The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 454. Urban Warfare, Civilian Casualty, & Human Shields | John Spencer

Episode Date: June 10, 2024

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson sits down with urban warfare expert and scholar John Spencer. They discuss the ongoing war in Israel, the ideology of Hamas, their capture of western universities, the complexity of the tunnel system beneath Gaza, the underlying roots of anti-Semitism, and the reality of war in the mess of politics. John Spencer is an award-winning scholar, professor, author, combat veteran, national security and military analyst, and internationally recognized expert and advisor on urban warfare, military strategy, tactics, and other related topics. Considered one of the world’s leading experts on urban warfare, he served as an advisor to the top four-star general and other senior leaders in the U.S. Army as part of strategic research groups from the Pentagon to the United States Military Academy. This episode was recorded on June 4th, 2024 Dr. Peterson's extensive catalog is available now on DailyWire+: https://bit.ly/3KrWbS8 ALL LINKS: https://linktr.ee/drjordanbpeterson  - Links - For John Spencer:On X https://twitter.com/SpencerGuard?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor Website https://www.johnspenceronline.com/ Understanding Urban Warfare (Book) https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Urban-Warfare-Liam-Collins/dp/1912440350 The Mini-Manual for the Urban Defender (Online guidebook) https://www.johnspenceronline.com/mini-manual-urbandefender Urban Warfare Project (Podcast) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/urban-warfare-project/id1490714950 

Hello everybody. I have the opportunity today to talk to John Spencer and we talk about urban warfare. Now John had a long military career as an on the ground infantryman, both as a regular serviceman and as an officer and in combat in both positions. So, and then he came to develop an academic career where he focused specifically on the complexities of urban warfare.

And that was actually a relatively newly developed field because most wars in the past haven't been fought in an urban environment, but the planet has radically urbanized. And so it was necessary for a new discipline to be developed to concentrate on that. That happened to be particularly relevant at the moment because the conflict between Israel and Hamas

is essentially a conflict of urban warfare. Now, there are other elements to it as well, which we also discuss, the public relations element. So, the conversation focuses primarily on Gaza and Israel and what the Israelis are attempting to accomplish and what the barriers are there and the nature of urban warfare, the complexities of urban warfare, and the strictures and opportunities that the Israelis have as a consequence of the October 7th events.

So I found the conversation extremely enlightening and I hope that you'll concur. So welcome. All right, well, we might as well dive right in. So we're going to talk a fair bit today about the state of the world in general with regard to all the wars that are currently raging, but I think we might as well zero in on urban warfare as such. That's your particular area of expertise.

So maybe we can start just, if you just outline for everybody watching and listening what why why is urban warfare your specialty and what does that mean exactly? Well as an academic I think you understand I fell into an area where nobody was doing research on it so that's why urban warfare became my specialty. I spent 25 years in the army and of course had my own urban warfare experiences. I was part of the invasion into Iraq and I spent 25 years in the Army, and of course, I had my own urban warfare experiences. I was part of the invasion into Iraq, and I went back and during the height of the violence, basically the sectarian violence.

But in around 2014, I became an academic looking at megacities, really any city bigger than 10 million for the four star of the Army, who said, look at something that we're not thinking about right now. So for over a year, I looked at only megacities, the four star of the army who said, look at something that we're not thinking about right now. So for over a year, I looked at only megacities and could you accomplish a military mission in there? Then I moved to West Point, I was teaching strategy, full breadth of military history,

to military theories, to different challenges or changes in the character of warfare. But I also stood up a research center that I now work for, the Modern War Institute, which was, we also saw a gap in people understanding the wars that are going on now. Historians cover wars that happened in the past, and they're really rigorous about how they do that. And embedded journalists kind of covered modern wars, but really like an actual study of what's going on now,

there was a gap. So we created the Modern War Institute, and I started writing about urban warfare, and it went viral. So like an academic, it's just like a dream come true. Like, what do you mean there's an area that nobody is studying? In urban warfare, as I dug into even the institutional

approach, the militaries don't study urban warfare, because in our doctrine for years, we've been writing avoid and bypass at all times. Don't do it. Right. Even this dead Chinese general that never existed, Sun Tzu said, the worst thing you can do is attack a besieged city

because it's been the fact. And there's a huge history of war, right? And there's a huge history of fighting for cities, but not in cities. That started to change really in the 21st century where militaries got smaller. The advancements in technologies made it—doesn't make sense to stand out in the open as a military, even if you're a big military. The urban areas with the urbanization of the world, population growth, the size of peoples and militaries, the rise of non-state actors, all war moved into cities.

And arguably, even on state-on-state warfare, like today we see Russia and Ukraine, the decisive battles. The battles actually determine the future of the wars are happening in the urban areas. Urban areas have always been the prize, the object, the capital city, the economic engine of nations. But militaries have not wanted to fight in cities for all the reasons I don't want to fight in cities today. Oh, and okay, so a couple of things there.

So one of the things you pointed out in your 2022 book was that in the 1950s, there were 80 cities in the world with populations of more than a million, and now there's more than 500. So that is an unbelievably radical change. And the cities are also much, much bigger. And so is that part of the explanation for why there was no specific study of urban warfare until 2014? I mean, that's kind of shocking. And so is it merely the consequence of the fact that the world is urbanized so much that no one was paying attention to this? Is it the fact that maybe people didn't want to pay attention to it

because fighting in cities is such a complicated affair? What accounts for that? All of it. It really becomes, you know, as I was working for a four-star general in charge of the entire U.S. Army over a million men in force, I understood that the military is also institutions with cultures. So there actually was an office a long time ago that studied urban operations. And because of

institutional change, there was a decision made like, well, we don't need that office anymore. Absolutely. Wow. That's unbelievable. It is. And there's been many recommendations to include congressional recommendations like you should have a center, an academic program. I mean, there is a jungle, at one time, a jungle warfare center, arctic warfare center, desert warfare center, never an urban warfare center.

It is the war, the battle that nobody wants. Right. Even though it's the war and the battle, think of any war ever where the urban hasn't been the deciding factor. Yes, one of the reasons we have urban warfare is like, you know, ancient siege warfare. You sent your army forward of your castle to destroy the other army that's approaching rather than go into siege warfare because that doesn't end well for both sides.

There's a long-term cognitive kind of historical reason for that. Then some of it's also cultures don't like change. And militaries, to include those that lead the military, want to envision a future war of army against army. Right, right. What do they say? The military is always 100% prepared to fight the last war. Yeah. One of my mentors- Previous war. They do. 100% prepared to fight the last war. Yeah, one of my mentors...

The previous war. They do, they say generals always fight the last war. One of my mentors say that's not even true. The military doesn't want to fight the war they're comfortable with. Yeah, yeah, right. And to imagine that war. That's right. Okay, now you said too that it's particularly dangerous for modern armies to be out in the open... That's right.

...as a consequence of technological transformation. Okay, so one of the things that I've noticed, and I don't know how accurate this is, but I've been, like I like to think about how things can go catastrophically wrong. Like to, I'm prone to, and it seems to me that as military equipment gets larger and larger and more expensive, that it's very much in the interest of the people who would be fighting such gigantic machines to produce very small and very inexpensive means of bringing those things down.

And so we have drones now, obviously, and they're extremely inexpensive and easy to pilot. And so you said that it's very hard on armies to be out in the open. Okay, so what does that mean exactly? Why is it hard on armies to be out in the open. Okay, so what does that mean exactly? Why is it hard for them to be out in the open and how potentially devastating is that? And I guess maybe I'm curious about how that is it the Houthis that are wreaking havoc on shipping in the Middle East? Yes. Right. Well, they seem to me to be the emergence of the kind of warfare that might be successful against giant equipment.

And so can we talk about that a little bit? What is it about being out in the open? And how has warfare shifted because of extremely new technology? Yeah. So what we say in teaching strategies, that's the character of warfare is always changing. The weapons, the technologies, the tactics, the nature of war

never changes. It's human. It's for political objectives, it's enduring. That aspect of the evolution of aerial platforms, from balloons that were literally in the 1800s in wars to drone warfare today, is an evolution of that air power environment. This is why I found myself in a place called

Nagar-Nakarabakh in 2021. In 2020, there's a massive war between Azerbaijan and Armenia over this area called Nagar-Nakarabakh in 2021. In 2020, there's a massive war between Azerbaijan and Armenia over this area called Nagarabakh. And the use of drones, to include with Israeli drones that the Azerbaijanis has, they wreak havoc against an older military standing in the open. So I went there because everybody said that's the future. That was the future of drone warfare. When actually the war came to an end, a decisive end over one city called Susha, which 400 special forces climbed the cliff and infiltrated the city. All these other things were a factor in that, the drone technology, the ability to

see your enemy, if you can see them, you can kill them, all that. But that urban train, again, because it was the objective, became one of the critical factors. So, yes, the evolution of technologies matters on where war happens, who has power, who doesn't. I mean, from the evolution of the nuclear weapon and the ideology of or the thoughts about a tackling nuclear weapon, which was meant to destroy a military in the open. And that's kind of gone as the nuclear deterrence and all that has evolved not to be a thing anymore. Now it's for national defense survival kind of acceptable.

There's so many aspects to this and why we don't, we understudy this aspect of strategy. How did the tools impact the political decisions or the actual where combat happens? And this is why I get to study urban warfare because one, nobody was studying it. Two, there's also the evolution of it migrating into cities as all these people without the weapons. Like who's going to stand toe to toe with the state actor like the United States, Russia, China? Nobody, but lots of people still want power.

They still want all the different things that people fight wars for. And as Thucydides said a long time a long time ago, that hasn't changed. But these power structures, so why wouldn't, if you pull a military into an urban area, it's called the great equalizer. You can take away its power. You can force them into places they don't want to go. You can break apart.

You can make their aerial platforms less effective. You can make their weapons less effective. You have ready-made defensive positions in buildings that you would never have anywhere else on the planet. So that's a pronounced advantage for the defender. Absolutely. A 15 to 1 advantage, depending on how you calculate combat power. And if you get there first, even some of, so one of my studies is, I found out there's a lot of urban legends about urban warfare. Like things that have happened in the past, we as a kind of human civilization, we remember what people write about history, not necessarily what happened.

So I'm going back and looking at all the urban battles, working my way back, like what actually happened there? And a lot of them are actually meeting engagements, like the Battle of Stalingrad. Like nobody was in Stalingrad defending it, really. They hadn't prepared defenses, but the terrain made it be this massive political battle that made no sense.

Same thing in Ukraine and Bakhmut. But if somebody is actually in an urban area and prepares it, let's talk like in Gaza, for 15 years prepares it, I can defend it against the world's biggest military for a certain amount of time. Defenders usually lose in urban terrain. But war is not about destroying the other military. That never was the objective of Hamas.

It's about that political strategy and time. And if I can get into an urban area, this is why I wrote a book for Ukraine in 2022. I wrote a little handbook based on all that I had learned about urban warfare, and it went viral. It was just about how do you hold an urban area for some amount of time so that the situation can change? And it went viral because there's this giant gap of knowledge, even though it's there, because there's nobody who's studying it. Okay. So let's talk about Gaza, because that's almost entirely urban warfare?

Yes. Okay. And so you said that the defenders have a 15 to one advantage. So what's your assessment of the situation? I 15 to one advantage. So what's going on in Gaza? What's your assessment of the situation? I don't mean politically, I mean militarily. Are the Israelis successful in their venture and how are they conducting the war in your estimation?

Like I know so little about the actuality of the situation on the ground that it's, well, any information is useful. So how do you conduct? I don't even have the foggiest idea how you'd go about conducting an urban battle. Sure. One is I've written things

because I've studied the history of this. When I tell people that nobody has faced the challenge that Israel faced in Gaza, it's not from an opinion, it's from an analytical statement of the size of the military. So it's a 40,000 defending force that had 15 years to prepare an urban defense, which included 400 miles of tunnels ranging from 15 feet to 200 feet underground.

And the reason it kept going deeper underground, if you know, if you've ever studied Israel, is because Israel developed weapons technology that could hit farther underground. So Hamas just kept going deeper underground. So now they're at a range in many places where no military ammunition can reach. And unique to Hamas, like everybody has tunnels.

I wrote in my little book for Ukraine, like start digging. Because if you're underground, you can negate whether being observed or hit. But unique to the world, there's 400 miles in Gaza built solely underneath urban civilian structures. Homes, hospitals, schools, mosques. For the sole reason to use this thing called lawfare, which is when there's a history of war. As a matter of fact, one of my mentors, Colin Gray says, the evolution of war, most efforts to limit the brutality of war have actually caused

more brutality. Okay. Because when you like the, you know, the evolution of laws of war, which I've had to study as well, because in urban combat is where the laws of war most apply. Because after World War II, the Geneva Conventions, we said never again were we going to try to punish the civilians to get their political government to give up fighting. Because war is a contest of will. It's not about destroying the other military, really. It's about convincing the military to give up fighting, because war is a contest of will. It's not about destroying the other military, really. It's about convincing the military to give up, or the political government to give up.

Or convincing the civilian population to overthrow it. Right. But we said, as a globe, those who follow the law of war, we wouldn't do that anymore. We wouldn't carpet bomb Tokyo and kill 300,000. We wouldn't do Dresden. We wouldn't do these things. You have to target only military targets.

So in the urban area, that's where the most constraint on the use of force. Again, why a military wouldn't want to go into urban areas. I can't do whatever I want onto the other military because he's intermixed between protected objects and protected populations. Yeah. So especially if you're not a law of war following

organization, you want to pull that military in there. In Gaza, though, Hamas not only built 400 miles of tunnels, but it built underneath all these structures, and they weaponized the law of war. This is why every hospital in Gaza, Hamas has been found in it, because hospitals are protected places, the staff. So they're hiding within the law, fundamentally. Some people call it a human shield.

Again, what unique to the challenge that the idea faced on October 8th was not a combatant, although they are a terrorist organization, but it's an army. It's a power, a political structure with a vast army who has a human sacrifice strategy. And in my history, my study of war, I've never found that. Okay, so explain the human sacrifice strategy. Yeah, human, well, I'll explain human shields. Human shield strategy means that you put your people in front of you so the other military can attack you.

So they'll restrain themselves. And the same thing if you use protected buildings like mosques, hospitals, schools, that's more of Human Shield strategy. As in, you know that that other force can't directly attack you without actually going through the laws of war on notifications and all these things. Right. And that means that they'll lose the public relations battle, let's say.

I mean, one of the things I thought when this conflict started was that really all that the Palestinians, the Hamas, Hamas needed to do in Iran, let's say, behind it all was hold out long enough to let the Israelis obtain a victory at a cost that was too great on the human relations front. Right? It's that as Israel's victory mounts and the human cost of that is broadcast, that would mean defeat for the Israelis on the public relations front. And my suspicions were that, I don't know what you think about this hypothesis,

but my sense was that Iran prodded the Palestinians into the October 7th attack so that they could undermine the Abraham Accords. And so they provoked the Israelis into the response that we've seen, hoping that that would turn certainly the Islamic, the Arab world viciously against the Abraham Accords and cause the West and Iran's

enemies undue trouble. And so far the Abraham Accords have held, but we've seen the consequences of the public relations battle that's been produced as a result of Israel's foray into Gaza. So is that in accordance in any way with your understanding of the situation? Absolutely. I mean, this is- Okay, so that is what you think is happening. Absolutely. So I-

Why are we so stupidly taken in by the Iranian maneuvers then? Because it seemed obvious to me right from the beginning that that was the strategy. So why do you think it is, for example, that there's so much noise and protest on the universities that's essentially in favor, really fundamentally in favor of what the Iranians are doing? Why is that succeeding? Because our world's greatest academic institutions are creating the dumbest people.

Yeah, well, who can't critically okay. You can't critically think. You can't critically think of like literally just the get your facts straight on what you did as you are aggrieved by or that you're so opinionated by. Well, Kamani himself had tweeted out two days ago his thanks to American universities for providing him with the support that they provided. Or even if you say free Palestine from what? Yeah, the river to the sea.

From the river to the sea. I study strategy, right? So I try to stay out of politics, although war is the pursuit of political objectives. What you just stated with Iran's direct funding, training, and direction to its proxies, which include, doesn't matter what their religion is, Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, Iraq, Shia. Like these are all known facts, and there is an element of proxy warfare, which is within the global international order of a thing.

Proxy warfare, it's a thing. Now, Iran being unique in history as the world's global exporter of terrorism. I lost soldiers in Iraq, two Iranian forces crossing into Iraq, training Iraq, Shia militias to attack the United States. But that was known. But in this sense, I can tell you that that's a part of the

strategy, of course, of what happened on October 7. But from a military strategy, what you briefed as well is Hamas's attack on October 7, while I walked that ground and understand it as an invasion, not a terrorist attack, it was an invasion of Israel with the intention to go as far north as they could to activate all the West Bank, to activate Hezbollah, and to really do a large scale attack.

I see. Oh, I see. So it was part of a much broader plan. Why didn't that work? Hundreds of Israelis, many of them without even a weapons, standing in the door, standing in what I would call the hot gates. I mean, there's so many moments that I walked that ground in southern Israel where just an off-duty named police person in a vehicle dying at a critical point which has slowed that advance down. There's one just so ordinary Israelis. Many of them ordinary Israeli or off-duty. Oh yeah. Who you know 70 year old men who used to serve in the military heading south to stand in the door to prevent them from heading towards Tel Aviv, to Jerusalem, to other places. But their maps actually said it.

Hamas maps said where they were headed. And they just didn't get there because of many situations, and I hope those stories get out, and I could tell you many of them, where they ran into an Israeli who was willing to fight for their nation, which is a real big part of war as well. Right. So they had, the Israelis had a population that was ready at the individual level to protect the country. So they weren't defending, they weren't depending only on their military to stop this invasion. There's lots to that. As in, absolutely, you know, a nation is built with this security apparatus, both the actual military whose job is to defend the nation, and then you

have the security forces. There is a cultural aspect of living in Israel where you've been attacked so many times that you have to be ready, whether it is the bomb shelter that you have to jump into, or the actual how many times Israel has, as a a nation has had to fight back five nations at one time. I understand that history and I've walked much of that ground. That happened again. So does that imply in some way that one

of the strategic necessities when urban warfare is a likelihood is that the general population itself needs to be prepared to fight, trained and prepared to fight. This is again going back to my injecting myself into the Ukraine war in a unique way through Twitter. I made a seven thread tweet on February 26th of 2022, two days after the invasion, as a guy who studied urban warfare for 20 years, if I was standing in a city in Ukraine, this is what I would do. Because most civilians don't know how to resist,

even if they have the will to resist. But this is why, again, the history of war and why we can look at what Israel has done in Gaza under the political constraints and why it has look at what Israel has done in Gaza under the political constraints and why it has done the things it's done, the United States wouldn't have done it that way. The whole purpose of war is to rapidly overwhelm your enemy, not destroy them all, so they lose that will to fight. So like Russia's invasion of Kiev, the whole point was to rush it, get into the center, take out the government, raise the Russian flag, war's over.

But the people resisted because they had the will. They didn't have the way. So yes, it's called total defense. And it's way back in European history. All the European countries had this concept of, if invaded, we're all going to stand up. The Finnish gun culture, the Polish, this idea that you're going to resist, defend. Some people call it resistance, I

call it total defense. It is a big part of actual having a society, especially if you have somebody, and this again, with no military is faced in modern history, where Gaza is two miles from Israel and is attacking, that proximity to an existential threat is real, is clear, if not evidenced by October 7th, which actually factors into the law of war like proportionality. This is one of the terms that started to get misused on October 8th. This number of Israelis died, so you can only proportionally kill that many. That's not the way the law of war works.

The law of war says you can respond with the appropriate force proportionally to achieve the goal like- Right, so that's minimal necessary force in the sense like the common law doctrine. Absolutely. So you shouldn't use any more force than necessary to achieve your valid military aim, which

in Israel's case would have been the elimination of a potential future threat of the same type they faced on October 7th, I presume. A real threat. Yeah. And this is again, so this back to that human sacrifice strategy. But nobody will, to include these kids on college campuses, won't listen to the words that Hamas say. They imagine some aggrieved, and I know you've covered this a lot about that, who's the oppressed

and who's the oppressor. You won't take the organization's words and actions for what they are. So a human sacrifice strategy that nobody has done, Nazis, Japanese, ISIS, where they state and act in a way that they say they need as many of their population, their population to die as possible to achieve their political goal of the war.

Okay, so it seems to me that there would be two tiers to that then, so tell me if I've got this wrong. I mean, my sense with regards to the Palestinians in general, and this is especially true in Iran, is that the Iranian powers that be would use all the Palestinians as sacrificial victims at any moment if they could provide an effective thorn in Israel's side and in the side of the West.

And then my sense is too that the Hamas leadership, given its history, is sufficiently corrupt and under corrupt financially and economically and under the sway of Iran as well, so that it has no qualms whatsoever about using its citizens as cannon fodder for its designs on Israel in the West. Is there anything, is that an accurate analysis? I think so. I mean, Iran's willingness to sacrifice all its proxies, that's pretty rational. Well, why wouldn't they? I mean, apart from what you might regard as humanitarian concerns, which I don't really think apply in the current situation in the least.

Take them for their words. Iran's strategy, they call Israel the little Satan, America the great Satan. And they want to destroy both. Through the use of this exporting of terrorism and the pursuit of a nuclear weapon. Yeah, okay, fine. Yeah, right, well that seems to be exactly what's happening. But the difference is Hamas, I don't think you can classify it as a cannon fodder.

Again, listen to the words they say. They need, because they believe in their ideology that martyrdom is the path. So they're willing to martyr all of their population to achieve their political goal. Not to achieve some geographic ideal of a new place. Their goal stated and written is the destruction of Israel and the death of all Jews in the world.

And their path to that is the death of their population that they act. OK, so you're saying that it isn't only that the civilians are being manipulated by the Hamas leadership in Iran, but that they're participating in this as a consequence of the fundamental doctrine of Hamas. Correct. Right, okay, so then I guess my question would be, to what degree are the Palestinian citizens, especially the younger ones, and I suppose this is partly what the compassionate people on the university campuses are getting at.

I mean, if you're 15, 16 years old, and you've been bombarded by Iranian propaganda since you were even younger than that, into believing that your best pathway forward is martyrdom, then to what degree can you be held responsible for the fact that you believe it? And so, I mean, I have the same conundrum, for example, with regards to the protesters on American campuses. I mean, a lot of these kids have been propagandized throughout high school into this victim victimizer narrative, and

they buy it completely. And it's very unfortunate. And I think that they're very dangerous in consequence. But I've seen the consequences of that propaganda among young people. It's very demoralizing, and it's also extremely effective. We did a study in 2016 looking at the predictors of support for politically correct authoritarianism, which is very relevant with regards to what's happening

on the campus. And one of the things we found was that even having had one politically correct course at any time in your life was a significant predictor of sympathy with politically correct authoritarian views. Now, there were other predictors. Not being very bright was one of them, right? So low verbal IQ, while that's relevant, you know,

low verbal IQ is a good predictor, comparatively speaking, and so was being female and having a feminine temperament. And the fourth best predictor was ever having been propagandized. And so how much of the doctrine that's, I know maybe I'm taking you out of your area of specialty here, you know, because'm taking you out of your area of specialty here, you know, because this is a more political or even a theological question, but how much

of the propaganda story that's driving the Palestinian civilian cooperation with Hamas do you think is a consequence of planned propagandization at the hands of the Iranians and how much, a lot. Oh yeah. I mean, this is the problem with the ramifications of this war, right? Because it would be a proven Iranian strategy. Spend decades radicalizing culture from primary school on the books, the payment structure, the pay for slave program of the Palestinian Authority. All those are multi-decade approaches to radicalize a population to achieve your

political goals. So absolutely that's there. From me, as my expertise though, this is where I think we will definitely reach that point in the war against Hamas and Gaza, is this how do you defeat an ideology? That's for sure. Right. I work in the world of strategy and war. Yeah. But I am fighting on a daily basis of now,

people who have spent their PhDs in counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, and saying that you're creating more enemy or more terrorists than you're killing. Right, right. You're radicalizing. Because of the military, because of the military, right. Right, so it's a, even if there's a short-term victory, that doesn't mean that you're ensuring

the long-term victory, quite the contrary. Right. Right, and do you think that's happening in Gaza? It's bullocks. It's a fallacy of thinking. And I think it's anti-intellectual. OK, explain why. That's like saying you cannot remove Hitler

and the Nazi regime or dismantle its military, because you will further radicalize the German population who believe in the Nazi ideology. OK, well, you can imagine a circumstance under which that might occur, but the one that you just laid out obviously didn't occur. Quite the contrary, the defeat of the Nazi regime really meant all things considered, the defeat of the Nazi ideology. Okay, so let's go back to Hamas.

What do you think the Israeli strategy is at the moment? How is that playing out? Are they being successful? Do you think it's a good strategy? And do you think it has a chance at defeating this ideology? I mean, if it's fostered by Iran, okay, I haven't been able to envision what a pathway to victory for the Israelis looks like.

So tell me what you think about that. So I actually got to go visit. I've been into Gaza twice. In December in Hamas tunnels and in February with the IDF in Khan Unis, I interviewed the prime minister. I'm like, what are your strategic goals you gave to the military? I interviewed the head of the IDF, multiple subordinate commanders. The objectives for Israel, the path to victory,

which is always hard to define in war, right? Right, right. Now at this point we're gonna- A tricky problem. There's already people who have said it's a strategic failure for Israel. Already, and the war's not even known. Yeah.

But it is very clear what was the objectives, number one, bringing the hostages home. So of the 240 hostages taken on October 7th, it's a clear war goal to bring them home. And Israel has brought over half of them home. There's 124 left in Gaza. The other one was to remove Hamas from power

and dismantle its military capability. Right, okay, but then the question is who exactly is Hamas? How do you distinguish them from the civilians? And what are the, so you said you can respond proportionately so you're going to remove Hamas's military capacity, but if Hamas is in some ways indistinguishable from the Palestinian civilian population,

then how do you know when you've won, right? In a manner that's gonna to matter in the future. I love this. I love this specificity that most people don't ask. How do you distinguish in a situation like this where Hamas is using human sacrifice, wearing civilians, there's not a single Hamas military building in Gaza? Right, right. Not one. So how do you move forward? I actually want the laws of war appealed. There's actually very clear guidance,

even with a non-state actor not wearing a uniform, what classifies the combatant or non-combatant, or as a person partaking in the hostilities. As in, you're shooting at the IDF. You're a combatant. Right, right. That seems clear. Now, who's in Hamas?

This is actually my visit to the IDF. They have a board, like walls, of every member of Hamas's military, from brigade commander, battalion commander, company commanders, and either exes for killed and captured as they're breaking apart. The goal of dismantling a military is never, just like we talked about in the beginning, to destroy all of them, to kill every member of Hamas.

It's never been the goal in war. And always after the war, once you remove that power, whether it is the Japanese emperor or Hitler himself, there's still going to be tens of thousands of... You have to reconcile them. You have to do de-radicalization programs. You have to disarm people. Right. Those are all. And that is possible.

It's possible, proven, everything. Right. Worked in Germany, worked in Japan. I can't tell you what that looks like the day after, but I can tell you it will never even begin to work if Hamas stays in power. Yeah. So the path to victory, step one is remove Hamas from power. Step two is remove its military.

So that means targeting those people that are identified in the way that you already described. Targeting enough of them until what? Like who gives up in this situation? Like how would the Israelis know when Hamas is actually being sufficiently defeated? Yeah, so in this case, again, it's measurable. Like, it's literally like measures of effectiveness and measures of performance are pretty clear on how to remove a form from power

is when they're the leadership that is the power, right? Just like when, if Zelensky would have left Ukraine, it would have went a lot differently. Because the leadership is a symbol of the power. And if it gets broken apart, then another power can be put in place. And like now that person is in power. Right.

We bring our powers with us, right? Invasion of Afghanistan, invasion of Iraq. We brought people with us who said that they would be the new power. Right. That's the challenge of the day after. But from the actual objective of the war, Hamas is still in power.

It's not an insurgency. It's not a counter-terrorist campaign. Hamas is a political body ruling Gaza through its now somewhat broken apart units, but it's still there. It's still in power in publicly stating things and negotiating all this stuff. Right. So it's still a recognizable entity. That's right.

Okay. It's not, once it gets to the point where it's not a recognizable entity. That's right. OK. Once it gets to the point where it's not a functioning organization, even from the political apparatus or the military, it's really definable. Militarily, you say you can destroy a military when it can't do its assigned mission, attack or defend. And it can't reconstitute itself. That's pretty easy.

Politically, you could probably apply the same metric. It can't rule in its assigned geographic location. Right now, one of the reasons that you have so many broken apart Hamas members from fighting is because they still think they'll win. Right, so the will hasn't been destroyed. That's right. Why would you give up?

Your leadership's still safe in Southern Gaza. The message is continue to resist until the IDF has stopped. This goes back to your question about, again, military strategy is not that complicated as we want to make it. Yes, defeating an ideology is very complicated. From a military strategy, both sides had a grand strategy. I already told you what Hamas is,

but they also had a military strategy. Ham already told you what Hamas is, but they also had a military strategy. Hamas's military strategy was never to defeat the idea of on the field of battle. It's never been. Like you said, they actually have a strategy that's based on time for the international community, namely the United States, like the United States has in almost every one of Israel's wars,

to stop the Israel saying, look, I know you had the right to self-defense, whether it's the Six-Day War, Yom Kippur War, you name it. Say, I know you had the right to self-defense, but you need to stop. Right, right. So that's hence the protests on American campuses. That's the Hamas strategy working.

Right, right, of course, of course. But this is, but- Not much of that, all right. So after October 7th and the campus protests emerged and very rapidly, how much of that was a consequence of a strategy that was conscious, that was put in place consciously by Iranian actors or proxies in the aftermath of October 7th? And how much of it was spontaneous consequence, let's say, of the victim-victimizer narrative?

Like to what degree has Iran managed to co-opt actors in the West that can organize those sorts of protests? Yeah. All organized, all history learned. I mean, I can take you back to battles in which the United States would stop through that use of social media, Al Jazeera, and others saying they're violating the laws of war, too many civilians are dying,

they're being deprotonated and stopped. But within Israel's context, I mean, I don't want to take away from Yair Yassin, who are sitting in jail for many, many years, thinking of what are the weaknesses of Israel? Its reliance on the United States. Its casualty aversion. Israel has stopped wars from a very low number

of IDF casualties, hostages. Of course, I mean, a nation that small, they've held a single guy for years and gotten thousands of prisoners in exchange, Hamas has. So yes, Iran in this larger picture of the geopolitical situation. Okay, so that's why you made reference earlier to this idea that the attempts to reduce brutality can make it worse, right? Because when you change the rules, you open up new strategic possibilities that are put in place in consequence of being able to manipulate the rules. This is the Western, we call it the liberal dilemma.

Yeah, right. And the enemies of Western societies have learned that war is always a contest of will of three populations. The military's fighting, of course. The politicians who are ordering the military to fight, but their populations. We lost the Vietnam War, not because of the field of battle, of course, because the American population said, we don't see the interest in this, and the conchite effect. So the actual, that social media effect

was there in the Vietnam War. So it's the context of these three wills that have led to this point, absolutely. But that weakness has also led to an aversion. So this is my, again, because I've been in this field with the United Nations, and Human Rights Watch, and human rights groups who have risen in their vocal power to say, that's not okay, whatever it is.

So now that's weaponized. That's why you have Gaza. That's why you have 400 miles of tunnels underneath civilians. That's why you have every hospital serving as a military purpose. Well, it's also why the Iranian PSIOP agents, let's say, can twist the moral force of the West to their own advantage. It's why you have urban warfare. Okay, expand on that. If I, as we've been talking, if I'm a non-state actor or a great, my actual long strategy

is to defeat you. I'm not trying to defeat you, I'm trying to turn your population against you. So I pull you into an urban area, show you photos of dead children. And you will stop your government and force your government to do things that they don't even want. And this has been like an example. Have you heard of the 2,000 pound bomb? Is it the bunker buster?

Yeah. How awful it is to use in urban warfare. No, I don't know about that. So one of the many criticism against the IDF's operations in Gaza has been the use of bombs. Yeah. Matter of fact, there's a misnomer that if you bomb less, there'll be less civilian casualties. We can talk about it if you want.

But one of the biggest things to include the US administration, because of this belief of the use of one bomb called the 2,000 pound bomb, is that they've used so many of them that nobody else would have done that, that Israel is purposely trying to cause destruction. Okay, yeah. It's a vilification of one. Right, right. That's an effective communication strategy, right?

Because it sounds monstrous, a 2,000 pound bomb, and okay, I can see how that would work effectively. And then you found a bunch of human rights groups which can tell you how much, what size the explosion is, how much concrete it, then you find different people who say, well, we didn't use that many of those in the last 30 years and Israel's used this many. We used over 5,000 2,000 pound bombs in the one month of the invasion of Iraq.

You know why? Because there were military complexes underneath buildings. Right, right, right. So you have to go deep. A 2,000 pound bomb only goes 50 feet underground. A bunker buster. Right, right. And I just told you, I was in 150 feet underground in a Hamas tunnel in December.

But all the criticism of the 2,000 pound bomb and Israel's use against a combatant in underground structure says, you know, it's just, you know, a point that they would use this tool in war. Right. I think it puts US national security at risk. So when next time when you send my brothers and sisters or our military into war, you're going to say that they can't use a 2000 pound bomb against an enemy underneath certain buildings or in a bunker. Right. That's really where we're gone. say that they can't use a 2000 pound bomb against an enemy underneath certain buildings or in a bunker. That's really where we're going. But it's the evolution of this hitting at the liberal democracy or the liberal dilemma to say that you

can find a different way. Yeah, yeah, got it. OK, so tell me what Israel is doing and has done. So they're fighting urban warfare, you said with a 15 to one disadvantage fundamentally. Now my understanding is that the IDF is doing what it can do to minimize non-combatant targets. Do you believe that that's the case?

I've written with evidence that Israel is doing more to prevent civilian casualties than any military has done in the history of war. OK, OK, OK. So you think that's valid. So what sort of things do they do to make that a reality? Sure. And this is why I went back in February. Like, I wanted to see it for myself.

Not just the access to information that everybody else has. I wanted to ask them, like, how are you doing this? Yeah. Given the complexity of a combatant who uses the human sacrifice strategy. Yeah, right. So the number one thing that people have done, although again, the strategy to win wars is to do it rapidly.

Right. And is that also because opposition to the war mounts as it's protracted? Because war is politics. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So the more dragged out it is protracted. Whereas politics. Yeah, absolutely. So the more dragged out it is, the more dragged out of victory, the more costly it is on the public relations side.

That's right. Because the losers start to look like victims. Or if they have, I mean, this is Ukraine had to hold for a while. It had to slow Russia down from achieving an overwhelming coup d'etat, which is overthrow the government and the fight's over. Right, right. So it's always to get in there and rapidly achieve your goals. Yeah.

If you can slow the army down, then all these other political elements set. Sure. What Israel did though, was implemented things to prevent civilian harm. After October 7th, they waited three weeks before they entered Gaza. Right. They did evacuation. That is the overwhelming number one thing that any military has ever done in the history of war to prevent civilian harm is evacuate cities. Although you... Well, and that's a very strange thing in this situation because the city is the target.

This was the misnomer too that I saw that Gaza is the densest place on earth. I saw that on October 8th. And I studied cities for a living. It's not even in the top 100. It has 10 massive cities, a total of 24 cities, that are very dense. But there's also, it's not one continuous urban area. But you are right that in any war I've studied, there's never been a population trapped in the combat area. But you are right that in any war I've studied, there's never been a population

trapped in the combat area. Although in the 2016-17 Battle of Mosul, the city of a million, the Iraqi government told the civilians to stay in the city, 850,000 of them, to stay in the city during the battle because they didn't have a place for them to go. Eventually they told them to go, but because of Egypt, the Palestinian people of Gaza had nowhere to go. Right. So Israel- Okay, explain that. Why did the Palestinians have no place to go

because of Egypt? And there's a long history there. To include, there's a city, Ra'a, that used to be on both sides. And that Egypt, that history escapes our campuses. Yeah, yeah, you might say that, yeah. That Egypt destroyed the homes of 100,000 people on their side and evacuated all those people

because there were a bunch of smuggling tunnels going in between and terrorism on their side. Right. They don't want a radicalized population causing political instability. Right, right. Well, it is the case, if I've got this right, that the Arab world in general has

refused to take Palestinian refugees in any great numbers. That is the case. And this is the reason, the reason that you just described. Depending on what nation you're talking about, absolutely. Some say it's because they don't want to force displacement. So they use that as an excuse. But for Egypt, it's very clear. They share the border with Gaza. It would be very easy for them to open that side up of the Sinai. And these kids need to

look it on the map. I mean, where Egypt is in this giant desert called the Sinai, there makes, it is not rational to say that Egypt couldn't have opened their side up, created a humanitarian zone outside of the combat area. It's just not rational. So where did the Palestinian refugees that Israel allowed to escape go? They went to a place that Israel established, and nobody has asked this question. Why did Israel create the Al-Mawasi humanitarian zone on the southwestern edge of Gaza? Right, I haven't even heard of that.

Yeah, that's the giant, over a million people, humanitarian tent zone that Israel designated in October for all the displaced people to go. Because it's the one area they knew Hamas did not have immense defensive positions set up, like tunnels. I see, I see, I see. So how did Israel ensure that when all the refugees went to this zone that hadn't been militarized,

let's say by Hamas, that it wouldn't just be as infiltrated by Hamas as Gaza itself is? So how do they know that the refugees are refugees and not military combatants? How? It's a good question. I know you have some of them identified,? Great. It's a good question. I mean, I know you have some of them identified, but OK. It's a good question.

So initially, little control. Yeah, right. OK, because it was quick. Yeah. Israel did move forward and split Gaza in half, along with what's called the Wadi Gaza. This is a river that splits Gaza almost in half. It's 25 miles, but they split in half.

850,000, which is actually an effective metric of evacuations. So the world said you can't do it. I don't know if you remember that. When Israel announced evacuations to protect civilian life before they moved in to get their hostages and destroy Hamas, the world said you can't do that.

You can't evacuate a million people. That literally was the statement from the United Nations and others. You can't do that. Israel did it and successfully evacuated 850,000 below that. But you're right. Many Hamas leadership and hostages

were moved during that time, as Israel was allowing for the protection of civilians, rather than, like other militaries, invading a territory, do it with overwhelming force to achieve your goals quickly. Quickly. Quickly. Right, right. right, right, right. So they took the risk of the hit on the public relations side.

Because they know from their own history that they have to keep international will, even after October 7th, international will and the United States who started making recommendations on day one of what Israel could or couldn't do. Right, right. Like Israel wanted to go in with the larger force and there was discussions at the political level, all wars, politics. You can't go in with five

divisions. You have to use four divisions. And now we're in Ra'afah, you can't go in with two divisions. You've got to go in with one division. That's what you saw. But Israel learned. So Israel did, by the time I visited in Khan Yunis, interesting as we go through all the metrics and all the things that Israel has done that no military has done in history, I went in Khan Yunus, interesting as we go through all the metrics and all the things that Israel has done that no military has done in history. I went in with the division commander who talked to me about basically the political atmosphere was that you had to bring the civilian casualties to zero. There's literally what the statements were, which would mean the war needs to stop. So you had a division in Gaza, in Khan Yunis, which is another Hamas strongpoint,

doing operations with the overwhelming backdrop of you can't have this civilian casualty. So they did an example of how they prevented that, basically the migration of Hamas, although it's still inaccurate to say that that migration is not showing Israel is successful. Because dismantling a military means taking away its military capability. So Hamas wasn't moving with its 20,000 rockets. It wasn't moving with its deep buried military weapons production plants in all its weapons supplies. So you still got to get in there and clear that and discover it

And this is why so at least they're disarmed. That's right, even if they're there. Yeah, there's gonna be tens of thousands of Okay radicalized it who didn't go Along with the evacuation on the Palestinian side because they had the option. So now the simple-minded So now the simple minded consequence of what you said, my understanding of that would be that, well, Israel gave the civilian population ample time to clear out and many people did. Okay, so now if Israel goes into Hamas territory,

into the Gaza and there are civilians there that are being killed, like those are people who didn't leave or couldn't leave. Okay, so. Or forced not to leave. Hamas also didn't allow their own population to leave. How much of their own population? It's hard to measure. Any approximation?

I mean, there were 850,000 that did evacuate. So leaves, you know, 250,000, 150,000 still there. Okay, 150,000 still there. 10% still there. Right. But this is, again, because I've studied every urban battle that's ever happened, there's always about 10% that stay.

Aha. Okay, so that's not historically abnormal. But it is abnormal for Hamas to set up checkpoints. To not let people go. To not let people go, to shoot at people trying to leave, to fire from the humanitarian safe route. So this is standard too. You evacuate the cities, create the roads you want them to use.

Hamas would put rockets next to that so they could use media to say Israel is striking the zones that they told people to leave. That's a fact. That's how. Right. Right. I see. Okay. So there's 150,000 people left. Okay. So then Israel moves in. Yep. Okay. So what do they, how do you move in? What does that look like? Building by building, fighting? Like, what does that look like? What's building, fighting? What does that look like? What's that like for the people who are on the ground? Yeah, it starts with, like any military would,

striking known military locations. Okay, so that's airstrikes fundamentally? Yes. Okay, okay. That's standard military operation, to include an urban warfare. If you know there's an enemy bunker, or an enemy headquarters, or an enemy formation, you would always want to strike them as far away as you can, especially if you've done everything to move civilians

out of harm's way possible. Right, right. This is the ideal, like the 2,000 pound bomb you can't use in an urban area, which they're actually saying, it doesn't matter if there's zero civilians there, you can't use that bomb in an urban area. Oh, right. Okay. Well, that's obviously a propaganda maneuver.

So, okay. So, one advantage of clearing the civilians out then would be that there would be, in principle, fewer restrictions on your ability to use air power. So why doesn't, why don't the Hamas forces just move everything that they have into the tunnels? I imagine they did that to some degree. This is why they have 400 miles of tunnels. Right, right. So why have anything available to be bombed? So this is what I face, when I went there in December and interviewed brigade commanders that were fighting there. They would have a two week battle on a single block.

Yeah. Because Hamas wasn't in the buildings. They were underneath running in a... Right. 400 miles in a stretch of... There are layers and webs of tunnels underneath at varying depths. It was so hard to imagine. I've never studied that. We call it the three-dimensional war, but to know, so this is the funny thing about me going into a communists.

I was in communists, a lot less activity, but I was taken to a location where they were searching for a tunnel, and later they found that tunnel. I was standing on top of an uncleared Hamas tunnel on the surface. And that's what the IDF faced every moment, every step they took into Gaza. And then the houses were basically rigged to blow. There were absolutely Hamas left behind.

And this is why northern Gaza was chosen first. It was the military strong point of Hamas, of its battalions with assigned geographic areas to hold with a vast tunnel network of cachees all throughout the urban terrain. Same thing that you would teach somebody to do if they did. Okay, so this whole tunnel network, it was produced over what period of time? At least 15 years. 15 years. But there were some present already while the IDF were there, before they gave up Gaza

and gave it to the Palestinian people. So it was obviously prepared under the assumption that Israel would eventually move in. Yes. Okay. But it wasn't for the purpose, again, their defensive tactics. So they spent 15 years, which is unique in urban warfare, to prepare their terrain for solely military defense, but not to, because defenders usually lose. All they had to do was hold the IDF long enough

for the international community. In the United States. To turn. To turn them off. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, okay. So that dictated the tactics. And they knew that.

Absolutely. It's been the strategy. The tunnels. Okay, okay. I wrote this article. War is a contest of politics. But I wrote the article in November. This is the first war I've studied where the underground is more important than the surface.

Because the Hamas are in the tunnels. The hostages are in the tunnels. The tunnels are the key methodology to achieve the strategy. Sure, sure, sure. How effective has been, how effective has Israel's invasion of Gaza been then if the Hamas terrorists can just retreat to the tunnels and have all the tunnels being identified or does anyone even know that?

Yeah, well, since they knew, since the, and I study underground warfare as well. I was doing underground warfare conferences in Israel in 2018, in Hezbollah tunnels and Hamas tunnels. No, they don't, they don't even know how many tunnels there were. Now the estimate went from 300 miles to 400 miles, but they found tunnels that they couldn't have imagined. Just the size of them, the depth of them.

How effective had they been at finding and destroying? Is it possible to destroy them all? Right. But if they're so dug underneath every structure in Gaza, they're not going to destroy them all. They've had to make critical decisions on which ones to destroy. And there's not enough explosive in the world.

So they've made really tough decisions on which ones they find to destroy and how to destroy it. Mainly because they tried this flooding thing for a little while, which it didn't work. I thought it was a really innovative attempt. It actually worked for Egypt along the Egypt-Gaza border to flood the tunnels because they were made of sand and they kind of collapsed out. But these are billions of dollars, Jordan, used that would have gone to the Palestinian people. Billions of dollars to use to build that would have gone to the Palestinian people. Right.

Billions of dollars to use to build these. And that's aid money? Yeah. Well, and money that they take from, you know, they basically, the market that they drive up the prices and Hamas takes that money. So both direct aid money given to Hamas, but also Hamas's subjugation of its population into poverty involves the population having to pay Hamas's subjugation of its population into poverty involves the population having to pay Hamas.

What about funding from places like Iran, the direct funding for the construction of the tunnels? Is that also part of the strategy? Absolutely. But Iran has helped in many ways. Yeah. But again, what- And what do you make of the knowledge of the international community, let's say the UN, for example,

with regard to the presence of these tunnels? How much of the fact that these tunnels existed has come? Who has it come as a surprise to, and who knew? So this is the idea of who is the United Nations. Yeah, there's a good question. Or who is UNRWA, the United Nations organization in the Palestinian areas? So in Gaza, the UN voice in Gaza is UNRWA.

So we're rational people that have facts and can make deductions off facts. If there are Hamas data centers underneath UNRWA headquarters, or if there's Hamas tunnels underneath UNRWA headquarters, or if there's Hamas tunnels underneath UNRWA facilities, schools, mosques, hospitals. But UNRWA, who has been there for 15 years, says that we did not know about that. To me, that doesn't make logical sense.

Well, it's either a confession of incompetence or malevolence. It's one of the two. Because how could you not know? It's just a confession of incompetence or malevolence. It's one of the two. Because how could you not know? It's just a lie. Of course, you knew. This, it gets the idea of where do we get information from Gaza. So Hamas is the ruling power, has been the ruling

power for 15 years. And you can't work in Gaza, much like the Ba'ath regime in Iraq, unless you're a member of Hamas. And you could not be like a radicalized, martyr, fundamentalist Hamas, but you can bet your dollar you can't say anything without the threat to your life if you don't even believe in the ideology. This gets to our number of civilian casualties,

like the Gaza Health Ministry, which is the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, and that we will believe their word without even questioning to where we have the national leaders of the world parroting the number, which I tell you as a scholar of this, there is no number. There's no way to know how many civilians are dying on a daily basis down to a single digit, period. Or that nobody will acknowledge that the Gaza Health Ministry provides a number to the world that, according to to them includes every death that happens in Gaza, no matter the cause. Doesn't matter if it was a Hamas rocket that landed on a house since 20% of the 13,000 rockets Hamas

has fired have landed in Gaza. Doesn't matter if that death was caused by Hamas. And the Hamas number also includes any reported missing person, whether it's a social media post or a family member saying, I don't know where this person is. That goes on the Hamas's list of dead personnel. But the world just runs with 37,000 Palestinian. Right. And I've seen that number radically adjusted multiple times, which is an indication of its, well, of its

comparative reliability. But this gets to the college kids that, yeah, like just know what the number is. The number is every death that's happened to guys no matter the cost. You know, I've had some friends who've been looking at the social media warfare end of this who are trying to understand what information that college kids who are protesting are getting and why they believe it. And TikTok in particular is flooded with images that suggest that the IDF or barbarians beyond belief

and that the casualty rates are extremely high. And once you click on one of those, then that's all you get in your feed. And that seems to be particularly effective. The use of imagery of injured children, for example, seems to be particularly effective for women. And of course, the majority of the protesters on the Ivy League campuses are women.

And so they're the targets of this particular PsyOP. And so that's another. It's a dream for Russia to have this access to the use minds. Yeah, absolutely. It's Russia, China, and Iran. It's a dream that they had this access in an algorithm that feeds it. You don't have to do the work.

The algorithm feeds it. There's actually a battle in my work in Arabian Warfare history where the United States was defeated because of this. The first battle of Fallujah, I don't know if you remember that, but there were four American contractors that were killed in the city of Fallujah in April of 2004. The US president ordered, because they dismembered American citizens, burned them all and hung

them from the bridge. Oh yes, yep. The US president ordered the Marines to go in and get those responsible for that action. So the Marine Corps, over their objections, launched an operation. Al Jazeera was sitting in the hospital, airing photos of children that had been casualties of the operations and trumping up numbers of civilian casualties, unverifiable. And six days into the battle, the Iraqi governing council, the US allies all threatened to disband if the United States didn't stop its battle.

That was basically an echo to what we have today, where you can defeat a superior power easily through the use of information warfare, the pictures of children. Why did those resonate? I know that's your field of study. That resonates very strongly, to include me. Yeah, of course. I have children? I know that's your field of study. That resonates very strongly to include me. Yeah, of course.

I have children. I don't want to see any children. I've seen children. And this again goes back to the, even these kids won't acknowledge what Hamas is. Well, children are the ultimate victims, right? The ultimate innocent victims. And so if you're playing a victim, victimizer,

ideological game, then obviously pictures of hurt children are incredibly effective weapons in that regard. And of course, if there is a war, there's going to be hurt children. So it's a strategy that's very difficult to counter. That's for sure. But there's an ideology that the IDF would do it perfectly. When I can show you the video of October 7th where Hamas psychopaths, like Jeffrey Dommers, were standing over children making the death moan and laughing over top of them.

I've been in ward and seen children injured and every individual, doesn't matter who he was, is dying in their heart to help that child. So the idea that the IDF would purposely harm a child isn't backed up by evidence. Now, do civilians get caught in between two warring factions? Yes. But despite, going back to our statement, that the IDF have done everything anybody's ever thought of

and created ways that nobody's ever thought of. I mean, they have drones with speakers, going back to drones, that go into enemy territory and announce to the civilian, please leave. This is a combat area. They've used technologies to track every cell phone in an area now, whether it's on or off, to know if there are civilians there.

And they won't even allow the military into that area until a certain population gets out. OK, so all right. So are the Israelis meeting with any success in their military ventures? Are they winning the battle against Hamas, all things considered, do you think? Absolutely. Do you think so? Okay, so what's the evidence for that?

Yeah, the evidence is if you can go by hostages, so half the hostages home. Yeah, okay. Right? There's 124 left in hostages or left in Hamas hands, basically, whether it's a dead body or a living person, so half the hostages home. Yeah, okay. Right, there's 124 left in hostages, or left in Hamas hands, basically whether it's a dead body or a living person, it's really hard to tell. How many of them were freed alive?

Do you know? I don't know what the exact number was, but most of them were freed during that temporary ceasefire where over 100 were released by Hamas. At great military disadvantage to Israel to do that exchange. Most people don't recognize that, like the fact that during that ceasefire Hamas forced civilians to reoccupy places like Khan Yunus.

They increased the population of a city by 300% during that ceasefire so that their human sacrifice strategy would work better. That kind of escaped the national media. Yeah, surprise, surprise. So they hostages. Hamas as a- What do you make of the fact that something like that, for example, escaped the national media?

How is that possible even? I understand some of the foundations for much of the talking points, but most of the world doesn't. They don't know what that number means. They don't know what the details are to that number. They don't question it. Or when you attack a 2,000 pound bomb, they don't know who are the groups.

So part of it's just lack of depth of inquiry, let's say. Or there's a global deficiency of an expertise in this type of warfare. Yes. You said even among the military. Yeah. Right. a global deficiency of an expertise in this type of warfare. Even within the- You said even among the military. Yeah. Right, right. So you'd expect that in spades among

what passes for journalists these days. Right. Where they, of course it's all bad. Like war is hell. War is killing. Right. We've done, we've agreed that we're going to do, not do certain things.

And Israel is following every measurement that we've ever had. Back to their successes of their objective to remove Hamas from power and dismantle its military. Yeah. From a straight analytical perspective, they dismantled Hamas's military to include areas it controls physically. Don't get me into the ideology part. But remove the rockets.

There were 4,000 rockets fired on October 7th, more than had been fired during the entire Second Lebanon War on day one. There has been 13,000 since. Now there are a lot less. Those rocket supplies have been taken away. Now they're still shooting them because they still think they're gonna win from Ra'afah and from right next to the humanitarian zone.

But from the actual measurement of what a military is, its fighters, its supplies, its production capabilities, its tunnels, Israel has been very successful in clearing dense urban terrain very slow, very methodically, despite the constraints of the world. At one point, they had one brigade in Gaza. Because the world said, you'd rather do it a different way.

They had one brigade in Gaza. Now they wanted to finish this quickly. In Ra'afah, with two divisions in the world, the United States, according to reports, said you can't do that. Use one division. But they have been very successful on reducing those military supplies.

Now, who's winning? Are they achieving metrics along that goal to achieve all three of their objectives, to include secure the borders? Because they have also put in many, nobody talks about them, large construction projects, new roads to create a different security environment, a buffer zone, new roads going into Gaza to include the new humanitarian entry points and roads into Gaza nobody talks about. They're being very successful in doing these military measures. But it won't matter.

None of this will matter. If Hamas, that was October 6, the leadership, just that core leadership, survives the war, doesn't matter whatever metric. So where are the Hamas leadership located, physically? Where are they? Southern Gaza. Okay. And how successful has-

We're in Gaza, right? Because it goes back to the cognate. Maybe some of them have escaped, but like going back to even the good guys, like Zelensky, if he would have left, that is less of a victory than if you stay. So I believe that that leadership is still in Gaza. Okay. And do you have any sense of what proportion of the Gaza hierarchical leadership is still intact? I think that was the senior leadership. They've gotten one of the senior senior leadership. This goes back to like when you hear- How many of those people in leadership positions are crucial?

Five or six. Okay. Okay. So it's a. So it's a handful of people. I mean, if Yaya Senwar survives this war, he's achieved victory. They'll make statues of him. He will be the great terrorist that weakened Israel on the global international stage and struck at United States' credibility.

Iran will make statues of Yaya Senwar if he survives this war. He will be the great victor of this war. And let alone if October 7th becomes Palestinian Independence Day. If the world says, we don't care, everybody agrees Palestine is a state. How many countries, there's European countries that have already accepted it as a state. Spain, Norway. I don't remember all the countries, but... Yeah. It would be... It's almost anti-intellectual. How do you not understand that if October 7th leads to a creation of something, despite all the challenges, it would lead to greater violence? No logic gets in the way of virtue signaling ever, right? There's no hypocrisy like moral hypocrisy.

This is where I can't tell you who's going to win this war. I can't. If Israel is stopped because of real pressure, because like the weapons shipments that have been threatened to be with Hill, that has nothing to do with the operations in Gaza. That has to do with 100,000 Hezbollah attacking in the north. Northern Israel is currently under fire, as we speak,

because Hezbollah has been attacking. And the real threat is that you won't have the supplies to push them back. Yeah. Because southern Lebanon is called the- How serious is the situation in northern Israel with regards to Hezbollah right now? It's an existential threat. You don't get more serious than that. There are 80,000 Israelis who can't go home

for the last eight months at a huge financial cost to the nation of Israel, but they're literally now trying to burn it all down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's an existential threat, which I think people just discount, like, yeah, it's a threat. And you think that they'll just stop if Israel stops in Gaza? Never want to underestimate the depth of anti-Semitism.

Sure. And you have to believe, since none of this makes logic, that there is something else behind all of this. Insane jealousy of the successful minor, of the perennially successful minority. And then underneath that, what would you say? Why are the Jews the canary in the coal mine? Because they're the perennially successful minority. Okay.

The successful in any enterprise are always a minority. So when a culture goes after the Jews, it's one step away from going after the successful themselves. And when a culture goes after the successful themselves, then it's doomed. Right? And so, and then you might say, well, why would people go after the successful? It's like, well, that's a story as old as time. That's the story of Cain, right? The first two human beings in the biblical account are Cain and Abel. And Cain is murderously resentful and bitter of success, right? And that makes him murderous. It makes him a rebel against God and makes his descendants

genocidal. Right, well, that's exactly. Nothing has changed. No. I mean, this is why the reasons people go to war hasn't changed since ancient times. And why do you... Of the many reasons... Well, we also think that people go to war to win. True. Right. Yeah. No, no. The people who are really serious about going to war are perfectly happy to lose. So as long as the loss comes at sufficient cost.

So actually dealing with an enemy whose desire is to win, that's a pretty easy battle. It's the people whose desire is to burn everything to ground and dance in the ashes. Those are the people that are very, very difficult to defeat. And that spirit is alive in those campus protests for sure. The protests of the radicals, they would burn everything to the ground. This is why this is not this idea that this is some type of an Israel-Palestine issue. That it's some type of an Israel-Arab world issue. The Arab world has addressed terrorism successfully

in many parts of the Arab world, their way. You're actually perpetuating the violence, believing that you could just do something and it would all stop. That's not the reality of truth. And I agree with you. I mean, the one factor that college kids don't want to acknowledge is that there are

two million Arab Israelis living side by side in Israel. Yeah, right. Yes. That's like, oh, they don't want to acknowledge is that there are 2 million Arab Israelis living side by side in Israel. Yeah, right. Yes. That's like, oh, they don't care. And they're not trying to emigrate. No. Right. Right. Because things are as good for them as they would better for them than they would be anywhere else in the Arab world with the possible exception of the UAE. Maybe. Maybe.

Maybe. I mean, the Houthis in Saudi Arabia, it's not all good, of course. But I think this goes back to your original opening comments about the normalization with Israel, Arab nations, going back to Saudi Arabia. You're right. Like, I'm not trying to win anything.

I'm preventing actual prosperity. I want to burn it down. Oh, definitely. Oh, 100%. 100%. Yeah. Well, everything around the Abraham Accords, once the Democrats came into power, irritated me to death because I knew, I knew enough about the situation in the Middle East at that point to know that the Saudis would have signed the Abraham Accords. Right, and that, of course, that was the last thing Iran wanted, like seriously the last thing Iran wanted.

And we were that close to having that happen. And then it got scuttled, and part of the reason for that was that the Democrats were absolutely 100% unwilling to do anything that would give the Trump administration credit for anything positive. And I think that's unforgivable, like absolutely unforgivable. But on the positive side, so far the Abraham Accords have held.

I know that the Chinese have pulled back and are just sort of waiting in the wings and not trumpeting the fact that they've signed a peace deal with Israel, but it's very, very positive that the accords have still been maintained intact. So in that way, Iran hasn't pained the victory that they'd hoped for. Now you just said that you don't know who's fundamentally, if Israel can win this war. So do you want to, what do you think is going to happen? Like what's your-

I absolutely know they can. Yeah. I don't know if they will. Yeah, yeah. I can understand that those are very difficult. I know they could have a long time ago. Yeah, right. They could have-

But what's, so my sense of- The world owns, the United States owns much of the suffering that's happened in Gaza. Okay, elaborate on that. By prolonging the war. Yeah, right. By saying you have to find another way. In war, there's no history of you,

but find a different way. The world has- Find a different unspecified way that's never been tried before under impossible circumstances. Right, or misapply a paradigm that isn't war, like counterinsurgency. Just do raids and strategic strikes,

and in a few years, you'll get your hostage back. Yeah, right. It's maddening, but the world owns some of their suffering. Yes, Egypt owns a lot of it, but the world owns a lot when they constrained Israel and told Israel, you can't continue. Literally, you cannot finish Hamas in southern Gaza, in Ra'at.

You can't do it. What do you mean, I can't. They own some of that, so absolutely. But I can't tell you, because war is politics, and Israel is reliant on allies. For its survival, for the survival of the 10 million Israelis, it cannot do it alone. So they could be forced, even though it puts Israel

under an existential threat going forward, it could be forced, even though it puts Israel under an existential threat going forward, it could be forced to stop in Gaza and told that, yeah, eventually, yeah. Yeah, right. Eventually, you'll get your hostages back. Eventually, we'll figure out a way to remove Hamas from power, try this other force of government on them, things like that. This is why you can't, you don't know who's, and that will determine whether everything, everybody is already, I just read a foreign affairs piece saying Israel's already had a strategic failure. I mean, talking about strategic failure, the war's not over.

Do they mean strategic failure on the public relations side? No, they mean this idea, yes, on this ideology though, that you're created more. Oh, I see. This is the metrics of how many people in the Palestinian community support Hamas, who approved the October 7th attack, who think it was a good thing and still have increased to support Hamas. Those are metrics. I got it. That has nothing to do with the achievement of those things that we've been talking about in this war, removing Hamas. Now that's an important thing to get conceptually distinct.

Yes. Right. Right. So your proposition is the military objectives that would be relevant and important can be achieved even if the public relations battle within the Palestinian population isn't going in the direction that you'd hope it would. Because you're in your, you use Japan, say in Germany, as an energy. Even an uninformed international global perception of the way it's going. Right, well, the thing is, is that most

of any given population will go along with the norms that are currently in place. We saw that during the pandemic, for example. So, and you know, there's good and bad in that. The bad is, is that if the bad actors get the upper hand, a very large number of people will go along with them. But the good is that if the good actors get the upper hand, then many of the people who went along with the bad actors

will shift position. Right, right, okay. Well, that's a very useful thing to understand conceptually. So strategic advice, like I'm so glad that I'm not in a position of having to make the kinds of decisions that the Israeli leadership have to make now. I mean, God, that must be awful

in 15 different dimensions, but you're a military strategist, so what's the best way forward for Israel? I mean, can you see a best way forward for Israel? And if so, what might it be? I do, although I don't have access to all the information, although I've interviewed many of the leadership, it is threading the head of the needle,

because I am a military strategist, but I also then understand it's not just about military strategy. It's about the politics of war. This is when I was asked, how long would this war take? I was always asked that in October, November. Yeah, well, no one ever can make that prediction. Yeah, but it's irrelevant.

How long does Israel have before Israel's, the will to allow Israel to defend itself runs out, which is historic. Right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right,

right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right,

right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, in the future. Of course. That seems starkly self-evident to me. Well, why wouldn't you? Because all it would have proved was that it was successful. Because Israel, its public relationships are seriously damaged on the international front. Hamas basically remains intact. Iran doesn't give a damn that it was at the cost of Gaza. That's irrelevant. It's a foreign diplomacy insanity, just trying the same thing over and over again.

Like getting out of Gaza, sending Gaza aid money, economic, humanitarian, everything, hoping that they would give up their stated grand strategy. Even though they've stated it. Yeah, and they continue to say it. To include after October 7th. October 7th was just a warm up. It's very difficult for Western liberals to believe that people who write down their evil intent actually mean it.

I get this, and you know, I work, and I do a lot on the social media world where people want to break apart your argument. So on that, they'll say, they wrote that down before. That's not what they want today. Yeah, right. Okay, what about the news conferences they're doing today where they say they're gonna keep doing October 7th

over and over again. And I don't care how many I need my population. Like that isn't stuff they said before. That's what they've said since October 7th. Yeah, well part of it too is that naive liberal types really lack imagination for evil. And that's a big problem because one of the things that's a consequence of that, for example, is like there's a proclivity for naively compassionate people to view even violent criminals as victims.

And the reason for that is imagine that you're trying to understand the motive for a violent crime. Well, you could understand that there are conditions under which that might be intensely enjoyable as a perpetrator, but you have to go very, very dark places in order to understand that. And so instead of doing that effort, and that is an effort, and it's a moral effort, because it reveals something profoundly disturbing about the nature of the human soul, you might say. The easiest thing to think is, well, nobody could possibly undertake an action like that unless they'd been brutalized and were victims.

And so then you fall into the pathology of feeling sorry for the truly sadistic psychopaths, and that's a really bad strategy, right? I mean, the really dark sadistic actors, they weaponize that compassion in a second. It's part of the pathology. And modern, naive, liberal people, especially if they're young, they have no idea. They have no idea about it.

They don't want to have any idea about any of that. This is where I think you should force them to watch Israel's October 7th video, where you see 2000,000, at least, psychopaths with that capability, who show who, for whatever, rape is not resistance, right? Everything that is seen there, the burning, all of that, if somebody believes that evil doesn't exist,

all they have to do is watch Hamas's videos. Yeah. You'd think that'd be enough to convince people, but I don't think it would. I think people would watch that. You see, the thing is, is to watch that and then to understand it is traumatizing. Yes.

Right, because you have to reconfigure your vision of what human beings are like and capable of so profoundly that you really have nothing left, especially if you're naive. And naive people are much more likely to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. And so what people generally do instead is they watch, but they don't really watch and they see, but they don't really see, right? And then their rationalizations and their previous ideology just kicks back in, or they

won't watch. And so I can understand that, but it's not helpful. This is what I've faced in my world of urban warfare. It's like, how can you not see these pictures of destruction and say that Israel's not purposely doing that to harm? Because I can show you every urban warfare scenario where the defender defended every building that looks like that. Why does every battle that I can explain to you,

why does the biggest battle of the Iraq war was the 2004 battle of Fallujah, not the battle of Baghdad. Because if the defender moves in there, it's a very destructive battle. But I've faced that now, like, I don't care what you say, John Spencer, Israel is evil and they're trying to destroy Palestine. Like all the evidence, everything they're doing

is actually to prevent harm. No. What's the evidence that people are swayed by evidence? Right? That isn't generally like... Motion. Well, people, the more naive people are and the more ignorant they are, the more they view the world through lenses of radical simplification. And one of the most simplified lenses is victim, victimizer narrative. And it's perfect because you can explain everything with it. You can explain history. You can explain economic relations.

You can explain the family. You can explain the relationships between men and women and parents and children. It's all power. One's a victim, one's a victimizer. So that explains the whole world. You can learn that in five minutes, but there's another advantage to it too, is that... So imagine you want to simplify the world because that's easy, but then the other thing you want to do is you want to take your place as a moral actor in the world so that you're elevated in your moral status.

Well, if you've identified the victim properly, all you have to do is announce your allyship with the victim and now you're the Messiah. And so the victim victimizer narrative is the perfect hyper simplification, both conceptually and morally. And that's what's promulgated on university campuses in the name of education.

It's like, well, everything's a victim victimizer dynamic. That's the power thesis of the postmodernists. Let's say it's the power thesis of the Marxists. You just view it through a lens of power, identify the oppressed, ally yourself with them. All your existential and conceptual problems are solved. Unbelievably pernicious. And the Jews are taking the brunt of that

now because they've been cast as victimizers. And so hence the massive rise of anti-Semitism on the side of the radical left, which is par for the course historically. Brutal. Yeah, I think the fear, fear-mongering has a bit of that. People fear what they don't understand. And since they don't have a mental construct to understand war, it's all bad. It's all wrong. They just want it to stop. Yeah, well, and as a first pass approximation, war is bad is not a bad theory. But the problem is that there are worse things than war.

Right? And to understand that, you see, you have to look into darkness and that's a rough thing to ask of people, even though it's necessary. All right, sir. Well, on that happy note, we could probably bring this section of our discussion to a close. I wanna talk to you about some things that are probably more personal.

I'm gonna do that on the daily wire side. So those of you who are watching and listening, thank you for this, by the way. That was extremely instructive. I really appreciate the opportunity personally to ask you the questions I did ask you, because I'm trying to get my understanding of the situation in Israel

and in relationship to Hamas and the Palestinians, right? And I've looked at this a lot, and I've talked to a lot of people. And it was useful to me to test out some of the conceptions I had against your knowledge to see if I'm like way the hell out in right field as it would be. And hopefully it's real useful for everybody watching and listening to hear a more detailed analysis of the situation that Israel finds itself in.

So, I think what we'll do on the daily wire side for all of you watching and listening is I'd like to find out more about your military career and how you entered the academic world and why you picked urban warfare specifically as your target of inquiry. And we'll probably delve a little bit more into the details of urban warfare as well. So if all of you who are watching, listening, wanna join us, we'll do that on the Daily Wire side. So thank you very much for-

Thanks, sir. Yeah, thanks for coming here today to do this in person. It's always better to do it in person. Yeah, you bet. Absolutely, thank you. You bet, yeah.