The Munk Debates Podcast - Munk Dialogue with John Spencer: how to dismantle Hamas terror tunnels

Episode Date: November 20, 2023

On this episode of the Munk Debate podcast we’re talking about one of the biggest challenges facing the Israeli army in Gaza: Hamas tunnels. These tunnels, some of which stretch for miles and reach depths as low as 230 feet underground, offer Hamas fighters protection and allow them to launch attacks against the IDF before returning underground to safety. How can Israel hope to dismantle this underground web of labyrinths, while trying to rescue over 200 hostages that are suspected of being held there? For this, and more, we turn to one of the world’s leading experts on urban warfare, John Spencer. John is a combat veteran, national security and military analyst, and chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute. The host of the Munk Debates is Rudyard Griffiths - @rudyardg.   Tweet your comments about this episode to @munkdebate or comment on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/munkdebates/ To sign up for a weekly email reminder for this podcast, send an email to [e-mail].   To support civil and substantive debate on the big questions of the day, consider becoming a Munk Member at https://munkdebates.com/membership Members receive access to our 10+ year library of great debates in HD video, a free Munk Debates book, newsletter and ticketing privileges at our live events. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue - https://munkdebates.com/ Senior Producer: Ricki Gurwitz Editor: Kieran LynchBecome a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When you're a journalist and people don't trust you, it's always your fault. These people need to be represented. They are Canadian. They deserve to have a voice and a seat at the table. It is time to go back to the office, and the time is now. Russia had reasons to be concerned. They had reasons to be fearful. We're at an absolute turning point in reproduction. This is the problem with realism. They just treat all countries the same. They don't distinguish between dictatorships and democracy. Hello, my listeners. Rudyard Griffiths here. And moderator, welcome to this, our continuing conversations called the Monk Dialogues.

These are in-depth questions and answers with some of the world's sharpest minds and brightest thinkers. On each monk dialogue, we go deep into the big issues and ideas that are transforming our world and shaping the public conversation. Today we're talking about one of the biggest challenges facing the Israeli army in Gaza, Hamas's immense network of underground tunnels. This city under a city stretches for miles and reaches. depths as great as 230 feet. It offers Hamas fighters protection, allowing them to launch attacks on Israeli forces before returning underground to safety. So how can Israel hope to dismantle Hamas if it can't dismantle this underground web, this labyrinth of caverns, storehouses, and weapon depots that include possibly over 200 hostages abducted to get some

answers, let's invite on to the program one of the world's leading experts in urban warfare, John Spencer. John Spencer is a U.S. combat veteran, a national security and military analyst and chair of the Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute. John, welcome to the Monk Dialogues. Oh, thank you. Thank you for having me. Looking forward to a very timely conversation with you today.

the IDF, as we know, is now going to have to spend the next period of time pivoting from a war of some success in the early weeks against Hamas to possibly a much more fraught and lengthy and dangerous exercise of fighting in the city beneath the city. Can you give us a sense, John, of what you think are the scope of this challenge and where you think that, particular issues or features of this underground war that we need to understand. What are they? Sure. I think first people have to understand the uniqueness. I study urban battles across the history of time. And there hasn't been one with this expanse of a city under a city that is vital to the achievement of the goal, right? The IDF goal, the Israel goal of the destroying Hamas military

capabilities means that it isn't just about fighting in the tunnels, that they'll have to, they have multiple problems and one having to destroy this very core element of Hamas's military capability in order to have any measure of success. So there's the tactical problem of the tunnels, right, understanding that this isn't, you know, really getting people in their mind. This is more like a major city of Tokyo, London, in New York City, metro system than it is what people might think of as a tunnel in war. Although the Hamas tunnels have been developed over decades,

and they vary from a couple feet underground to 200 feet, 20 stories down into the earth, in very standardized tunnels, I guess you could say, walkways, which the Hamas, unlike other places that I've been, whether I've been in North Korean tunnels in South Korea, I've been in Hezbollah tunnels in North Israel, I've been in tunnels all around the world. But Hamas has a very standardized tunnel because of the geology of Southern Israel and the concrete that they prefabricate, which they spend billions of dollars over decades doing prefabricated size and archways.

If you're in the world of underground warfare, you know, you just can't start digging and you're good. There's engineering to it. And the archways that they use in Hamas uses is very standardized. but they also, so this, we will leave. Really, nobody really knows. There was an estimate, really almost five to ten years ago of 500 kilometers of tunnels underneath Gaza, which is 300 miles. I personally think it's more than that, but that's just one of the estimates. And the depth, Israel found one tunnel that went 200 plus feet under the ground.

I believe they go much deeper than that. And there are long tunnels that run from not just Gaza City, but from the tip of Gaza Strip to the very border of Gaza along the Egyptian border. As a matter of fact, there's many types of tunnels. There's smuggling tunnels that they use to get. I mean, it's just crazy that no matter what you think has been happening in Gaza over the last few years, they got tens of thousands of rockets through the tunnels in there. So they have smuggling tunnels. They have infiltration tunnels that they infiltrate into Israel with. They have defensive tunnels.

They have headquarters tunnels. So the idea of in their current mission, despite their, I agree, there's successes in moving to certain objectives like the hospitals to secure them to show the world what's there and to show them that there's tunnels underneath the hospitals. There's the tactical challenge of the tunnel. Like, what do you do when you find one? And sometimes you can really blow the interest and not even deal with it and just keep moving. Then there's this strategic problem. one is that there's 200 plus hostages and just a few hostages that have been released. We know that we're logically where we believe and now we know most of the hostages are in the tunnels,

which means even in the tactical sense, you're not just going to blow up the tunnel when you find it because you have to be able to know what's in it. And if you have any possibility, which Israel said, I believe them, make all means to get the hostages back. That means you'll have to enter some of these tunnels. So the challenge that people have to understand, and again, because I get to study this, is that nothing that anybody ever created for a military to fight with works underground. Night vision goggles don't work under there because there's no ambient light. You can't even breathe into some depths of tunnels without special equipment because there's, there has to, you know, in order to make a tunnel, you have to ventilate it. Sometimes that goes wrong.

If your ventilation is not working, all this stuff. So you can't see it down there. You can't communicate. No communication system that relies on radio frequencies, line of sight. Does it work? John, let me jump ahead for a second. I mean, should, and, you know, Galant has maybe intimated this. I mean, should the Israeli strategy just be not to go down into the tunnels, to occupy Gaza,

if need be, to stay there for a year to ensure that nobody comes out of these tunnels ever again? I mean, don't the tunnels at a certain point, John, turn into a tomb? They turn into Truton Commons tomb for the people that built them, just like the pharaohs. Yeah, and that actually in war has been a solution. Think about the Japanese diehards of Iwo Jima. The marine solution was to bury them in the tunnels, bury them in the bunkers. It is a solution, but I don't think that that's a great rule of engagement. You don't ever want to send a soldier into a tunnel.

It's just a nightmare even if you have specialized people. But the enemy gets a vote. Some of these tunnels are strategic level assets, as in the narrative war is a contest of will. They can't blow up the Shifa hospital and collapse it on top of the tunnels that are underneath it. One, you don't want to do that because it's a hospital, but two, you need access into the tunnel to show the world what we all know and believe about the tunnels. And, again, blowing a tunnel isn't a solution to getting hostages back. So in some cases, yes, that is a very simple solution. Like you tracked yourself down there and now it's your tomb.

There are other ways that will be required. So I agree that should be a good talking point. But it's not reality. Some soldiers will have to enter tunnels in this war. That's a fact. Well, if you're thinking about that fact, What advice do you have? I mean, I just, the problem to me seems too big to wrap my mind aren't.

I mean, if these tunnels are hundreds of feet underground, there was a tunnel that was discovered under this children's hospital in northern Gaza that the IDF recently provided some video on. They indicated that the tunnel ended in a bulletproof, explosive proof door. That's just one tunnel under one hospital, and we're talking about a city under a city. Yeah. No, and that doesn't surprise me at all, right? And again, you can guess the actors that influence Thomas' tunnel building capability from Iran to North Korea to them, you know, trial and error or Hezbollah.

There's so much and there's so many varieties to include deep buried military targets like that, we still reinforced concrete structures to include bolt doors, all of this stuff that that will be, that is down there. So, but there are, so like the way I understand, I've visited Israel many times, I've held academic conferences in Israel about tunnels, about the boundaries of science and the boundaries of military strategies underground, the law, like the law changes when you go underground. It's just mind-blowing. Not like the laws of war, but like kind of like especially border tunnels, is that an act of, you know, there's some really unique securities, but Israel is truly a three-dimensional battle space. Yes. But Israel is the leaders in the world. I can say that

as a U.S. military veteran, the leaders of the world in strategies, tactics, techniques, you're sending a remote control robot that can work underground down there to see what's down there before you go down there, bombs sniffing dogs, dogs trained only for underground. Some people think that any dogs should, dogs are like people. They don't like going underground either. You got to train them. So let's talk

technology. Are robots a solution? I mean, I one intuitively would think, well, robot doesn't need oxygen. It can create all kinds of of light emitting on parts of the spectrum. The human eye can't register

so it can scan the environment without detection. But again, if there's bulletproof, explosive-proof doors every 20 meters, what good's a robot? Yeah, no, it's a great point. No. So robots are actually, are some of the leading solutions. And people have figured out, like, well, how do you have a robot who can't receive a signal? GPS doesn't work. Because, yeah, you can develop, I've been a part of DARPA five-year programs to develop highly technological robots that are multi-million dollar robots. That's not going to work, but you can have a tethered robot that's literally like a Walmart remote control car that you put a GoPro on top of it and you tether it to a.

So there are cheap and, you know, highly technical, highly expensive solutions. It is absolutely, but you're right. There are limitations to it. There's a limitation to the amount that you have versus the size of the city under the city. And the same thing with the dogs, the trained soldiers, all of that. And then you get to, like you said, there's other challenges, like a door like that, which there is breaching equipment

made for cutting through, like thermo-thermobaric, basically torches and things like that, used to cut through this. So Hamas doesn't have anything that a military hasn't faced before. Now, at this scale for the idea, is an issue.

But this is, like you said, there's advantages, of course, and this is why it was built. to having an underground city, but there are also disadvantages. So the idea that, you know, 50,000 Hamas fighters are drinking chai under the, underground is just waiting to pop up and like, well, that's not going to work and that's not true. So it goes both ways.

John, on that point, are you a little surprised that we really haven't seen much in the way of offensive operations from Hamas? I mean, is there a tunnel strategy kind of backfiring against them to this point in the war? they seem unable to mass, you know, personnel and kind of critical formations. Yes, there have been, I guess, up to the time of this recording, tragically, 45 IDF members who've died in this war. But it's much less than people thought by this point. And it's kind of like, where's Waldo? Where's Hamas? Exactly. No, I, you know, hopefully this ages will. I'm very surprised at the lack of resistance of Hamas to the idea of. operation. And you could say like, oh, yeah, they're waiting, they're waiting. Like, you can, like ISIS, and they put up a much greater defense in places like Masul, Raqqqqa, very phased layer defenses. If Hamas had all this capability, I don't see it.

Israel went around it. Israel seized. So this is the idea. If you want to rate both sides, look at their stated objectives. Hamas's objective, right, to get this international accommodation to get IDF to stop, to live the fight another day, to get other people to join them like Hezboa, like nothing's worked. Now you can be a terrain-based, like that's usually if you're defending your land, you have a terrain-based strategy, like keep them out, destroy them as they, you know, break them apart, pull them into the dense urban area, which is a great strategy. It basically, we say, break them apart into pieces.

So they can't mass, like you said, it can't maneuver. Amos has done none of that, none of it. Yes, like you said, IDF had, I thought there'd be hundreds of IDF, honestly, just as an analyst of urban battles. And IDF had gained the initiative. They seized it, gained it, and maintained it. And now are sitting on top of vital centers of gravity for Hamas, the hospitals, and the center of Gaza City. I mean, it's pretty crazy. Yeah.

I mean, where are all the, you know, if you look at Fallujah, I mean, you're a former U.S. veteran, you knew a lot about the first and second battles of Fallujah. I mean, that was tough urban fighting with U.S. Marines on the streets, you know, taking casualties from snipers, RPGs, that kind of hornets nest of an urban environment that just hasn't happened in a city that seemed to be, unfortunately, the ideal terrain to recreate a Fallujah-type battle. Right. No, I agree. And I wrote a case study on both first and second battle. of Fulia. I think from, you know, from density perspective and enemy perspective, the 2017 battle of Massou is very similar, but there are also giant differences. Like the fact

that none of these urban battles has the enemy been launching rockets at the civilian population. That's only a few, you know, kilometers behind the fighting force. So the thousands of rockets that Hamas has continued to be able to launch really changes the nature of this battle. I agree with you. That's what we thought we would see is that these blocks, by block, house by house, tough fights. And I'm not saying that's not going to happen. But if that was Hamas's strategy, it didn't work. And this is the ideal that of urban warfare, like the second battle of flusia, where I know that

the al-Qaeda and other forces in Fallujah thought that the U.S. would surround it and just attack from one side. And what they did was punch to the middle, very similar to what's happening here, a little different. They went around here in Gaza. They went around the defenses. in the Fallujah, we punched to the middle of the city turned around and said, okay, come fight us. But still went house to house, of course, eventually.

But there are very sophisticated ways you can take the advantage that an asymmetric guerrilla force like this and in a terrorist organization want you to fight. Never fight the way the enemy wants you to fight. Yeah. So don't, you know, the tunnel is the same way. If you thought that Hamas might have a surprise, John, what would that be at this point? because it's getting pretty late in the day for them to show up. Yeah. I mean, I think there's some tactics that I could see being not surprises to the IDF, but to the world.

Like rigging a hospital to blow, and when the IDF go into it, it explodes. Tunnel bombs, which I presented on in the past, which have come back in frequency, massive amounts. I mean, like hundreds of pounds of explosives in a tunnel that exploded on the people on the surface. the causing, you know, the hostages, using the hostages shields and causing some major, they need international media attention of a surprise level thing. But you're right, it's, you know, both from an enemy centric or a terrain centric, there's no way I see them achieving a goal at this point. The ideal that somebody's coming to save you, which is a strategy in defense, it actually is.

Like, defend the ground and somebody comes, oh, let's say like Hezbollah, comes to your made, that failed. Yeah, and it was clear from some of the early war plans that the IDF captured as part of the material left behind by the October 7th terrorists, that that was their plan. They thought they were going to ignite a bigger war in the Middle East. They thought Hezbollah, Iran, the West Bank would explode. None of it's happened. So if Israel has the advantage, then what is the next step?

It seems like they're exposing the hospitals for what they are, which are. command and control and weapons and arms depots. But once you're through that phase, what do you think the IDF does next? Do they start probing some of these tunnels? Do they surprise again? Do they come up with something that puts Hamas yet again on their back foot? No, I think I agree all of those. I think that they continue.

This is the idea that they couldn't surprise Hamas, right? Like we all watch it. Like how are you going to achieve operational or tactical support? strategically, it's impossible, right? You announced your operation. But there's so many, as we've seen, still capabilities to surprise the enemy. I agree with you that they'll likely need to map and exploit the tunnel network as a high priority, while IDF forces also continue the clearing surface level operations, which will involve tough fights

and more losses and more destruction. But in order to achieve that strategic goal, I'm not talking about the day. after, but the immediate strategic goal of destroying Hamas military capabilities, every rocket, every tunnel, every fighter that fights. And some could throw down their weapons and blend it in with the civil population. There are still chances for not militarily to gain some type of advantage, but for Hamas, who doesn't seem to have a problem with killing their own civilians to create some type of mass casualty event that as an attempt to get to that strategic narrative of, look, yes,

the IDF is right. The IDF is lawful. It's doing everything. And, of course, the law of wars, but we still need a ceasefire. We need this to stop. Too much human loss. So I think there's a possibility of Hamas pursuing that objective of just killing in some event,

as many civilians. And now there are more densely populated areas because of the moving of civilians out of combat areas in other areas, like in the South, that it's an awful scenario, but I would not put it past Hamas. Maybe you're familiar with this history, but one of the early examples of tunnel warfare was the Battle of Hama. So Hafez al-Assad, the father of Bashir al-Assad, confronted the Muslim Brotherhood, which is in effect the kind of origin, the original gang that kind of produces Hamas

and a bunch of other Sunni radical groups in the region. Hafizal is sad at that time, again, a horrible thing to contemplate. He poured diesel fuel in the tens of thousands of gallons down into the tunnels of Hama. Some people have said, we've gotten pretty good at horizontal drilling these days. You have a large sea adjacent to Gaza. What if you simply began to drill, drill laterally into that structure? You have it mapped and begin to flood those tunnels using seawater, through a lot of the same techniques that we use for fracking,

you know, every day around the world. Yes. So in my conversation with tunnel experts and even in the history of what's been done in the past, like that fuel, tear gas, cement, the actual flooding of these and connecting it to a body of water to it, it can't be pumped out like a sea, is the most logical in solution for the tunnel complexes that I have heard. because even if you fill in the cement like Israel did in the Hezboa tunnels of the north, you can dig through cement. As a matter of fact, Hezboa digs through straight rock in order to dig as tunnels.

That would be a permanent solution to the tunnel problem for sure. And I think it's, like you said, fracking, horizontal drilling, very reasonable. So there's the, again, the now problem and then the ultimate solution to the tunnels. And I agree that's the greatest one I've heard. and I hope they pursue it because it would eliminate that tunnel complex. You still have the greater problem, right? What to do about God, you know, another Hamas, not popping up, but the idea that Hamas would just live to fight another day.

You can't kill an idea. I can destroy tunnels. Did you know that you could give the gift to the monk debates this holiday season? That's right. We are offering both our curator and supporter memberships as charitable gifting opportunities. You can do that right now at our website. Triple W Monk, MUNK, Debates with an S.com. Click on the join button, go to the bottom of the page, and select either a supporter or

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don't you, John, a tone, especially from Gallant, the defense minister, that the order of priorities begins, and to certain degree, ends with the destruction of Hamas as a military and political force. They are not talking up the hostages. And is that, John, because just the tunnel challenge, frankly, is just it's insurmountable? I mean, the ability to get these people out alive, is it in reality pretty close to zero? No, I wouldn't. say that. And I understand a defense minister or a defense general or somebody's sentiment of

you know, from, you know, literally from Patton till now, like destroy. Like kill the enemy. That's the priority. But war is politics. And I actually believe that to include, as we're talking, discussions of a negotiation to get women and children

of the hostages in exchange for something that that is not off the table. And I don't think anybody said that that is off the table. It is this is the idea of a waiting too. The time is of the biggest concern. The longer you go historically, the less chance you get a hostage back.

Hamas is not the hostage exchanging type. But if there's a chance, absolutely. And I think that political leaders are doing that. Militarily, I could see, I mean, it's hard to say. These are the awful decisions that give. made, but I believe in my heart that even the military person is an old soldier will do everything feasibly possible to rescue a single hostage, let alone 200 of them, from the political

strategic level, all other countries down to that soldier in that tunnel. Right. And when does that utilitarian calculus, though, kick in where you say to yourself, you know, as important as these hostages are, these are lives of soldiers, you know, And there's unfortunately often a political dimension that comes with the lives of soldiers and with casualties on the part of soldiers. I mean, or again, is there a credo that you just do this and no cost is too high? No. So that no cost too high is never really a factor even in any moral, ethical, despite what the ridiculous statements that are made about the idea. From the individual level, the priority is to save life, not destroy life.

So this is, it's about intelligence. It really is. It isn't as much, there is always going to be these tough decisions down to the soldier's decision to fire or not. And it's based on the intelligence of that given moment. And I think that's driving some of the objectives currently, which you can hear in their wording, is to gather more intelligence on the location of hostages. But that's the worst case scenario where you have to make a decision of the risk, right? This is also what determines the risk,

willing to take and of course that they would risk soldiers lives to rescue hostages. But it's all based on intelligence and probability that they are alive, what intelligence you have, even if it's about what's in that tunnel. That's why again, a drone, I have things that can tell me a little bit, tell me more, even if there's human life in a tunnel. I have things that can tell me these things. And this is what drives those decisions, but there is no one, this is a lot. why every tunnel, every military decision is situationally based. It's based on the information

I have at the moment to make that decision. And I do have to make decisions. And this is why soldiers mean commanders make that decision. Like I know I will lose soldiers based on the intelligence to do this. But the objective, that is the decision that commanders are the burden of command, even from the prime minister level down to the soldier. Yeah. It's hard to think that we're having this conversation, those people are sitting in those goddamn tunnels right now, excuse my French, but it, I mean, it is outrageous. The Red Cross has not been allowed to see them. As you say, Hamas so far seems to be very reluctant to release any. You've seen some of these tunnels. What are the conditions that you think they're being held in right now?

Yeah. I mean, based on, again, the ones I've been in, based on what the one hostages or two hostages have said, it's a nightmare. It's literally tied to the ideals of hell. It literally is I'm under the earth in a dark, damp, hard to breathe, can't, I can lose sense of time, you can lose sense of direction. It's horrible of feeling and it is, it hurts me to even think of a single person being forced to be in that environment, already scared to death, but then be immersed into this. environment that is literally psychologically tied to hell. Yeah, and children. There's children down there. It's just. And I mean, this is the thing that if it was my, of course, this is the, where our hearts go out to every family is that I would want anything and everything done to include pain to get my loved one back. And I, and I know that that this is on the hearts of every person involved in the operation.

Yeah. Just finally, I know you've spent time with. the IDF, you've been to Israel on a number of occasions. What is your perceptions? I think it's important people hear from you. Your assessment of this fighting force, their professionalism, and what you've seen in the opening weeks of this war, you know, there's been a lot of accusations and hot language thrown around about war crimes. What's your take on all that? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I've spent a lot of time with the IDF. It's one of the most professional militaries, most like the military I served in the U.S. military that I've ever,

studied and encountered, but also design specific for the challenges they face very professionally, doctrinally. The U.S. military is a global force that has expeditionary, which causes the IDFs not, which is not that. It's very unique. So it has really advanced technologies and capabilities that we didn't have. I don't, not in the U.S. military, but also their professional, ethical, moral stance. But most importantly, and I can say this as a researcher, they're held to a law, moral, ethical standard in the execution of anything, even in self-defense.

It just never started a war. Never. They've only defended and acted in self-defense. And even when they do, like we're seeing in this war, they're held to a standard that no other military in the world has ever been held to. And it's above and beyond the actual laws of war, international humanitarian law, even customary law. It's crazy.

And I try to help, but it's the thought that they aren't this law-abiding force. And then they have an actual moral, ethical code even within themselves and the rules of engagement and how they function, which people, if you study militaries, can change even when they're following the law. Everything I've seen them do so far has been above and beyond the way that I think other military took care of the U.S. military has done.

We don't call people in the building before we attack it. We don't knock on the roofs. We do evacuate civilians. But from October 8th on, Israel has been doing prevention of civilian harm steps, millions of flyers, calling directly cell phones. We don't do that. doing tactical pause in the middle of a fight to pass people through you. Israel is now doing that daily. Now, usually you set up a green corridor, you set a certain amount of time, and you do it

for some amount of time. Israel's doing it daily. So really, the most moral, ethical, law-abiding military that I've ever studied. That's fascinating. Because we just, we get caught up in the moment and you get a lot of hot language, especially words like genocide, which I think are really inappropriate to this circumstance in itself, but also to charge a group, a people for committing genocide who had genocide committed against them, you know, seems like you're adding insult to injury.

Finally, John, where do you think this goes from here? You know, there's this argument that there's a clock ticking, that the IDF has a political clock, and it has to operate within a certain period of time before that clock runs down. We hear, though, from Netanyahu, Galant, Benny Gantz, and others that this operation could take months. They could still be in northern Gaza a year from now. What is your sense? Do you believe in that clock theory? If you do, then how does the war change to kind of reflect that reality in the weeks and months to come?

Yeah, I actually strongly believe in that clock. theory based on the history of war and the history of Israel's war, there is no unlimited time, both in the tactical to strategic international will aspects to this, which are, again, this is not only as Israel held to this highest standard, Israel is usually forced, nobody can force a nation to do, but strongly intervention driven to stop the operation, even if it's being executed in every measure of the law of war. this will take months. So I both agree and disagree.

Time is always a factor in wars. Most people discount it. Even the economic cost to Israel to feel this size of a military is underrated. It's costing millions and millions of dollars a day just to have all these reservists in an operation. And then the resourcing all of that,

there is always a clock ticking. There's a clock to the international will, the political will, that can go up and down as the war continues, so you have to maintain it. And you have to use as much energy as fighting as you do is maintaining the will to keep your clock ticking. And I think that they've actually weathered some of that storm. But this is a recognition to achieve their stated goal of destroying Hamas military capability, you have to clear terrain, and that will take months. There are people who are saying, you know, time for a ceasefire.

I kind of struggle with thinking about how a ceasefire, especially a prolonged ceasefire, would allow Israel to achieve its stated goal of the military and political destruction of Hamas, and then the implications of not achieving that goal would be not restoring deterrence vis-a-vis Hezbollah and a lot of other bad people in the neighborhood. And also creating on the part of the Israeli citizenry a sense that Hamas still exists there, that the threat has not been removed. So how do we reconcile this tension between an Israeli argument, I think a strong one, that this war has to be fought through to its logical end versus an international community

that seems with each passing day and each passing hour to be seizing on this idea of first, you know, I guess short term and then extended ceasefires. And I would think some of the more, you know, progressive voices, the United Nations or elsewhere, they want a negotiated settlement, a deconfliction of the fight between Hamas and Israel. Yeah, I mean, I know many of the sides of the story. There won't, as ceasefire would be a victory for Hamas. It would be a threat to the survival of Israel

to maintain any military capability in the hands of Hamas in Gaza, which is literally people just, people who haven't even been to the area have these positions. They don't know that it's a few, I can see it from the kibbutzis that were raped, massacred, everything, it's not a faraway threat. We can just do a negotiated settlement, right? All wars in a political settlement. There is a ceasefire that could be done.

Seas fire, total disarmament and total surrender of Hamas. There you go. There's a ceasefire. But until the threat is removed, which is a very, it is Israel's right in accordance with the UN charter to remove that immediate existential threat to the Israeli people. there hasn't been a day without a single rocket continuing to come out of while people are calling for ceasefire. I understand the position of the foreign people,

but I also 100% understand that there won't be a siegefire. There can be some pauses to limit and reduce the death of civilians. Absolutely. But pauses aren't ceasefires, and they're definitely not negotiated settlements, which is ridiculous. Hamas is dead men walking, and they can't, Israel can't, as a nation, like it just doesn't make common sense.

As a nation, allow that threat who wants to do more October 7th. It's not like they're all of a sudden going, oh, that, you know, sorry, we want to have peace now. No, they're like, we're going to keep doing this. We're going to keep doing October 7th. We're going to, until our last breath, every one of us is going to try to kill people when you're right over there, like a few kilometers away, and destroy the entire, we will never stop. like, okay, fine, it's hard to kill an ideal. I understand that.

And I agree with the day after matters. But I can absolutely take military capability for you to do that to harm citizens away. And that won't happen. That ceasefire won't happen until that goal is achieved. And it's a very reasonable goal to achieve. There's a couple ways to do it. Like I said, you can do it by force where they can give up. Yeah, that's a critical point.

I wish more people, especially in the international community, would be urging Hamas to unilaterally surrender. Germany did it, you know, in two world wars. So if it's good enough for Germany and two world wars, then I think it's good enough for Hamas. John Spencer, thank you so much for coming on the program today. Just terrific analysis and insights. We're going to publicize your center, all your important writing and working. Really, again, appreciate your analysis. Thanks so much.

Well, that wraps up today's dialogue. I want to thank our guest, John Spencer. He certainly gave us a lot to think about. If you have questions or reflections on what you've just heard, please send us an email to podcast at monkdebates.com. That's MUNK. Debates with an S.com. Also a reminder that you can access on this same podcast feed our entire live in person. Monk debate on the crisis of liberalism. We've got that for you in high definition audio. Check it out. Jacob Rees-Mogg, George F. Will, Ash, Sarkar, Sorcar, Sorab, Ahmar. all battling it out on whether liberalism is a viable ideology in the 21st century or is headed for exhaustion. We've got that debate for you right now in the same podcast feed. Also, please consider becoming a monk member. If you enjoy what we're doing, we'd love to have you as part of our community. You can do that free right now at triple w monkdebates.com. And if you feel like putting a dollar or two into

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