets to really where you're frustrated, I think, in the leaving of areas, which is it, it's cultural.

There's some cultural issues here with the IDF where they'll go in and clear an area even like conunist where I visited, where they thought they had cleared a very great majority of the military infrastructure, and then they leave. And then people move back and we see it in hospitals in Gaza. The math, though, right? So the counterinsurgency math, which is really where when you get to build, you're talking about. you bring the population back, you build up a new normal. There's called Inkblot strategy. It's even called the Disneyland strategy, where you build a small area of good and show everybody all the services that area gets,

that's what we called it in the Battle of Sauter City, where we build a wall. On one side of the wall, the commander said, well, I want this side to look like Disneyland, where I want to give all the essential services and all the government. Everything is going well. But the math is, it's called counterinsurgency math, 20 security forces to a thousand population. So if you have a million, that would be around 20,000 soldiers who don't leave an area ever.

Right. So they're there. They're helping local security forces. They're the security that is foundational. So in Gaza, you would need about 44,000 IDF soldiers not rotating out, permanently stationed in that area. developing just a security framework and usually backed by hundreds of thousands of other security forces. And we never achieved that math in Iraq.

But in clear hold build, you need to never leave. And the question to you that I wanted to ask, you know, as an Israeli, as I've faced this, it isn't just that the IDF is a rating force, but it's also a reservist force. Most majority of the forces are reservists who, while some people will say have been, you basically actively fighting for the last two years, they're only spending, not only, but they're spending about two months in Gaza. And they rotate back where they're going home and everything. And I've actually even talked to Israeli mothers saying, of course, they can't go longer than that. I want to see my son.

I want to see my daughter. I want to bring food. In order to commit a force to that phase that everybody is frustrated that isn't happening yet, is could the IDF or the Israelis, society see that happening where you have forces that go into Gaza with no return date. So they're there. They're the part of the holding force because even in Gideon's Cherrier, like you said, right now, they said that Gideon's Charity would be different as in you would clear an area and then you'd hold it and you'd stay there.

And what the IDF really did was clear up to a certain point and then somewhat hold it. I wouldn't say they control, 75% of Gaza at this point. Control for me has a military definition. I understand, yes, there's four divisions right now. They rotated brigades back in preparation for the bigger operation. But control, for me, you have actual control of those areas. What the IDF has done is cleared up to a certain area. And yes, the population is in that last bigger 25%,

but they're not interacting with the population. And this is really where the nuances start to become important. And what you see the – you say the Iraqi government, I say the IDF, pushing back on plans that would actually perceive them taking control of areas with their population in them. So you I mean we've gone right

to the heart of the matter. In Fallujah 2, in the second battle of Fallujah, that Iraqi force, that Iraqi government, we often use the example when people look at images of the destruction in Han Yunus or Rafah and we

say, well look at images of the destruction of Musul. And it's It's absolutely correct. That's a kind of fighting that produces that kind of damage. And you know what? If it's the day after, it can all be rebuilt very quickly and with the sympathy Gaza has and the incredibly wealthy friends in the Arab world who want to come in and be the thing that deradicalizes Gaza through building Gaza, the money is all there, the sympathy is all there. The rebuilding is all available as soon as Hamas is gone, which is also true of Musul, right? But the thing that was there in Muscle that we don't have is that the ground for, the United States was the Air Force, was the envelope, was maybe special forces. The ground forces were Kurdish-Peshmerga and the Iraqi security forces. In other words, there wasn't the problem that we talk about as the day after.

We don't really mean the day after. We mean who runs Gaza, who isn't Hamas? And who runs Gaza and has sufficient coherence as a force, as an ideology, to fight Hamas? And would the Saudis send 20,000-member police security rebrand? building military force of some kind into Gaza, if Hamas will harass their lines and murder their soldiers. Now, I submit to you that the Saudis, after the third dead soldier, will leave and not rebuild Gaza.

And so Israel alone, without the local force, has to do this thing while Hamas is still embedded in a supported civilian population with that tunnel system. So it's a challenge that doesn't exist, hasn't really been done. So you need to hold without the Iraqis. And so I guess I have many questions, and this isn't even a criticism of the Israelis. So far, I've only just articulated the challenge the Israelis face. It took an awful long time to come to a serious strategic grappling. I do hear now a serious strategic grappling on the Israeli side with this.

I do believe that this was delayed in part because of political problems. Smotherich was pulling in one way, Ben-Gvier was pulling in one way. Netanyahu very much wants to win and he doesn't, I think, want to get dragged over into those spaces, but he's limited even in being able to talk about it. So much of winning a war like this is shaping the narrative around the war, denying the enemy the narrative around the war. And Netanyahu was unable to speak because of those political problems, and so it did affect the war. But so now we're at a point where we have to already make some fundamental decisions. Gideon's chariots was supposed to be the make or break.

The worst thing for me was the rhetoric of the government around the latest Gaza city operation. It is entirely possible. I'm extremely convincedable that this has to happen. I'm extremely convincedable that if we do reach a ceasefire with Hamas now that gives us our hostages, we're back at this war in five years, and Gaza can't be rebuilt in the meantime. And so I don't understand anyone who thinks that's a pro-Gaza position, that Hamas survives this. I have never, I've debated a lot of these people, I've been screamed out by a lot of these people. I've never reached the point where anyone's explained to me Gaza's future with Hamas in it.

I've reached many points where people explain to me how much Israel has to leave. And you know what? I desperately want Israel to leave as well, but only when Hamas isn't in it, or we all have to do this again. So how do we get there? And given Gaza's the difference in Gaza where we don't have another force that isn't Hamas. And I'll just say beyond that, there's also, and I want to get to this to ask you about the information word, we're to ask you about the humanitarian questions. one of the great problems we have with humanitarian aid isn't just the Hamas is stealing it all.

It's probably not stealing at all, okay? It's stealing some piece of it, but it's not all of it. But what Hamas is able to do in Gaza is disrupt anything it needs to disrupt at any point. It still has that power. And it's a very low bar to have that power. And so it'll be very hard to deny it that power. So moving forward, given that Hamas not just is willing to see Gaza suffer, Gaza's suffering is its strategy.

How do we create a take hold, you know, clear, hold, build strategy where we don't have the Iraqi government on our side and where we don't have, and where Hamas only wants to destroy. It doesn't actually want to conquer and control. So I don't have all the answers, Saviv. I can definitely give context, more challenges and considerations. There are lots of differences. Even in the Missoule situation, there were about 10 factions that were actually involved in that operation. And ISIS was 3 to 5,000 fighters, 3,000 to 5,000 fighters in a city of a million. It wasn't the population.

There was some population support, but once they were defeated, then there was no fighting left. And there was actually, and like, you're right, even the other forces, which were told quickly to leave. There were Shia-backed militias. There was a whole bunch of groups that were involved in the liberation of Missoule that were rapidly told to leave. And it was transitioned to the federal government. You had local leaders back in there running the city. So many nuances there. And just to be clear, Operation Gideon's Cheriot B, as far as I can tell, has nothing to do with holding or building an area.

It has to do with clearing Gaza City that hasn't been done yet. of, you know, Hamas, stronghold, infrastructure, sanctuary. It's really a sanctuary, which really goes back to even Fallujah, because if you know the history of the two battles of Fallujah, first battle of Fallujah, is a failure. The city is encircled. A local force is assigned security within it called the Fallujah Brigade. And it becomes a sanctuary for enemy forces for six plus months.

Eventually the government says, we can't have this anymore. And then you clear it. The plan that I see in Gaza City is to once again evacuate the civilians and then go in and clear the Hamas fighters that stay or that are trapped to fight. And there are some differences here before. But the plan isn't to have the population there because it shouldn't be, right? In order to minimize civilian casualties, you've got to move the civilians out. But one of the challenges I think that's being missed by a lot of people is that the population

is a factor in this, right? So even if, you know, in eastern Rafa, right, you have these Bedouin tribe with supposedly dubious backgrounds, they have a Hamas-free zone, right? And that's a model, like a light of hope. And I think that personally, I thought that should have been amplified, that you have this zone. I mean, the guy I wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed on, I'm not Hamas. I have a zone here where you can bring food in.

I think it was brilliant. And I think that should have been protected. You put up a wall around that thing, start flooding resources into that as a light of possibility. The Disneyland, in other words, to show Gaza what could be. That's right. Disneyland theory. I mean, he wrote a while. Yeah, but then you immediately, as soon as the person's name, then you get attacked by, like, he's, you know, a terrorist, all these things.

This is the idea, again, that you're going to create something that is almost, you know, near impossible in like you said, de-radicalization, which is a, everybody knows that in order to have a Hamas-free zone, you'd have to have some form of de-radicalization after Hamas is defeated. All these different techniques that have been tried thus far is about removing Hamas from power or lowering their power to where anything else to survive. You pointed out, and I agree with you, you couldn't assign any other force to come in there and secure a portion of Gaza right now that wouldn't face daily attacks unlike we've ever seen in any other area that we could say is where there's this clear whole build happening, right?

You have to bring Hamas's power down. In order to do that, you have to do the clearing part, which is kind of frustrating, but also if you peel back the onion of the cultural aspects, even what General Zamir is saying now, when he violently refused or commented about the, ideal of having a humanitarian zone in southern Gaza that, you know, the Defense Secretary of Cox was talking about, right? We'll have a zone here that we've already cleared. We'll let people back in it.

We'll secure it. Right. And then that's, again, a commitment of IDF soldiers securing a population, not a piece of terrain. And then you have the issue of even being able to clear Gaza City. Some of the context that I felt that was missing in your conversation about what happened with the humanitarian aid. what was the history of northern Gaza in getting the civilian population to move south so that IDF kinetic operations or offensive operations could happen against Hamas in those areas.

And then this entire time, of course, there are portions of Gaza City that the IDF haven't gone in. But there's also a population that has, no matter than how many notifications, hasn't moved. I don't know if you remember. So let me let me set this up because I said something and you think, thought that was just crazy. And I think that's extremely useful to hear that it's great. And also, you're always a gentleman about it, so it's easy to, you know. But basically, I said, you know, and I said this in the context of the hunger in Gaza and the data, the price data, and things like that, that showed us that the UN has lied again and again and again and again.

But, you know, roughly in May, it was no longer a lie. There actually was hunger in Gaza. One of the things I said was you need to clear the civilians, you need to separate the civilians from Hamas. The best way to do that, I suggested, and this was something that I suggested 20 months ago, but I'll just say, when I suggested 20 months ago, it was a flippant, you know, side comment in just trying to clarify the scale of the difficulty of the civilian problem. So I was not a great, wise man 20 months ago, but it was obvious that the problem was profound and fundamental to the war. and I suggested, well, you know, we can't send them into Egypt because Egypt won't take them. The Arab world won't let Egypt take them. There was, by the way, in January 2024, February 2024, a year and a half ago, more than a year and a half ago, Egypt actually was willing to contemplate in Rafah some kind of refugee camp for Gazans.

And since then, Egypt set about building the biggest wall Gaza has ever known the entirety of the Gaza-Egypt border with barbed wire, you know, totally impenetrable so that Gazans don't even accidentally dream of putting a ladder over a fence and climbing over. So we have a situation where the Egyptians won't take them. The Arab world discourses don't let them out. The Israelis will never

let them back in. So I've suggested I don't know a month ago so let's build a massive refugee facility in Israel and let's bring international aid agencies into the facility and let's have Israeli Arabs running the facility. These are Israelis

who know Hebrew and Palestinians who know Arabic and they're the same people. So they are that bridge. And let's and let's it might even have a deradicalizing element in that in that contact. Ghazans don't know the story of Israeli Arabs. They have only a very ideological version of that story. They haven't actually

crossed the border as populations basically since the second intifada for 25 years. And so this could be something fantastic. Plus the civilians are out. Now this is a terrible idea, you said. So I will not interrupt you. I really, maybe it really is silly and the problem remains and you can't solve it with just Chaviv dreaming. But what's wrong with this picture? So one is Israeli society. I don't know personally, and you would know better than I would,

if the Israeli society who suffered October 7th, and you're talking southern Israel, would say, yes, we can take the population out of Gaza and put them in Israel after knowing what happened on October 7th, which included thousands of Ghazans who weren't Hamas crossing the border to do awful things in Israel. That's the first step, right? Because Israel's a democracy. Any plan that gets put forward, and you've even seen it recently with Gideon's chariot versions, that wasn't the version that went into the conversation. It was a much broader plan. And then for the vibrant democracy and different figures, it got changed. So I think from a societal perspective, I don't think it would have flown to just from a security perspective. Right. So this is the ideal.

And I think that's it's present, right? And I try to be as objective as possible, even about holding areas in Gaza is that, well, how would you screen those that would be moved to this area if the international community let you do that, right? So there is that factor. I want to come back to Egypt, though. But the international community said, yes, you can displace. Now, forced displacement is illegal in all forms of the law of war. There's voluntary or temporary displacement. So you could say this is temporary.

But then who would be the person to say this person isn't Hamas? This person isn't Palestinian Islamic jihad. This person isn't lion's den. Because as we've seen in even the hostage release videos, there are many terrorist organizations in Gaza who have aligned themselves in participating in the hostilities. Some of the hostages that are held right now aren't being held by Hamas. They're being held by Palestinian Islamic jihad and other groups. They have consolidated. Many of them, Hamas bought some from civilians, if you remember.

So there is the practical perspective of who would be the determinant. And then from a military lens, so those are political considerations, political societal. From a military lens, who would secure this force, right, that goes back. to the math. I mean, even the last few months that we talk about kind of what was attempted in Gaza about trying to move all the humanitarian aid to southern Gaza in preparation for clearing of northern Gaza. It's a variation of a plan that I disagreed with in the beginning. Who would secure this force? How many tens of thousands of IDF soldiers would be responsible? And if you use, You could use, you know, Magab.

You could use police, blue police, you name it. But how many would be assigned to that to secure a displaced person's camp? And then when would it stop if there was some type of violence event? During this last few months, you had the whole, you know, Israel-Iran conflict. This is the, even the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which does amazing, very courageous work. We're serving food during when Iranian ballistic missiles were raining down on Israel. Who would have secured this force?

So for me, all courses of action have to be feasible, acceptable, suitable, suitable, sustainable, like all these military terms that we use. One, ahistoric, of course. I like to point that out because I'm a very factual person. Like there's never been a history where a military who has, trying to overthrow a government, a forest, removes, takes its population into its own territory and then houses it, you know, like you said, what would they say about concentration camp? Because it would look more than what people use in hyperbole.

It would look like a very closed-in prison if you were to create a camp to do this. I just don't think it's feasible even from a perspective of who would be the population. I don't want the conversation also shifted off of Egypt. You in Israelis kind of, I think, have already like, well, you know, Egypt says, no, it's not an option. I'm on the other lens of, no, it should be a part of the national, international conversation every day and it's not. And it's so a historical double standard that it's not a part of the conversation, that you have the ability to create the same camp you're envisioning just on the other side of that gate. in the Sinai. And there is no, and I actually wrote the article this week, trying to again say it.

Like there's no practical reason why this isn't the demand of the international community, the world. And should be the number one topic of the September UN General Assembly that's coming up is create this camp that would allow the civilians, which is very historical, to even clear, hold, build operations. If you look back to like Romadi, you actually searched every individual coming out. out of the city to make sure they're not a terrorist or a part of the organization. And then you searched everyone going back into the community. That's very historical. And that's been a part of the conversation. And I point out about Ambassador or Minister Dermer who said, look, I don't know why this isn't a conversation.

And this whole idea about forced displacement, which would be a part of their conversation about moving into Ngev, is you could pass a UN Security Council resolution saying, And we're going to ensure that the Palestinian people of Gaza move back into the areas once Hamas has been defeated. But I don't think that Negev was reasonable for many reasons. I don't want the conversation shifted off of the Egypt conversation. That door is the fact that they closed that door, it should never have been closed and you're right. And I'll put the caveat that there actually has been about 100,000 Gazans who have left. through the Egypt crossing if they pay enough money. So anywhere from, you know, $2,000 to $10,000 American dollars,

they can get out through that gate. So the hypocrisy is rich here. But this is all the context of what could we do at this point? What can we do? I think that you're right that it's unique. I mean, there isn't a war zone in the world or possibly ever in the history of war zones where civilians were unable to flee.

maybe a specific siege of a specific city by the Mongols you can't find fleeing but but that's because of that right but usually the enemy wants them to flee usually that's something that is useful to civilians and then they come back we saw that in World War II we saw that always always everywhere that's unique here it's not just unique here it's one of the many things that are unique here that tunnel system is unique its scale is unique 60,000 tunnel entrances under, I mean, tens of thousands of buildings throughout Gaza's cities, that's unique. That has never been done before in war.

So so much of this is unique. Hamas offering the people of Gaza up on the altar is a unique feature of war that, by the way, is an enormous strategic advantage for Hamas because they can afford, and the whole international discourse around the war is built to ensure that they can afford higher Gaza losses than the Israelis can afford. And so, you know, while the Gazans are left in place, everything in the system is built out to ensure Hamas survives this. And to me, that means that everyone in the system is pro-Gaza suffering, because Gaza suffering serves, I don't know what a theological. We saw this with Macron and Kier Starmor, who insisted on recognizing a Palestinian state, not in a way that helps Palestinians, for example, as a condition conditioned on Hamas disarming.

Then I can have a debate. Good idea, bad idea, diplomatic, whatever. But as conditioned on, the current opinion of the UK is, the day Hamas disarms and evaporates, we will recognize a palcei. You know what? At least you haven't given it as a gift to Hamas. But they chose to actually do it as a gift to Hamas in September. If there's no ceasefire, meaning if Hamas refuses a ceasefire, right?

They've incentivized. So everything about this conflict in that sense is unique. I take your point about guarding it. I take your point about it, not just being called a concentration camp, because they're going to call us everything under the sun, but that it will actually have to have massive, you know, barbed wire fences all around it with armed guards making sure nobody escapes and there'll be escape attempts, and they will probably get shot.

And so it will look like that. I also didn't say the cost, Haviv. So one of the things we do is a military view, we test the assumptions. Two million people. Yeah. Yeah, the cost in shekels. So how many billions of dollars? I think the estimate of even the southern Gaza,

humanitarian zone that they were discussing was like three billion shekels or the expansion of the Gaza humanitarian foundation. The other actor here is the United Nations and all NGOs, right? So if you go back to even Jonathan Conriquez's story about setting up the Almwaste humanitarian zone and the United Nations said, no, we won't help you in that. We won't provide any resources. So the ideal here in this create the humanitarian zone and the Ngeb would be that the international community would be a part of just like they are in every other situation in the world.

of the resourcing and cost of it, right? The food, medical services, all this doctors, everybody would rush into that area. And actually the history since October 7th is, no, they would actually fight this, and they would not assist. So it would be 100% on the Israel government to fund and resource that initiative.

So let me challenge two things. One, Egypt in that sense doesn't help us either, because if the only way to do this is to have them voluntarily go, The best surveys we have, and I don't know how trustworthy they are, but some surveys of Palestinians, even in wartime in the past that I have seen, have actually been very reliable, also consistent and rational over time. So maybe they're true, is that half of Gazans would walk out if they could today. That leaves half in. That leaves a million people in. So even if Egypt agrees, okay, the civilian death toll would go down, but the military problem of a civilian death toll and having to have to, and having to,

target around civilians wouldn't disappear. So even Egypt, yes, I'm absolutely for leaving, you know, the light on Egypt. I completely accept that this is a terrible idea, but nevertheless, we have to be thinking in these terms. By the way, I'm still not convinced the Israelis couldn't do it. In other words, couldn't build out that aid organization. There is an Israeli aid organization working right now in Gaza that can scale up massively. I know something about the IDF's aid agencies and Do you think the government would fall if that position was taken and that attempt was attempted? No, I think Bibi would know how to sell it if he thought that was the strategic thing to do. I think Smoltswich would leave.

Right now, by the way, the government fell and still hasn't fallen. The ultra-Orthodox parties, because they can't get the bill they want for exemptions, are no longer in the government, except that nobody's holding the vote and they're not going to vote against, and they haven't toppled the government, even though the government technically doesn't have them. So I think there would be a way forward to deal with that, but I'll put it this way. If the government falling alone is the reason not to, and it's not, you've said 16 reasons that have nothing to do with the politics, but if the government falling alone is the reason not to, then our problem is, then that's what's holding us back from properly winning the war. So, okay, so even Egypt doesn't solve, I want to suggest to you, and this is a question, this is a classic Israeli question in the sense that it's a speech. So I want to suggest to you that even Egypt

ideally would only solve half the problem and that ideal is not available to us and it's not going to happen to matter how much pressure you bring to bear because the entire Arab world would tell the CSE regime that they're traitors. And so right now we're in a situation where the civilians are going to be stuck in the way and the IDS still has to get at Hamas

and a massive invasion of Gaza City is going to result in destruction there on the scale of Rafah. And now the question becomes how do we win? Yeah. So how do we remove Hamas? One thing I said, one sentence, just to give context of what listeners have heard, if they've listened to all the episodes up till now, is that in places like where you've had guerrilla forces that have been defeated by standing armies, like Peru and the Shining Path, like the Greek Civil War where the Yugoslavs supported these communist militias, all these other places, the successful ones, they separated the civilian population from the guerrillas, sometimes violently, sometimes by forcibly moving. the civilian population. Sometimes by giving the civilian population the thing that the rebels were promising them, you know, help and structural changes in society and all kinds of other things. So however they did it, the separation itself was the key to success. Is that the key to success

here? Is it even possible here? And if it's not, is it just more of the same? Are we just continuing this path that Hamas keeps seeming to survive? So, yes, and again on the caveats on what has worked in the past is each we say you know history has to be studied in with depth and context so that's why again I recommend that book by general Petraeus because even the idea where did the the statement of hearts and minds came from it came from the guy named the tiger of he was a tiger because he was vicious against the enemy but separated the civilian population and that can be done in more than one way you can arm other factions against the enemy that you're fighting and still technically be

separating the population i don't have what what is the necessary path towards winning i can say that again any feasible solution can't be surrender right so most people agree that well even these european countries are like well of course hamas has to lay down their weapons now you have the Arab nations, you know, what is it, 11, 14 Arab nations saying, of course, Hamas has to lay down his weapons and give up power, but nobody has the solution where surrender can't be a solution. Given all the current constraints, I agree, we actually agree on, I believe there should have been at this point a, you know, General Galant called it bubbles, you know, creating these Disneyland, like that southern Gaza section, which is very small.

and it would be very hard to do, but doesn't mean there shouldn't have been an effort to it. It's all been forms of trying to attack the will of the enemy, and you have rightfully criticized the attempt of the movement of aid, and I put nuances to southern Gaza in an attempt to continue to break down Hamas's power over the aid distribution. but up to this point Israel has allowed Hamas to have a sanctuary to run command operations, hold hostages, everything inside of Gaza City for concern of the hostages, concern of the difficulty of the cost that it will take to enter that terrain because it's a denser terrain than the IDF have ever faced technically in my view in the history of the IDF.

the central Gaza city, the urban canyons, will be a humongous fight. But the fact as an objective observer is that you've given Hamas a sanctuary this entire time, which has made it very challenging to convince it that it needs to do what the world is saying, lay down its arm, and surrender to any other form of government, any other faction, Palestinian-led faction. For me, as an objective observer, even the clear whole build strategy doesn't leave sanctuaries, right? That's, again, going back to all of these other situations where it was used, even in a counter-surgency faction, where you're fighting for the government saying, like, I have an enemy city here.

I can't deal with, I can't have that. Masuwa's that, Fallujah, Ramas, all of these were enemy-held cities within a functioning national system. You don't give them a sanctuary because that never leads to their, their surrender. Even the ideal of sieges, I hate sieges. A siege, and a lot of people call things sieges that aren't, where you surround an area and then use that as the form of warfare to convince the enemy to do whatever it is you're wanting them to do, give up hostages or surrender. If you besiege an area, you can isolate an area before attacking it. In my perspective, what Gideon's Chariot B is radically different than even Gileon's Chariot.

which was, to me, if you go back to Gaza 2008, a little bit of the same of clearing Gaza up to a certain point, keeping the population away from where you're clearing, and then you say you've gotten up to that line in the, literally in the sand, and say, I've cleared this much area, I've achieved my goal. That was Gaza 2008 as well. What the plan is being briefed for Gaza City is five divisions against one city. that's historic in IDF history and historic in the operations in Gaza. You could ask... Meaning it's the largest force to ever enter a city, the scale of Gaza City.

Correct. And you could say, why didn't they do that before? Well, then we've got to go to the constraints, right? So... No, no, I want to ask that question. I literally have it written down here while you were talking. So denying sanctuary is the key to the old strategy and to the new strategy and to every strategy, then it should have been done much sooner. So this is two points. One, why didn't they do it

sooner? Does that mean that the strategic thinking is not as clear as it should have been? Forgive me, it's 22 months, and I have family in the war. And so I am prone to think that maybe something isn't always happening correctly in the highest levels of Israeli government. Denying Sanctuary is the key should have been done sooner, and therefore this could actually be the beginning of the end. because there isn't anything after Gaza City of significance. I mean, you still have the central camp. You have Dera Blan and other areas that were taken off of the overall plan to finish off technically, right? And this is again where, as a military guy that nuances here, like the IDF having cleared 75% of Gaza, Gaza.

That's just a fact. I haven't been there multiple times. You've said that. Explain that. What's the difference between what you call clear and what the idea of his death? Yeah. So what I call it clear is that there's no military infrastructure or resources left for an enemy to fall back on. Right.

So you're talking tunnels, weapons caches, weapon manufacturing plants, supplies, cash, the whole gambit, even unexploded ordinance, which is a weapon for Hamas, right? So the 10% of the IDF munitions that have been dropped on enemy forces in Gaza are unexploded. And Hamas, like ants, comes out later, grabs those and uses them to. make explosives to lay in the roads and in the houses and everything, to clear an area, literally means you cleared of enemy activity. And that means its infrastructure, its weapons, and everything. So if Hamas only had 25% of its supplies, I mean, it doesn't have the rocket supplies that it had, of course, this would be a different occasion.

But you can't control and clear something unless you're there for a very long amount of time, right? So that means clearing every structure, every tunnel. Even in a Netturine corridor, there's still tunnels there. They just, because to remediate a tunnel is very expensive, timely, everything. So to say you clear an area, for the idea that means that there's no active military enemy forces fighting you, right? Hamas is not there. That's different than the way I call something cleared.

you cleared of enemy infrastructure is a part of that conversation what the question of clearing Gaza city right so this is where the forecast of how long it would take are like I'm again you know it's it's fine to be critical as long as you provide all the context you know Gaza city is a city of a million the densest part of Gaza had never been touched once how are you going to do that in a matter of two months, you're going to fight the Hamas that stayed there to fight. You're going to clear it through. You're going to discover intelligence.

But to actually clear that would take a significant amount of resources. And the fact that there is five divisions is a very big sign of an actual commitment to doing the clearing. How likely is it that those five divisions would stay there and hold that area? It's just not going to happen, right? Just based on Israel society, rotating reserve forces, call-ups. I think that, you know, 70 days a year is one of the, you know, sayings at this point. But so you're saying not just that there's still infrastructure all over Gaza. It actually has to be cleared properly for Hamas to be sufficiently degraded for, let's say, the Saudis, the Arabs or the UN to come, or the Americans to come in and rebuild slash de-radicalize and all that.

You're actually saying in one sense, if you take the population rather than the geography, half of Gaza has been done, the other half has yet to be done. The capacity of Hamas to hide in Gaza City, a city of a million is immense. That's half the population of Gaza. Those tunnels are enormous. It's almost the entirety of the war again in terms of the objectives the idea of actually has to achieve in there. And you're saying not only is not going to last two months.

Two months is just a sort of rushing along the ground, maybe blowing a few things up. you're actually talking about hunkering down and massively systematically destroying all of those infrastructures. And those infrastructures are deeply, deeply embedded in all the other infrastructure, the civilian of the buildings. I mean, all these buildings become in one way or another part of either tunnel entrance or IDs. So we're in for a very long slog in Gaza, all of Gaza, and a longer and more difficult and focused and concentrated slug in Gaza City. and that would do the job. And anything less than that is the Israelis just hemming and harring and unable to actually give the kind of concentrated push that would finish it.

Is that? Yes, and. So this technique that the IDF have used, it's very IDF, this raid in and out. But it has been arguably very successful in doing what would have necessarily, taking hundreds of thousands of troops. The fact that Hamas doesn't have a military today. Its leaders are gone. Its brigades don't function.

Its battalions don't function. Yes, there are fighters. The goal in war is never the death of every enemy fighter. The goal is to convince the enemy to do your will and could the operation in Gaza City, doing it the IDF way, tip Hamas to the tipping point of what

everybody has basically been on the same sheet of music as is a to the disarmament and surrender. That is a great question, and I think more likely than to say that this would do the other goal, which is the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip, which I think rightfully so, the Israel government and military leadership are saying, that's later. We're trying to break the will of Hamas. And it's not the radicalization ideology, but just the leadership to continue the war to that point.

That's, I think, the phase you're in. We're still in phase one of the Gaza war, in my understanding. But I will say, in credit, again, as an objective analysis, that this IDF methodology of in and out, in and may be clear a little bit, an out, based on Israel's society of continuing the war, right? So the amount of time a reserve force can be used has been effective at, and some people would argue this, returning hostages. the military pressure with political pressure of 200 hostages returned in various ways the Hamas doesn't have a military

it doesn't have a rocket supply it has a sanctuary of this 25% for many reasons that's been left there and you're right to say this should have been done a long time ago and then I'll say at what month did you want to do it did you want to do it during the attack against Hezbollah did you want to do it against the attack against Iran did you want to do it against when the American government

said you couldn't go to Rafa, which was a sanctuary at the time. And then they moved. I mean, even the Al-Mawesi humanitarian zone where Muhammad Deaf was killed. It's a sanctuary at this point. It's where Hamas could go and operate without, and even what we've seen this morning in Al-Nasar hospital,

where Hamas was returned to operating a command center inside of a hospital, is these sanctuaries that are there. But I do it with a little bit of understanding of the Israel way, the constraints that are on the idea, but agree that this operation against Gaza City was a necessary means, not because of its black sanctuary, is because all other things that have been done to try to convince Hamas that they're not going to win, but the daylight, right? So this is the daylight that people have talked about, even Secretary of Blinken said. Anytime there was daylight between Israel's society and Israel's government, Israel's government

in the United States or anybody else, that's when Hamas gets resolved to, well, even if we only have this 10% left as a sanctuary, we can hold out. We're going to win here. And that's for me what this Gaza City operation will be. It won't clear Gaza City. It will remove the sanctuary and the hope that Hamas has had. And I think, personally, this is why Hamas is now, okay, wait a minute, we're willing to give up some of the remaining hostages.

Because if you remove that sanctuary, they have a lot less cards. and a lot less resolve that they're going to be successful because of this daylight. And the Kier's Darmers of the world and these threats against Israel is creating, it puts resolve in Hamas to not to do what even the Arab countries at this point say they shouldn't be doing, which is holding out. Okay. So the Israeli strategy is not bad. We should not seek, it's a reasonable given Israel's constraints, which are demographic constraints.

I mean, there's only 10 million Israelis in the world. I mean, everybody talks about Israel more than China, but nevertheless, given these very real, unavoidable Israeli constraints, it doesn't have America scale, you know, military capacity to engage and stay and hold and clear and all that. So this is a very good strategy that has achieved a very great deal. 80% of hostages back is not something that on the week of October 7 anybody in Israel thought was going to happen. so many of them of course they should be said dead right their bodies are back but nevertheless that is not something

that anybody thought was available to us as we go into Gaza City what happens to the hostages the reasonable threat of going into Gaza City has possibly moved Hamas we heard today allegedly not actually from his mouth but a report of a leak of somebody saying

that the chief of staff has said that there is a hostage on the table now which there wasn't a week ago or whatever. But now, Hamas appears really wanting to have a deal, have some kind of a ceasefire, delay the entrance into Gaza City. If that gets us out, 10 more hostages, great. Not great, flippantly. I mean, great, then we stop and do it.

But ultimately, Hamas never gives up the last hostage. And so ultimately, this has to go forward, even at the cost of hostages' lives, because you don't leave Hamas this massive sanctuary and, you know, an entire city and all the tunnels, et cetera. Is that fair to say? And let me, before you walk into this terrible trap where you're never going to please anybody, I have said that ultimately removing Hamas, teaching the lesson that we have taught our enemies that hostages are our strategic Achilles heel. We need to teach our enemies that our hostages are their strategic Achilles heel. They cannot survive this.

The very fact that they will have us negotiating for our hostages is why this ends with them dead and it doesn't end until then because we can't have another strategy. In other words, I have agreed with Netanyahu multiple times on these kinds of questions on the Philadelphia corridor when he was fighting with Galan, on the questions of hostages, on the hardest decisions of the war. I've criticized him a thousand times on a thousand things. On the hardest decisions of the war, I think he's generally been right because of what Hamas is. So having cleared the way, get angry at me first, people.

Ultimately, we lose some of the hostages to take Gaza City to deny Hamas that last sanctuary. Is that right? Or is there another way? So I don't think it's binary. I think everything you just said is accurate, right? So you reached the point that all other means have been tried, and now you have hostages that are near death, like actually being starved to death.

That's an assessment of some of the living hostages. It's hard to argue against that, but I don't think it's black and white. This is, again, the different operations. methods, I have been surprised by the IDF operations from the beginning, whether it's the initial attack going around, Hamas's offensive, coming from the beach, coming from the sea. There are surprises that are yet to be known, and there is always this risk, but how they're going to mitigate this risk.

So to say that if the IDF moves forward, they're saying, look, we understand that the hostages are going to die. I don't think that's accurate. As straightforward as a statement as we've reached some. to the point where all other things have been tried. And you're right. If Hamas comes to the table, like they have in the past and say, look, we want a 60-day hold.

But it usually, and it's not me saying this, right? They have passed on five deals that would end the war, but they won't do that because they want to either keep military arms or keep political power. It's both, but they want to survive. But you're reaching a point where, you know, this goes again to the history of Hamas, like you said. If you go back and it was very enlightening to go back to 2008 after, you know, Gilad Shalit, after Hamas rocket attacks, where did the IDF stop and why did they stop? And they didn't get Gilaj Shalit back, right?

It was years and then what was exchanged for him. And there is a lot of history to Hamas, hostages, Gaza, the strongholds that IDF have never gone into in the history of Gaza. And we're reached a point where you're right, the cost will be great, but it does the cost outweigh. This is always, even in proportionality, excessive to do you want to, because there will be loss of IDF life as well. The IDF soldier loss of life, you know, getting to the point of 900, as an analyst, as an objective analyst, I would have on October 7th imagined thousands more. But because of this IDF way of fighting, it's different. Even if you do the proportionality of other wars, right, the Iraqi soldiers lost 10,000 soldiers in taking back Missou. It would have been much more.

So there will be loss of IDF life, but it isn't that they aren't all calculated risk, right? So this is the – it's not black and white because I do believe that the IDF will, of course, like they did in Gideon's chariot, gather intelligence about the whereabouts of living and dead and retrieve dead hostages, to be frank. One of the most painful things at this moment among Israelis is this furious debate between, it isn't really left and right, it's almost more secular versus religious. Most of the hostages belong to the secular subculture of Israel. and a disproportionate number, not most,

but a disproportionate number of the dead soldiers in Gaza and the fighting in Gaza since October 7 belong to the religious subculture of Israel. And those two populations feel those two different sides of it differently. And so there is this in Tel Aviv, you can't drive down a highway, you can't turn a corner on a street without seeing a sign for hostages. And in more religious neighborhoods and more religious areas,

the death of soldiers, you know, you'll walk into a restaurant and one wall of the restaurant will be dedicated to this tradition that's developed in this war of bumper stickers with a quote. One of the soldiers, you know, a quote that the family picked out from the soldiers' social media or whatever about being good in the world or about, you know, the need to do for people in the world, things like that as a memorial. And so there are these stickers for hostas and these two subcultures of Israel. and they're almost forced by Hamas, by Hamas's strategy, to debate, you know, whose blood is worth shedding or worth risking more. It's incredibly painful and explains a little bit.

I don't think the world understands the extent to which no matter what the world sees out of Gaza, Hamas continues in that sense to radicalize Israelis against Hamas because it will release these high. hostage videos, it will talk about the hostages and it will mock the deaths of soldiers. And in other words, I don't know how Gaza ever comes out of this. I literally don't know, and I don't know anyone who can explain if Hamas isn't removed. I want to finish, thank you so much for your time. I want to finish with the last critique I had of this government, which I'm saved the best for last, because it's the one I understand the most.

And that's the information war. now this government I believe this leadership and by the way also the IDF which I blame less because it had more things to deal with but it also should have understood at a strategic level the IDF understands at this point that cyber is a phenomenally important

strategic front in war and the cyber capabilities the IDF are commensurate to that understanding but the information war is almost completely lost I mean not just lost there's nothing there There's no nothing. For the vast majority of this war, Netanyahu literally had no English language spokesperson and also didn't really take to the airways

and explain Israel's position because explaining that we're not going to build settlements in Gaza would have caused trouble with some of his coalition partners. And so they got to put on, you know, massively televised internationally and, you know, seen press conferences about how Israel's going to take Gaza, kick out the population and build settlements there, while Netanyahu sat silently off in the corner,

not causing himself political problems. The information war hasn't just not been... We're going to lose it no matter what, okay? No, I'm not imagining that we're not. But nobody even understood or wanted to understand or cared that this was phenomenally central to this war. And the only reason I think one sentence that it was phenomenally central to this war,

as you've said, as every single expert has said, that's why Hamas thinks it can survive. That's why if it finds its sanctuary, hunkers down, all it has to do is let the world pressure do its thing. We are losing friends and allies to the genocide claim, never mind to specific complaints about specific air strikes. And partly we're losing them. They would be susceptible to Israeli explaining what the hell's happening. But Israel isn't explaining. And so the most radical extremist pieces of Israel, the only one's talking.

Have I gone overboard or is that a reasonable? How do you assess the information war landscape of Israel? Absolutely. So I join you with a yes to Ann who would have done the information operations completely different. I have some nuances there that there wasn't a starvation campaign, but Israel did fail to explain what they were doing and why they were doing it. I know more of the context. Right, just to go over, I meant the claim of starvation. The campaign is that they claimed those intentional starvation.

Okay. Yeah. Good, good, because there was a pause in the aid delivery, the stand-up at the GHF, the what was happening during the 42-day ACF. You're 100% right, and it's just a case study of that there has been a horrible, if not, not planned whole-of-government information strategy. And this is the way you can compare it to others, and you rightly say, you know, and people will say, well, they won't believe us anyways.

who's responsible for putting on information and when, right? So I agree with you and you could fix it today where you're, you were producing daily information within the threshold of operational security, where the entire world could go to and listen to a daily day, a press briefing on whether that's COGAP, the IDF, and there's real government. And usually you want them all to be on the same sheet of music. And I, you're just having come back from India and watching India's operations during its war against Pakistan four days. But you saw that that all three echelons were putting out information. It was all the on the same and it was daily. The only way you beat the misinformation is put out information daily.

And even David Horst, you know, the Times of Israel editors says they just don't put out any information. We'll ask questions. There's no answer. I couldn't. Just to clever, I couldn't get answers on hunger, on starvation. I had to go find this very talented Hebrew University economist, who, by the way, votes left, and was deeply critical and explained the criteria and had the numbers and had the data. I couldn't get real information out of this government.

Never mind, why would a BBC person who doesn't know who to call in Hebrew, you know, from Israeli official, anyway, it's, it was a, I want to ask you more than that. It's not just, yes, obviously they haven't been, you know, explaining anything. This is foundational. This is as much as cyber. Imagine the Iran war, but you have no hacking capabilities. You would not have had that targeting. You would not have been able to get Iranian Air Force officials

into the room together to kill them all in one shot. You would not have taken out the air defenses ahead of the air strikes, right? If you didn't have, it is foundational, it is central. Israel is flying this mission without an air force and hoping, you know, balloons carry the day. and the information space is Hamas's foundational strategy. That's why Ghazan suffering is something Hamas magnifies at every turn. And so my concern is that I'm being unfair because this is a radically new version of that information war.

Israel has to innovate. Yeah, it's just not catching up 22 months in that it has to innovate. Nobody else has done this before. It's not screwing up in the sense that it's forgotten what people once knew. Nobody has had to deal with this. or, which is what I feel in my gut, they literally just can't imagine it culturally and have just abandoned this field and will not now, even now, 22 months in, build a serious information or infrastructure. You're right. And if you were to dig deeper, right, do investigative reporting on why. Like, why is this? I've asked the questions, you know, I'm better with the idea, why aren't you putting out this? Well, that should be the Ministry of Defense's responsibility. And then you ask, them. They're like, well, that should be the prime minister's office. So it isn't just one group. It is

actually a young country struggling with even the Civ Mill hierarchy, right? So, of course, military gives best military advice. But even within Israel, you have retired military who become, you know, voices of opposition. There is some nuances here. You're right. It's a case study not the way to do it. Even with COGAP putting out daily information, it's not rising. So there's one aspect of, you need to, I agree with you. I 100% join you, Habib, you need a hierarchy of almost an army to fight in the information operations domain. And actually, the IDF spokesmen grew there, the organization greatly after October 7th.

And as I continued to visit it, it was getting smaller. The problem wasn't getting smaller. but for, for, you know, many reasons. But it's also being, so this is a new template. So we can be critical of Israel for that, but we can also say that all other countries don't think you're excluded from this happening to you if you ever face a war of this scale, right? This is the hashtag and the misinformation, right?

This starvation, this genocide that gets a stamp of approval from a legitimate organization, and then it goes viral, right? The United Nations say 14, 14,000 babies will die in 48 hours. stamp of approval viral and you have to fight that so you have to have an army ready to fight the misinformation right so the kernel of truth that gets told in a story that's a lie so it isn't just putting out the I agree with you but you I think you should have I can be critical like you saw these starvation claims coming you should have developed a whole campaign against that one thing which they came to it later as you have

seen and you ripely criticized like later you've come to it and the visits to the GHF and even explaining what happened there from the beginning to now and you have these people taking their 15 minutes of fame to say how it was when they were there even though it's not the way it is now it's so you're right and I don't know what the solution is though because it's deeper than just just fix it because it is political it is societal as it has to change it isn't right, it will be a very big challenge to achieve victory, not addressing it, not saying that it's not, it's not an option, right? Failure is not an option, but you could be doing a lot more to assist, even at this point. My sense is that we have to have a catastrophic failure. That's how it works in

Israel. In the 1980s, we had to debase our currency twice because of triple digit inflation over eight years where everybody's life savings were wiped out. We were like worse than Venezuela. And then we actually passed the laws and the reforms that broke the labor unions and made monetary policy independent and created these conditions for the massive prosperity of Israel since the 90s. But first we needed to crash. So the Israeli culture, Israel's intelligence community was built out of 73, where it collapsed catastrophically. So for some reason, I don't know why we do this to ourselves, but for some reason, Israeli culture

is you drive off the cliff, you're falling, you're falling, and you're still bickering. you still don't notice. And then an inch before the, you know what, you smack on the ground, look at your bloodied body and say, we probably should fix this. And then the Israelis go and do something so stunningly professional and serious. But so, you know, maybe it's not bad enough. Maybe that's the answer before the culture takes notice. I thank you very much for this, because I come away from this saying, you know, again, I don't know what the answer is. It's war.

The enemy by nature surprises you. That's what an enemy is. And there are many, many factors that we can't know. But I am at least satisfied that this is rational, that this is not silly, it's not politicking, it's not, and that to me is an important thing to know. My last question to you, so are you optimistic? Are you optimistic at the most baseline level without too much caveats? Just, are we going to win this thing? Are we going to see it through?

Is Hamas ultimately dislodgeable? And are we going to achieve it in your estimation? That's a tough one, Haviv. Because the Israeli society decides whether they continue and are willing to pay the price. I think there's a heavy price still to be paid to actually defeat Hamas. Democracies, the society decides that. Not the military, not the politicians, the society, and the Knesset reconvene soon. The society decides that.

Am I optimistic for Israel 100%? What Israel has achieved since October 7th is unthinkable. much like it was, you know, after the Yon Kippur War and others, the Ring of Fire, Hezbollah status, the Lebanese army moving against Hezbollah, Syria, Syria, Syria, Syria, Syria, I'm very optimistic for Israel. Other people are saying that Israel is doing detrimental harm to its national security and continuing to not surrender to Hamas. I disagree holistically against that. I'm actually optimistic, but in the actual final things that need to be done, the taking of the sanctuaries from Hamas, the getting a day after plan once that happens, I have apprehensions because it's very complex at that point for the society in whole.

Thank you so much. I'll add a sentence from me. I don't want to blame you for it. our government, if it had focused on an information provision to the Israeli population, would have more resilience among the Israelis to see it through a great many. I mean, most of the protesters against the government are for a ceasefire deal, a permanent total ceasefire that ends the war, brings back hostages as many as are available as Hamas will let go, but ends the war.

Most of those protesters in Israeli society say they don't trust, it's not that they don't want Hamas defeated, They don't trust the government to be doing that or to be able to do that or not to be politicking. I don't think Netanyahu is extending the war out of sheer politics. But I respect people who do come to that conclusion because I think that there that has been the same information failure as well. There's just months without interviews. I mean, just not explaining to Israelis what's happening. So that, again, is not your critique. That's my critique.

Israelis do need to be shored up as well. One of the things we saw with Winston Churchill in World War II that Nizeniao likes to compare. all to is that he constantly was telling the British what was happening to them. Even if we lose this, know that this is why we're fighting the thing that we might lose. So thank you so much, John Spencer. You've cleared up a lot, and I really appreciate you coming on once again. Thank you, my friend.