Making Sense - Sam Harris - #366

00:00:00.000 welcome to the making sense podcast this is sam harris well it's been pretty crazy out there

00:00:28.160 on college campuses i will have much more to say about that shortly but today i'm bringing you a

00:00:35.140 podcast that i promised in a previous episode where i said i would talk to someone who is an

00:00:40.800 expert in urban warfare who could help me analyze just what has gone on in gaza today i'm speaking

00:00:48.200 with john spencer john currently serves as the chair of urban warfare studies at the modern war

00:00:53.700 institute at west point he is the co-director of the urban warfare project and host of the urban

00:00:59.740 warfare project podcast he's also a founding member of the international working group on

00:01:05.660 subterranean warfare john served 25 years in the army having held ranks from private to sergeant

00:01:12.900 first class and second lieutenant to major he was an active duty army officer during two combat tours

00:01:20.780 in iraq his research focuses on military operations in dense urban areas megacities

00:01:27.380 and urban and subterranean warfare john also holds a master of policy management from georgetown

00:01:33.760 university and his writing has appeared in the new york times the wall street journal the washington

00:01:39.920 post foreign policy and many other publications and he's the author of the book understanding urban

00:01:47.180 warfare john and i cover israel's response to october 7th from top to bottom we discuss the nature of

00:01:54.700 hamas's attacks on october 7th what was most surprising about them the difficulty in distinguishing

00:02:00.940 hamas from the rest of the population in gaza combatants as a reflection of a society's values

00:02:07.180 how many people have been killed so far in gaza the proportion of combatants and non-combatants

00:02:13.580 the double standards to which the idf is held the worst criticism that can be made of israel and the idf

00:02:19.900 so far intentions versus results what is unique about the war in gaza hamas's use of human shields

00:02:29.100 what it would mean to defeat them what the idf has accomplished so far the destruction of the gaza

00:02:35.580 tunnel system the details of underground warfare the rescue of hostages how non-combatants become

00:02:43.020 combatants how difficult it is to interpret videos of combat what victory would look like the likely

00:02:50.460 aftermath of the war a possible war with hezbollah iran's attack on israel and what to do about iran

00:02:57.820 and other topics this one is a psa so no paywall as always if you find what we're doing here valuable

00:03:07.180 and you want to support the podcast you can do that by subscribing at samharris.org

00:03:12.540 and now i bring you john spencer

00:03:21.500 i am here with john spencer john thanks for joining me

00:03:24.460 sam thanks for having me so uh i will have introduced you in the the intro here but um

00:03:31.900 perhaps you can state what your background is and and how you come to this conversation

00:03:38.300 sure so i spent 25 years in the u.s military as a infantry soldier and officer and then spent

00:03:46.460 two combat deployments to iraq both in the invasion and at the end but then i went you

00:03:52.620 know throughout my career i went my last job was teaching strategy at west point where i stood up a

00:03:57.020 research center and started researching you know all urban battles and i became this chair of urban

00:04:03.820 warfare studies that i am now where really when i left the military i began this endeavor to travel

00:04:09.980 the world into combat zones to understand them in real time that has led me to where i am now where i

00:04:15.660 can uniquely provide people i hope understanding of the israel's war against tamas in gaza which is

00:04:23.500 overwhelmingly urban which is what i specialize in yes i want to get your expertise here on on urban

00:04:30.380 warfare and um use that to analyze what's happening in gaza and what what isn't happening there's i think

00:04:38.220 there's a lot of misinformation about the nature of the war and how it compares to other conflicts where

00:04:44.780 else have you witnessed urban warfare beyond being in your own tours in the military when i left the military

00:04:54.060 in 2018 and really took full direction of my new job to study it academically i started i went to

00:05:02.540 mumbai to study the 2008 terror attacks which it was on a you know 10 terrorists took down a whole

00:05:08.540 city i went to israel multiple times studying past wars so like the 2002 battle of janine the

00:05:17.260 the battle of suez city when the full-scale invasion of ukraine by russia started i started going

00:05:23.340 into ukraine so i've been four times since the war began studying the urban battles so

00:05:29.020 kiev bakhmut mariopol and then of course i've been to gaza twice since the beginning of the

00:05:35.580 israel hamas war interesting that you went to mumbai that's something i've thought a lot about

00:05:41.500 in the aftermath of october 7th because it's it's really this pure case of jihadism that has

00:05:47.820 nothing to do with israel obviously has very little to do with jews except for the fact that they did

00:05:52.860 managed to find some jews to kill in mumbai but um i'm interested to hear what that was like before

00:06:00.140 we hit our main topic sure i mean i i also i forgot to mention that i also went into nagarna karabakh

00:06:06.620 there was a war there in 2020 and there's been another one but i went in after that war to

00:06:12.220 it ended in a major urban battle over the battle of shusha but going back to mumbai i mean it was

00:06:17.900 just fascinating and the planning that went into it and like you said i'm one of they basically hit

00:06:24.060 five targets simultaneously at the exact same your moments with small teams of terrorists dressed as

00:06:32.220 civilians trying to blend in and one of them being the habad two hotels a train station but overwhelmed

00:06:39.420 the systems and there are you know totally at a different scale a lot of similarities between the

00:06:44.700 invasion of israel on october 7th and the mumbai attacks on how it kind of overloaded the system

00:06:51.500 yeah yeah that was um it's all one thing that's fascinating about this is that um to my knowledge

00:07:00.220 india did not respond am i right about that at least i haven't heard about what india has done in

00:07:06.700 response not in a direct action because you know it was verified by an intelligence that it was a

00:07:14.060 pakistani-led operation so really a state-backed operation but using these proxy forces you know and

00:07:21.900 this was a you know that traveled from pakistan into india to conduct the attack there was a lot of

00:07:27.340 political things that happened to include you know demanding responsibility but there was such

00:07:32.620 plausible deniability it was literally frustrating with the you know the terrorist group who did it

00:07:38.060 but you're right no direct action as there are lots of you know history there between the india

00:07:43.900 and pakistan and the concern of just like we've seen other places the concern of escalation

00:07:48.860 in that direct attack but there's a this is the kind of the iran situation in the middle east too

00:07:53.900 there is always this plausible deniability even if in these cases where it can be proven that

00:07:58.700 that the terrorists were trained financed and launched by a state actor okay so on to

00:08:08.220 october 7th and gaza i was thinking we would start our conversation with the war in gaza just so post

00:08:16.700 israel's response to october 7th but is there anything you want to say about october 7th itself

00:08:22.380 before israel did anything in response sure i think it's i i spent a lot of time walking

00:08:28.540 the ground on october 7th from my lens right as somebody who studied urban combat from mumbai to

00:08:35.980 all wars i think that the world kind of got a miss really still has it wrong on what happened on

00:08:41.420 october 7th so i i've done a lot of work on walking the ground and going to all the different sites and

00:08:46.380 understanding the scale the intention the magnitude the tactics and everything from october 7th i think the

00:08:54.060 world you know wants to put it in the terrorist bucket right to put it in the bucket with 9 11

00:08:59.740 26 11 or the mumbai attacks and other terrorist attacks and while yes it there are some similarities

00:09:05.020 but it's it's more like a full-scale invasion i mean there are over 4 000 you know both hamas and

00:09:11.660 palestinian civilians across the border between israel and gaza 22 breach sites along the border wall

00:09:18.300 4 000 4 000 rockets launched in the first few hours with the intention of moving much farther north than

00:09:25.180 they did i mean it was a and i've struggled with what was october 7th and as from a military lens it is

00:09:32.940 as clear as an invasion as you can get interesting it's somewhat confounded just optically and conceptually

00:09:41.500 by the fact that as you just pointed out that there were hamas you know fighters i mean not not

00:09:48.780 properly thought of as soldiers in in the state actor sense perhaps but they were um you know obvious

00:09:55.740 insurgents but then as you pointed out there were almost as many or even as many or more palestinian

00:10:02.300 civilians who came across the border and participated in the violence to one or another degree how do you

00:10:08.780 think about that i mean it we all want frameworks in which to think about it i think about it as in

00:10:15.180 a war lens it's hard in this situation okay what was gaza it was it a state and was this a the launch

00:10:22.540 of a state attack right it it's not so it falls into these two buckets of whether internationally armed

00:10:29.580 conflict or non-internationally armed conflict but i view it like i said as an invasion with different

00:10:35.260 forces yeah the first wave of forces were these hamas nukba some even wearing uniform forces with

00:10:42.540 clear instructions i mean they had guidebooks on how to create as much suffering they had guidebooks on

00:10:49.180 how to wear their gopro cameras there's just so much uniqueness but i view if you cross the border

00:10:54.700 i view you as a combatant really so in in war there's two categories non-combatant and a combatant and

00:11:00.780 yes you can get into like illegal combatant and all of these things but if if somebody crossed the

00:11:06.860 border from gaza into israel with the purpose of partaking in the hostilities they immediately

00:11:11.820 make themselves a combatant yeah so let's move forward into and i think as we talk here i'd like

00:11:19.980 both of us to be alert to any topics about which we think many people are confused so if i just raise

00:11:29.500 something which about which you think there there's a lot of misunderstanding out there in the public

00:11:35.260 please flag it and let's linger on it so that we don't miss any opportunities here to rectify some of

00:11:40.780 the confusion so now that the war has started we're talking now where there's been a a lull in the

00:11:47.180 fighting and and really the question the open question still perhaps it'll still be open when we air

00:11:54.060 this is whether or not is the idf is going to go into rafa i'm sure there's there's some conflict

00:12:01.260 happening even as we speak but there there's definitely been a lull in the fighting what do

00:12:05.740 we know about the war in gaza and how do we know it at this point i mean just how much how is information

00:12:12.540 getting out well how do you view the quality of the information on some level this is the most

00:12:17.900 most witnessed conflict in human history judging from social media but in other ways that you you

00:12:25.500 know we know that there's an astounding amount of misinformation and and confusion about it what

00:12:31.260 what is going on in gaza and how do we know what is going on sure i think i think that's a great question

00:12:37.260 and it's hard to say you know from from the time from october 7th till today have been how have we known

00:12:43.500 what is going on and how has that shaped our you know basically our information about the war and i

00:12:49.900 agree with you this is we used to have these terms like tick tock wars they're calling this the first

00:12:55.580 open source war after ukraine but the evolution of being able to basically be bombarded by information

00:13:03.100 not through kind of the traditional means but through social media and other aspects where we can see

00:13:09.260 into the battle continuously but we're also looking through a soda straw and a lot of people are

00:13:14.060 interpreting what they're seeing where i agree with you we can really start from october 7th we talked

00:13:20.220 about that on how i think people have gotten that wrong on it was a terrorist attack it was you know

00:13:25.900 oriented towards the military all these different immediate disinformation campaigns that seem to be

00:13:32.700 be gaining traction to sticking even in israel's response but once you know on october 8th israel

00:13:40.620 declared war against tamas so that's a really great framework a state because they went on the news and

00:13:47.420 made a formal declaration of war against tamas in gaza because of what happened on october 7th that's

00:13:54.060 pretty straightforward they set forth their goals which again as time has gone in different media messages or

00:14:02.380 information operations what we call them you know social media trends or whatever there's been so

00:14:07.900 much of the truth that has been translated you asked me how do we know what we know so for like

00:14:14.460 october 7th we know because hamas uploaded all their videos a lot of time in real time so we we can

00:14:20.940 pretty much you know people were starting to make their own opinions on october 7th based on

00:14:25.020 the overwhelming information being uploaded but it's really interesting how despite even hamas's videos

00:14:31.180 everybody formed their own opinion on you know it was resistant it was oriented towards this the

00:14:36.220 military it there wasn't this you know no rape happened all these things despite the overwhelming

00:14:41.740 evidence we all had access to is all that video still up there or has it been in some ways taken down

00:14:49.340 no you can go to like you can just go to october there's actually a video i forget the name of

00:14:54.700 them like october 7th dot com and um where people have collected unfortunately all the hamas video

00:15:00.780 they can find and put it on as a record of because you know you as the thread of x or telegram whatever

00:15:07.580 it can get lost in the threads but you know people have it's all still available i saw the video that

00:15:14.300 the israeli government put together um i saw it you know back in november and it was really shocking and i

00:15:20.860 wrote about how much it it jarred me despite how much i've seen of war how much you know my own

00:15:26.220 experiences yeah i haven't seen that video and i perhaps i should i think i've been sparing myself

00:15:32.060 the experience but um what did surprise you about it one i one of the biggest surprises was just the

00:15:39.820 unique because of the fact that hamas recorded so much of the atrocities they were doing but also the

00:15:47.180 fact that you know there were so many sensors as we call them you know traffic cameras dashboard

00:15:52.060 cameras victim cell phones the what israel did which nobody has access to unless they've seen this

00:15:59.420 video was to take all those different points of view and then put them in time and location so like

00:16:06.540 if you're at the nova music festival the video shows you the hamas gopro approaching the festival

00:16:13.180 it shows you the dash camera of somebody they're trying to get away and the and of the frightened

00:16:17.740 teenager who's recording it it brings it all together which i think really creates this very

00:16:22.380 mixed reality experience of which is unique to war reporting like i've watched you know my fill of

00:16:30.860 evil things happening around the world but how this was put together i think was really unique so it

00:16:35.340 really jarred me i mean other things that i saw in the video that were very unique to me was like the

00:16:42.220 video of hamas rolling through the the border really jubilant about what they were about to do

00:16:49.580 and i've led i've led a lot of soldiers into combat and that's not normal even for you know for

00:16:54.860 soldiers for anybody to be really excited euphoric about what they were about to do and then lastly i

00:17:02.060 found some of the videos of like the children crying out in pain there's one scene where there's two

00:17:08.780 young boys um the hamas members had just killed the father they had brought them back into the house

00:17:13.980 and you can hear the boys moaning which is something i as a soldier have heard you know enemy combatants

00:17:19.420 do on the battlefield like it's like the death the death moan i call it and to hear that coming from a

00:17:24.540 boy was really traumatic but i've also seen you know innocent civilians being caught in between you know in

00:17:32.140 war and how the soldiers will overwhelmingly stop to give aid and to have a little boy crying out his

00:17:39.740 eyes missing his dad's dead and for the hamas member to be standing there like shut up be quiet

00:17:46.380 and then goes to the fridge and that's the scene that everybody talks about where he grabs the the

00:17:49.820 coke out of the fridge and starts drinking it that was really you know very unique

00:17:53.900 yeah i i was just um we're talking now and uh on the day that um cheryl sandberg released her

00:18:02.620 documentary on um uh the violence against women on october 7th that's available on youtube uh and i

00:18:10.460 just started watching it i only got maybe 15 minutes in before we had to jump on the microphones here but

00:18:17.020 it shows some of the footage which i had seen before of which many people have seen and i really think

00:18:22.380 everyone should see of of some of the hostages being dragged across the border into gaza and you

00:18:27.900 know some of the young women who almost certainly have been raped i mean there's there's one that

00:18:34.220 who's got obviously blood around her pelvic area on her pants and actually it looks like her her

00:18:40.460 achilles tendons might have been cut which is a diabolical detail if true but the thing that's so

00:18:46.780 striking about so much of this footage of the hostages being dragged across the borders that

00:18:54.780 so many of the people in the scene are absolutely ecstatic and they're you know they're you know

00:19:02.700 basically all you hear are shouts of Allahu Akbar and it's coming from you know i mean i guess many of

00:19:10.060 these people certainly some of the people are official members of hamas but judging from the

00:19:16.380 the sheer numbers in many of these shots it really seems like a lot of these people are just palestinian

00:19:23.500 civilians who are getting caught up in the in the mob violence but it does strike me as unusual i mean

00:19:30.300 it's very hard there i can imagine a lot of things you know i can imagine based on some experience of

00:19:37.100 being a victim and you know wanting vengeance and you know i can imagine being on the other side of

00:19:42.860 violence even even wrongful violence but what i find it very difficult to imagine is a scenario where

00:19:50.780 an obvious non-combatant you know in this case a girl or a mother clutching two children to her breast

00:19:58.380 being taken hostage and finding the taking of these hostages a cause for celebration right like

00:20:06.940 this is the win i've been hoping for this is the thing that's going to get me shrieking to heaven

00:20:12.700 in jubilation that we finally grabbed one of these you know mistreated girls who's you know already

00:20:20.220 bloodied may be grievously injured in some cases in some cases dead where you have people you know

00:20:24.780 rushing forward to spit upon the corpses of again in many in many cases obvious non-combatants i mean

00:20:31.260 you can you can understand it you know if this you know really fully lean into the principle of

00:20:36.300 charity here perhaps you can understand it if these are soldiers being taken hostage but when you have

00:20:42.140 a woman clutching her kids being dragged onto a motorcycle and you have people shrieking in jubilation

00:20:49.340 over this i have a um i mean i know why i think people are capable of this but it's um you know i would

00:20:58.060 say you have to believe some very specific things about the moral order in the universe and your place

00:21:03.580 in it to find these sorts of moments the fulfillment of your aspirations right and a cause for happiness not

00:21:12.620 not not grim murderous determination or sadism or but just joy and so it's something i think people

00:21:21.900 find it very hard to interpret these scenes and and i think they've just averted their their eyes from

00:21:27.180 them but they do suggest that any bright line we want to draw between you know evil mustache twirling

00:21:35.740 terrorists you know i.e the core members of hamas and other palestinians is in fact difficult to draw

00:21:45.580 i'm just wondering how you view those scenes because they do strike me as surprising in ways that echo

00:21:53.500 the surprise you just expressed over the jubilation of the of the combatants coming across the border as

00:22:00.620 as kind of a non-standard mood for soldiers yeah it's an interesting so it's not the first time i've

00:22:07.100 seen it to be truthful now those who crossed the border and engaged in the activities in any way to

00:22:13.820 include the the looters who even came forward and walked over the dead children's bodies and took their

00:22:20.380 clothing back into gaza like i'm a very law of war rule of law a realist basically so have i seen

00:22:30.060 similar of course it's this disgusting to see it reminded me of you know scenes of mogadishu 1993

00:22:39.340 the entire population celebrating the death of american soldiers fallujah 2004 the entire

00:22:45.900 seems like the entire city coming out to dismember americans burn them drag them hang them from their

00:22:54.460 bridge and celebrate it's not yes i 100 agree with you it's a massive problem with your islamic

00:23:01.660 radicalization of populations and to where you can bring yourself to be celebrating the rape of women

00:23:07.660 and taking the babies as hostages there's so many fundamental issues with that but i also draw a

00:23:16.780 clear line because i understand the history of war and this is again where i think people have gotten it

00:23:21.180 wrong they think that to think that those videos didn't lead to like israel's quest for vengeance

00:23:28.780 and and the way they act that is all stemming off of what happened on october 7th i strongly believe

00:23:35.100 from being on the ground you asked me how do i get my information or other people from being on the

00:23:40.700 ground with the idf that is also not how soldiers approach even after you know the battle of fallujah or

00:23:48.220 other incidents which is fairly similar and the difficulty of distinguishing between okay who's

00:23:53.420 a combatant or non-combatant innocent civilian it doesn't lead to nations or like the idf in this case

00:24:03.340 where no matter what they do people think they're intentionally trying to target people because of

00:24:08.540 those videos which is not the reality on the ground yeah i mean can you imagine the reverse case of

00:24:15.180 the idf dragging obvious non-combatant women and children out of gaza across the border into israel

00:24:24.780 and you know random israelis celebrating their rape and abuse it's just there's some glaring asymmetries

00:24:33.340 here which people are losing sight of there's just no i'm sure we'll get into the details of what the idf

00:24:41.740 has done and what what they may have done wrong and i really have no doubt that there are examples of

00:24:47.900 war crimes to be found in the war in gaza on the idf side because it would be it seems like it would be

00:24:54.220 impossible for some soldier or soldiers not to have gone haywire in in certain circumstances right and

00:24:59.900 this is just the nature of war as i understand it but what i don't think you would find is an appetite

00:25:06.380 among the israelis to have raped non-combatants paraded before jeering crowds in tel aviv there is

00:25:14.140 just a cultural asymmetry here that is quite glaring and almost never remarked upon 100 and i agree with

00:25:22.540 you this is really that you know the misinformation that is so shocking that what you have so much

00:25:31.340 misunderstanding of who the israelis are as in the idf the people of israel how there is an aspect of

00:25:39.180 of course the law of war i'm sure we'll talk about following the law of war in all of its intricacies in

00:25:45.020 the execution of a war but also the the moral ethical code of your society i mean militaries

00:25:52.380 are a reflection of their societies so like you're right the asymmetry here is that you think that the

00:25:57.980 israel society would be okay with any of that and clearly they're not and they want to hold soldiers

00:26:03.900 if they do go wrong and were accountable there's so much of that that is that's not who we are

00:26:09.500 that people don't understand that militaries take into war the reflection of their society's

00:26:14.300 values so there's so much misinformation out there that it becomes confusing to people who have

00:26:19.980 never been there they couldn't tell you what the the difference between gaza and and the west bank is

00:26:25.340 they they couldn't tell you what the size of israel is or what there's so much they don't know but

00:26:29.500 they form these immediate you know hardened and emphatic opinions about that's just what israel does

00:26:37.980 like what are you talking about so back to the information question let's just

00:26:44.540 focus on the the raw numbers here how many people have been killed in gaza and what is the proportion

00:26:51.580 of combatants to non-combatants and because one thing we're dealing with here is that for the longest

00:26:58.060 time people have simply been restating numbers that have come straight out of the so-called ministry of

00:27:05.580 health which is really hamas in gaza you know i don't think anyone can doubt that many thousands of

00:27:11.660 people have died and that many thousands of non-combatants have died but what what do we

00:27:16.380 know about the numbers and the proportion or do we simply actually not know with any confidence at

00:27:22.620 this point yeah it's a great question it's interesting how many times i've gotten the

00:27:26.300 question unique to this war only what is the combatant to civilian kill ratio it's just i of

00:27:34.700 course haven't studied so many urban battles can tell you what it was in the past um i can tell you for

00:27:41.180 so the question was how many have died there the answer is nobody knows but for some reason unique we

00:27:47.500 we you know war is a contest of will we have to fight what the narrative is so because unique to

00:27:54.140 this war alone and and i i don't say this based on opinion just but empirical evidence this is the

00:28:00.620 first war in history where anybody has had a running count of the civilian casualties down to the single

00:28:07.420 digit in real time i mean if you just imagine a fake running account correct i mean we're taking the

00:28:12.780 actual opinion of a third party in who is affiliated with the enemy hamas so the gaza health ministry

00:28:20.380 is a hamas because hamas wasn't just a military force it was the government and you couldn't be part of

00:28:26.300 the institution if you're not it's complex but to get a number from within the environment from the

00:28:32.300 enemy and say that's the number that the entire world runs with with no caveats one it's physically

00:28:38.220 impossible to know how many civilians have died in gaza it has never been done in the history of war

00:28:44.540 the greatest battle since world war ii was the battle of massul in 2016 and 17 and a year after

00:28:51.260 the battle the iraqi government still did not have a number in which how many civilians had died

00:28:56.620 now it went all the way from 9 000 to 40 000 the mayor of the city said it was over 40 000 because of

00:29:03.580 how many people are in the rubble how many people are unaccounted for who left and there's no report

00:29:09.340 on where they went you can imagine in a in a very dense urban environment like how could you possibly

00:29:14.860 have a number but if i ran with the numbers that we all use so let's say the gaza health ministry as

00:29:21.500 we're talking says 33 000 civilians have died actually it's not let me caveat myself is that the gaza health

00:29:29.020 ministry says that 33 000 palestinians have died in gaza since october 7th that number if we are

00:29:36.620 truthful in and we used hamas's numbers or the gaza health ministry's numbers it accounts for every

00:29:43.340 death that has happened in gaza no matter the cause it is it includes all hamas members anybody who died

00:29:50.380 of natural causes anybody who died actually from hamas's hands because of the 12 000 rockets that

00:29:57.340 hamas has launched out of gaza towards israel since october 7th 20 of those have landed inside

00:30:03.260 of gaza and killed many palestinian people of gaza but if we ran with the 33 000 which includes everybody

00:30:10.060 has died and we took israel's number because if we're going to believe hamas why don't we believe

00:30:14.380 israel who says given our battle damage assessments we believe we've killed 12 000 hamas combatants

00:30:21.020 so you subtract 12 000 per 33 000 you get about a one enemy to two if not one to one of enemy to

00:30:30.460 civilian ratio which would be historically low to any urban battle and this is a war not a battle so

00:30:37.340 it's actually really interesting how somebody will try to take a battle from the past especially the

00:30:41.900 last 30 years and compare it to the war in gaza which includes you know like 10 massive urban battles

00:30:48.540 together so that they they aggregate the numbers to kind of tell the message they want it would still

00:30:53.980 be a historically low given the all the context of urban combat where you have a civilian population

00:31:00.060 where no matter what you do many of them still stay you're trying to identify separate enemy from

00:31:06.860 civilian or combatant to non-combatant like the battle of massul where you know it took nine months for

00:31:13.740 100 000 iraqi security forces to get four to five thousand isis members out of the city and they

00:31:21.180 killed 10 000 civilians in in the process of that nine month battle to liberate the city so that's a

00:31:27.500 one to two ratio it was so but this is i mean the fact that every person in that i ever interview

00:31:34.380 asked me this question is really shocking because it's it's never been the question that's not how the

00:31:39.740 law of war works but we have this number in our head like clearly this means everything that's

00:31:45.100 going on is illegal and israel is purposely killing civilians because look how the high the number is

00:31:50.620 irrelevant of the context of the war like we're not even talking about the numbers the challenge

00:31:55.500 that the idea faced in gaza nobody wants to talk about that like the 40 000 hamas members tens of

00:32:02.620 thousands of other terrorist members buried in 400 miles of tunnels intermixed between a population

00:32:09.660 of two million who egypt won't let into egypt there's so many complexities to this battle that

00:32:15.260 no military has faced in the history of war but nobody cares they just want to know what's the civilian

00:32:19.900 death toll and there is no number yeah yeah well obviously i asked the question very much in the spirit of

00:32:27.820 echoing the the observation you just made which is that it's the very question shows how upside down

00:32:37.100 everyone's analysis of this conflict is and it and became really immediately but even before israel

00:32:44.140 responded there was already a massive distortion of moral and political priorities in how people were

00:32:52.860 thinking about the ensuing violence and i was i i just want to continue to flag what is unique about this

00:32:59.260 and and just the ways in which people focus on i mean it's almost like we have at this moment

00:33:07.980 something like a billion people maybe two billion people maybe three billion people for the first time

00:33:14.780 discovering that war itself is intolerable and the onus is on israel really and the onus is on the jews

00:33:24.300 if you want to get down to it but uh there's so there's a kind of a layer of anti-semitism here which

00:33:29.100 we can table it's really not my focus but i mean when you ask about what was it what is the origin of all

00:33:34.620 of the double standards here and the weird inversions of priorities and the you know for the first time in

00:33:40.620 human history the seizing upon details that no one ever thought about in any other conflict

00:33:45.980 you know the standards to which the idf is being held which no other army has ever been held you

00:33:51.660 know especially in the face of the challenges they're facing which we're going to talk about

00:33:56.300 which you just began to reference i.e 400 miles of tunnels the strangeness of of all of this is

00:34:03.260 something that i want to keep in view but i do also want to just simply deliver the information

00:34:08.220 insofar as we have it and to concede whatever can be conceded to the people who are horrified by

00:34:16.780 the images they're seeing coming out of gaza because it's it's understandable that people

00:34:21.980 are horrified and especially if they're for the first time looking at the evidence of war the evidence

00:34:27.580 of urban war as i've said before there really there really is no argument for the justness of any war

00:34:33.980 in the and it's even necessity that makes sense of the image of a child being pulled out of rubble

00:34:43.660 right it's unacceptable whatever the rationale for it and some billions of people are having that

00:34:50.380 experience on a hourly basis because of social media and it's all being framed in the the most

00:34:58.700 invidious way possible against israel and against you know support for israel defending itself in

00:35:05.660 this case well let's i guess a high level question here it is because of this imagery and because of

00:35:12.380 the way the discussion is being framed again largely on social media there's this widespread

00:35:19.340 allegation against israel and the idf that they're guilty not only of war crimes but the very war is itself

00:35:25.980 a crime and they're they're guilty of genocide they're guilty of the collective punishment of the

00:35:32.700 palestinians the deliberate murder of non-combatants and even the deliberate murder of journalists and aid

00:35:39.340 workers right so they're like when you have you know the the seven employees of jose andreas's uh

00:35:46.780 humanitarian organization killed it is analyzed so as to suggest that israel has intentionally

00:35:55.100 killed those aid workers as though you know the killing of those aid workers worked to the advantage

00:36:01.180 of israel in some way i mean it's just like you know it's a it would be a colossal act of self-harm

00:36:06.380 for them to have killed those aid workers on purpose given the consequences for world opinion but

00:36:13.100 people seem to effortlessly interpret every casualty as something that the idf has intended

00:36:19.660 what if anything in this downpour of disparagement of the idf and israel is true i mean what what is

00:36:29.820 the worst thing that can be honestly said about how israel has been waging its war in gaza so the only

00:36:37.980 thing that i can say would be the most honest fact-based criticism of israel is that it has done a

00:36:44.860 horrible job on fighting the counter narrative of what they're actually doing one of the main

00:36:52.220 reasons that is is because they did not embed foreign media and journalists and this is the

00:36:57.900 example i usually give when i'm teaching a class the first battle of fallujah 2004 you know four

00:37:03.500 american citizens were killed the u.s president orders the military in to get those account you know who

00:37:09.500 did it accountable the world says that there is too much use of force too many civilians are being

00:37:15.500 hurt they're being they're committing war crimes so six days into the battle the u.s military is

00:37:20.540 defeated and told to stop because of the perception the use of force very minor example of the totality

00:37:27.660 that is the war against hamas and gaza but it's a great example where they they were defeated and there

00:37:34.620 were zero media embeds in the first battle of fallujah six months later when they redid the

00:37:39.740 same operation 60 media embeds so that's the honest criticism but i could help you kind of go through

00:37:47.420 every narrative every accusation to include the targeting of journalists aid workers or civilians in

00:37:55.260 general where the u.s government not even me john spencer who's been there but doesn't have access to all

00:38:01.100 the classified information said there's based on their investigation there is zero evidence of a

00:38:06.300 single event in which israel intentionally caused harm to civilians journalists or even the world central

00:38:14.540 kitchen event where people don't want to accept the fact that accidents do happen especially in the

00:38:21.900 fog and friction of urban combat which people just don't have a clue of like of what what it actually

00:38:28.620 takes and they get to this point where they interpret situations right you and i think that was really

00:38:33.180 important you said that because even a the way that war crimes work from the ridiculous use of the word

00:38:39.740 genocide a big factor is to intention based on the information you have at the moment you take your

00:38:46.380 action not the results so everybody sees you know footage of of gaza especially northern gaza or sees

00:38:53.900 like you said the unfortunate every one of them is a travesty a civilian destiny they interpret well

00:39:01.100 of course that means israel did all that on purpose and that there was no alternative which i think could

00:39:07.340 be a a part of the conversation is that people who have no information on how war works like you said

00:39:13.340 people woke up to not the syrian war not to the last 30 years of wars not to real massacres

00:39:21.820 russia taking 20 000 babies out of ukraine they woke up to and want to start interpreting based

00:39:27.980 on their knowledge the wars that they see based on short clips and videos or they think that there's

00:39:33.740 an alternative which i actually think is i've been arguing with literally like national leaders who

00:39:39.340 have propositioned that there was another way and that's not the history of warfare one example i'll

00:39:45.260 give is there was a you know a very another news story of israel has used more 2 000 pound bombs than

00:39:53.020 any other military in the last 30 years which is a true statement but it is given as a negative

00:40:00.220 to paint the picture that israel had a choice it could have not used those bombs it could have just

00:40:05.420 not did bombing at all and the actual evidence shows that that has been a a feeling between in

00:40:13.180 many wars that if you just bomb less there'll be less damage less civilian casualties it's actually

00:40:18.940 the inverse like in the 1945 battle of manila where there were 4 000 americans and uk internees

00:40:27.180 prisoners of war being held by the japanese in the city of manila and the general general macarthur said

00:40:33.020 you no air power i don't want you destroying manila i don't want inappropriate civilian casualties

00:40:39.660 and still the the military moved forward and there were a hundred thousand civilian deaths

00:40:43.980 because of the complexity of urban combat you think that if there would have been just less

00:40:48.060 bombing or the fact that the actual nomenclature of a 2 000 pound bomb we haven't talked about it yet

00:40:53.580 but one of the things the difficulty for the idf is that the enemy there's no enemy on the surface

00:40:58.860 they're underground and they're deep underground so yes israel has used more 2 000 pound bombs because

00:41:04.940 they're the only military in the history of war who's faced an enemy so deep underground under

00:41:10.780 civilian structures in which a tool like that is the weapon that can get to that military target

00:41:18.300 okay so talk to me about i guess you can talk about urban warfare generically and guerrilla warfare

00:41:25.180 generically but what is unusual about this war what is israel facing that we didn't face in

00:41:33.180 iraq or afghanistan or didn't face to the same degree and what is novel about what they have done

00:41:42.060 in the direction of being more scrupulous more more averse to producing collateral damage than we

00:41:49.660 or any other army has been in the past sure if you're going to say just that that all that israel

00:41:55.900 has really done wrong is to fail to anticipate how colossally badly the the pr war was going to go

00:42:04.060 for them and they failed to embed journalists who could give credible real-time information about all

00:42:10.700 the efforts they're making to not kill the wrong people and i agree it's been you know i you know i

00:42:16.140 don't know if it would have mattered had they done that i certainly hope it would have mattered but

00:42:20.780 i agree that they have not done a good job at all of changing the narrative but if that's their only

00:42:28.220 crime what have they done that has been scrupulous and compassionate and beyond the usual course of

00:42:37.420 action for an army launched from a democratic state into combat sure so two easy actually things to pick

00:42:47.100 apart one is what did they face that no military has faced and what did they do that no military has

00:42:51.660 done so on what they have faced one is just the proximity to the enemy right that this is not

00:42:58.300 hundreds of miles away so if you if you want to use a u.s military example it just fails step one

00:43:04.540 just a proximity to the actual national security the existential threat so that's october 7th right but

00:43:11.100 the war is being waged in eyesight of the homes of those you know the size of the combatants so 4 000

00:43:18.780 combatants launching rockets over the head of the military so no military in modern history has faced

00:43:26.540 a combatant who is launching 12 000 rockets over their heads headed for their homes behind them the

00:43:33.180 tunnels of course so you know this this what hamas had built over 15 years hasn't been seen in war

00:43:39.980 period yes there's been tunnels in war before but the fact that there were 400 miles of tunnels ranging

00:43:45.980 from 15 feet to 250 feet underground where no military munition could reach but solely under civilian

00:43:54.220 sites so civilian homes hospitals schools u.n facilities on purpose so they could deploy this what they call this

00:44:03.820 human shield strategy because you know non-state actors terrorists whoever have learned from the

00:44:10.300 history of really you know modern wars in which you have a military who follows the law of war against a

00:44:17.180 combatant who doesn't that they use the laws which in urban combat you immediately enter and you already

00:44:23.580 have restrictions on the use of force right you can't that's the underlying thing is do not target

00:44:28.780 civilians and only target military sites and that's really hard to do in urban areas but there's

00:44:34.540 lots of rules that we can talk about on that so hamas deployed this human shield strategy but also a

00:44:41.100 human sacrifice strategy where and i don't know why the world just won't take for on its head what

00:44:49.260 hamas says like literally they tell you these things and the world's like yeah but they're

00:44:53.260 the fact that they say they want as many of their civilians to die as possible and one evidence of

00:44:59.900 that is the fact that there are 400 miles of tunnels in gaza and not one civilian is allowed in them

00:45:05.820 the entire population 2.2 million could fit in hamas's tunnels with ease where you take in another

00:45:12.860 example in another war like ukraine's war where the civilians did seek refuge in the subway tunnels and

00:45:18.460 underground and the hostages so the fact that you know that hamas immediately took over 200

00:45:23.180 40 hostages which really gets to the time variable right so in understanding the challenge

00:45:28.380 that the idea faced you have to factor in you know the rockets the tunnels the hostages which

00:45:34.300 really get to your alternatives on well just wait just pursue some other strategy and just leave your

00:45:40.540 hostages in captivity yeah so all those variables no military has faced that in modern times none and

00:45:46.940 i could you know i could go back to world war ii and give you some variables like the battle of manila

00:45:53.340 1945 the 1950 battle of seoul which will get you close but not all those variables and especially not the

00:46:00.780 variables in which israel relies on the support of the united states now all war is a contest of will

00:46:06.060 so israel knowing that of course everybody agreed it had the right to of self-defense and to launch the

00:46:12.460 war but to to know you have to maintain the will of the international community in how you respond

00:46:20.220 that's a little different than let's say post 9 11 when of course the united states saw a coalition but

00:46:25.980 it was going to and it did take action now on what did the idf do which again is unique to actually and

00:46:35.420 novel in preventing we call it civilian harm mitigation so everything you do to

00:46:40.940 to not have civilians hurt and the biggest thing that really the only thing that has been

00:46:48.140 very effective in wars in modern history or even world war ii is if the conditions allow

00:46:55.100 wait and evacuate the cities of the civilians so this is a very like the biggest thing you can do so

00:47:02.380 israel waited after october 7th one it had to mobilize but then it is still waited three more weeks

00:47:09.020 and sent notice especially the northern gaza where the the greatest meat of these 40 000 hamas members

00:47:16.700 organized in 30 different battalions the greatest really population of them were in northern gaza so

00:47:21.980 it evacuated the entire northern gaza and they got criticized for doing that and telling this the

00:47:27.660 civilians to please leave these combat areas and they evacuated 850 000 of the million population in

00:47:34.780 northern gaza and they were criticized for that but it was it was the standard and how you do that

00:47:39.340 through the dropping of flyers was pretty straightforward of course israel because they

00:47:44.060 have the capability and they've developed what nobody else in war does started also using phone calls

00:47:50.300 text messages pre-recorded voice messages to help with those evacuations then they deployed drones with

00:47:56.860 speakers and they deployed speakers um dropped out of pair you know from the sky on parachutes to help

00:48:03.340 evacuate with a very high level of fidelity so that way when you enter the environment you there's less

00:48:08.540 civilians caught in the middle of it so they waited and i heard reports that hamas tried to prevent

00:48:14.460 people from evacuating to make their human shield and human sacrifice strategy more effectively are those

00:48:22.140 reports credible 100 i mean and again we have to believe those reports as much as we believe the

00:48:26.860 other reports of of course the idf told the civilians what road to use and where to go and hamas targeted

00:48:35.580 them or sent them messages to the cars preventing the civilians from leaving and and most of that comes

00:48:41.820 from the civilians in the environment where the information comes and as when you say hamas targeted

00:48:46.540 those yes points of egress do you mean like hamas snipers shot people on those roads correct and

00:48:52.540 and bombed mortared those roads and this is the thing where people will say the other report is that

00:48:59.500 israel targeted the exact areas in which they told the civilians to go which is a you know usually

00:49:06.380 misinformation as a kernel of truth where like hamas would set up a rocket firing position next to a

00:49:11.740 humanitarian zone right and then launch rockets so israel would respond to that and then the world

00:49:16.300 would only pick up on israel is targeting the humanitarian areas they told civilians to go

00:49:21.180 to get out of the combat area yeah really the the only you know that's a safer area but hamas again

00:49:27.260 using the human shield has wanted that narrative and this is also the the difference too to hamas

00:49:33.900 as a combatant as opposed to most other urban combatants even isis right so isis um in the battle

00:49:39.660 of massul used human shields but its purpose wasn't to get as many civilians killed as possible

00:49:45.420 nor was there a way to really hold the people into the area so this again gets to the the

00:49:51.500 uniqueness to this war is the fact that the civilians can't get out into egypt but they were identified

00:49:57.900 this this place in southern gaza that was identified which is now the al-mawasi humanitarian zone it was

00:50:05.020 picked because it was one of the few areas that the idf believed there were less hamas tunnels or hamas

00:50:12.380 military in in in general and initially the the civilians wouldn't go there but yes the hamas and

00:50:19.420 really we can talk about what hamas did during the temporary ceasefire that happened for the hostage

00:50:24.540 exchange which nobody comments on is that during that ceasefire hamas sent hundreds of thousands of

00:50:31.900 civilians into areas and repopulated them with over 300 of the civilians that were there before the war

00:50:39.740 so like in khan yunis hamas increased the population of khan yunis by 300 percent before the idf could

00:50:46.060 start their operation in that area hmm what what do you make of the difference you know albeit a subtle

00:50:53.340 one in how isis or the islamic state used human shields you know versus how hamas is doing it you say

00:51:01.980 that the islamic state wasn't seeking the though they used human shields they weren't seeking to maximize

00:51:08.780 the loss of the loss of civilian life i mean the only way i can interpret that is to imagine that

00:51:14.060 hamas recognizes that in this conflict with israel the role that global opinion plays is you know is

00:51:23.420 a lever that they really have in hand and can easily pull and the way to pull it is to maximize

00:51:29.660 the loss of civilian life because you know they know israel will be blamed for every single

00:51:34.940 body and that the blaming of israel will matter in a way that i can imagine the islamic state did

00:51:42.860 not imagine they had that same kind of leverage with in fighting the u.s and and you know much less

00:51:49.500 you know local iraqi and you know forces in you know being led by the u.s yeah it's a great question

00:51:56.940 as you really have to look at in war the strategy of both sides so this has been trying to have people

00:52:02.860 understand that the hamas military strategy in the war is not to defeat the idea as in in military

00:52:10.940 force it is also not to hold terrain just in those two objectives it's different than isis who was

00:52:17.100 trying to hold the terrain that it had captured to include massul which is the capital of their

00:52:21.980 self-proclaimed caliphate they were really trying to hold the train the hamas strategy in accordance

00:52:28.540 with what they have done has always been about just biding time and why they built this vast

00:52:35.340 tunnel network was to be in the tunnels when idf came i don't think they assumed that israel would

00:52:41.980 maintain the will to continue even this far but it was always about biding time for the world to stop

00:52:48.060 the idf like which has happened in israel's previous wars isis didn't have that strategy as their military

00:52:55.260 strategy or their grand strategy where hamas again again according to them their grand strategy is

00:53:01.820 all this is just in the pursuit of a political objective to israel not existing and for there to

00:53:07.580 be a palestinian state which includes everything that israel is currently sitting on right now

00:53:12.380 that gets into this military aspect where you see a vast difference between isis and hamas both use

00:53:17.900 terror tactics one was a full-out government of this region received billions of dollars to improve

00:53:24.220 the region funneled most of that money into building this terror military that had the intention

00:53:31.980 of just causing the idea to not be successful and that has been where again they say that the

00:53:38.780 civilians should die to achieve that goal and they're fine with the all of them dying in the pursuit

00:53:45.980 of this like you said that there's a fundamental misunderstanding of what hamas and this radical

00:53:52.220 interpretation of islam which leads them to pursue this strategy in real time yeah it's um i don't

00:53:59.900 think i can really recover from my astonishment that people can't see this more easily than they than

00:54:06.940 they have i mean when you look at the protests on college campuses which now have devolved into in

00:54:12.940 many cases explicit support for hamas right they're not even trying to draw a line between the palestinian

00:54:20.300 cause and hamas right there's just needless to say there's no concern for a return of hostages and

00:54:26.540 all these calls for a ceasefire but they're just actually so you know they're just nakedly supporting

00:54:31.660 hamas and yet what should be obvious to everyone is that there's nobody who cares less about saving the

00:54:39.660 lives of palestinian non-combatants than hamas right i mean this is when you're looking to see who is

00:54:47.100 the the most callous about the lives of palestinian children it is uh sinwar and his colleagues down

00:54:54.940 there underground and i just find it so remarkable that people have you know either lost sight of that

00:55:01.260 or have never seen it and that we're seeing it is somehow doesn't matter in how they're interpreting

00:55:06.860 the situation yeah i mean this is the uniqueness i agree with you it's it's it's shocking and concerning

00:55:13.740 where our world's best academic institutions are creating the dumbest students who can't

00:55:19.740 critically think or get access to their own information this has been the you're basically

00:55:24.300 the survey-based analysis of the protesters like do you know which river in the sea means do you know

00:55:30.620 who hamas is what do you know what happened on october 7th it's it's just shocking but i will give

00:55:37.180 you have to analyze it almost empirically on how hamas has been able to tap into all these human

00:55:44.700 storytelling techniques of the you know the the weak versus the powerful the oppressed versus the

00:55:50.380 oppressor and the idea that there is just an alternative if you just stop you know just cease

00:55:56.300 fire now everything will be better if we just cease fire and this has been my position from the beginning

00:56:01.820 as a student of war is that if hamas was allowed to survive the war period as in hamas not the ideal

00:56:09.340 which again i think the world to include military analysts have just every day since october 7th tried

00:56:16.060 to compare this to a counter-insurgency counter-terrorism campaign which we just are comfortable with over the

00:56:22.700 last 30 years is what we know rather than a conventional war mindset of this is a political body

00:56:30.060 with a military holding terrain with political objectives but the fact that the world thinks

00:56:37.100 that you know if you just stop fighting just stop the war right like you said they woke up to what

00:56:41.580 war looks like and that it's intolerable war is hell it is death and destruction but one they want

00:56:48.140 to fail or recognize what the idea have done to limit and restrict themselves and and to prevent

00:56:54.540 civilian harm but they also think that the world will be a better place if the war just stops

00:56:58.460 that if hamas who they are today the hamas that was october 7th in my interpretation if they survive

00:57:06.780 the war they have achieved a massive victory in the history of war they struck israel and as they say

00:57:15.260 as iran says israel and then through israel the united states if they survive that they become

00:57:22.220 these giant legends i mean they'll make statues out of them they'll have there'll be celebration days

00:57:28.380 in iran for hamas leadership who pulled off october 7th and survived it and that we will see a much

00:57:33.980 more violent middle east and world if they survive yeah i've i fully agree with that premonition i just

00:57:41.820 think it's the only answer to the triumphalism of jihadism is to defeat it right there's no it has to be a

00:57:51.820 stark defeat and so i guess my next question for you is how likely is that i mean i guess before you

00:58:00.060 answer that you can perhaps tell us what the idf has actually accomplished thus far in gaza and and

00:58:07.820 now as i said we're we're waiting to see if they're going to go into rafa and i think we both think they

00:58:15.020 should but what has the idf done what is left to do and how likely is it that they can destroy hamas

00:58:23.820 and what and what does that what does destroying hamas actually mean does it mean killing every last

00:58:29.660 member of hamas does it mean just killing the the leadership or you know bringing that otherwise

00:58:34.700 bringing them to justice and then we should talk about what conceivable aftermath there might be if they

00:58:41.020 do what can be done here so what have they done what can be done and uh what does it look like

00:58:47.420 afterwards sure so what they have done and especially keeping in mind what the objectives

00:58:52.940 were you know return to hostages destroy hamas as a military organization with the ability to

00:58:58.140 harm israel and secure israel's borders so if you if we compare to has israel been successful thus

00:59:04.940 far right i can't tell you who's going to achieve ultimate victory in the war yet thus far israel has

00:59:12.380 historically cleared dense urban train at a pace and with a despite the numbers low collateral damage

00:59:21.020 low civilian casualty count they of the 30 battalions 24 of those being light infantry battalions of hamas

00:59:28.620 they have destroyed 20 of the 24 active battalions they have cleared 75 of gaza as in broken apart

00:59:39.340 those functioning military organizations um they have identified the weapons capability right because

00:59:45.020 the rockets are a big part of hamas's military capability that they had immense to include the

00:59:50.460 manufacturing capability so these deep buried weapons manufacturing as in rocket production plants

00:59:56.540 underground that israel has found it has destroyed much of hamas's terror tunnel networks it has

01:00:04.540 returned half the hostages home through military pressure which led to negotiations and it has now

01:00:11.500 created a situation in which there is only four battalions the hamas leadership and the remaining at

01:00:17.180 the time we're talking you know 133 israeli hostages left to fulfill the objectives of israel so that's what

01:00:25.180 they've done so far now the question of destroy hamas that gets everybody going right actually let me

01:00:30.780 just add one uh footnote to what you just said so so obviously we started this conversation talking

01:00:35.820 about how unreliable all the numbers are and now you just kind of went through confidently detailing

01:00:42.940 the numbers in some basic sense and giving a proportion of hamas fighters versus uh non-combatants but

01:00:50.300 again what you're doing here is basically taking hamas's numbers of dead at face value which we can't

01:00:55.500 really do but you know one can imagine it's a something like a worst case scenario number like

01:01:01.260 at the moment 33 000 dead and we're taking idf's claim to have killed something like 13 000 combatants

01:01:09.980 and just using those numbers as as the framework for the proportion right right and this is really gets

01:01:17.420 a bigger question on that we're in a world in which nobody trusts anybody right so they're not

01:01:22.380 going to trust anything israel says the united states says united kingdom says but they'll trust hamas says

01:01:28.300 which is unique but let's say i trust everybody's numbers that's where i get to right and everybody's

01:01:33.580 statements to include hamas's i'm taking all the information available and and making these statements

01:01:39.980 based on what we know like the 33 000 are we confident that the that hamas had 40 000

01:01:48.620 fighters in the first place i mean are those hamas numbers are those idf numbers or that

01:01:53.420 both sides agree on the number of hamas fighters yeah that's a great question no it's it's a combination

01:01:58.460 of both hamas leadership both the political wing in qatar and the military wing in in gaza and the idf and

01:02:06.220 u.s and other intelligence agencies estimates based on a collection right what we call all source analysis

01:02:13.260 a collection of both what hamas says what the idea says what we can gain and we have to achieve some

01:02:19.020 type of okay we will agree that this is the number right so when you say they have uh remind me the

01:02:26.780 proportion of hamas battalions that have been destroyed or or fatally compromised is is what so 20 of the

01:02:35.580 24 basically infantry kind of terrain holding battalions before the war there was an estimate

01:02:41.740 of 30 battalions which includes like the people who shoot the rockets the headquarters everything

01:02:47.420 so of the hamas military 20 battalions of their 24 battalions that they had on october 7th have been

01:02:54.700 destroyed and by destroyed it means broken apart so they're no longer functioning as a military unit

01:03:00.780 able to do their their assigned mission whether it's defend or attack and how do we know is it in

01:03:07.020 terms of the damage to the tunnels i mean what what are you picturing or what do you what are you aware of

01:03:13.180 being true there where i mean it's 400 miles of tunnels it's just it's just staggering and i when i

01:03:20.060 say that number or hear it i'm i can't shake the feeling of of incredulity right i just it just seems

01:03:26.700 impossible but accepting that something like that is true israel could not have destroyed no matter how

01:03:33.900 many 2 000 pound bombs they dropped much of that network maybe they took out crucial nodes in that

01:03:40.220 network what what do you imagine has happened and what is the result i mean are we now talking about

01:03:46.620 hamas fighters and israeli hostages trapped inside tunnels and you know dying of starvation or what i mean

01:03:54.300 what is what is the reality of of that destruction yeah it's really hard to get a true estimate like

01:04:01.020 nobody's given the number of sheer number you know miles of tunnels that have been discovered and

01:04:06.620 destroyed but given the way urban terrain is cleared the reporting of over a thousand shafts identified the

01:04:16.060 number of tunnels in which the idea have controlled destroyed as in using explosives to destroy i mean i was in

01:04:23.500 one in december along the border of israel and gaza that was two and a half miles long it was an

01:04:29.660 invasion tunnel if you were just to take up the number of ones that they have publicly announced

01:04:35.340 and shown the world it's still many many miles but it is a great question and i've gotten this

01:04:42.300 question as somebody who studies underground warfare too it's like when is will they ever be able to

01:04:46.860 destroy all the tunnels absolutely not and if you get to the realization of like how is it possible to

01:04:52.540 have hundreds of miles of tunnels underneath a space that is only you know gaza strip is 25 miles

01:04:59.100 long at the widest part seven miles wide and if that is the really the uniqueness to what hamas has

01:05:05.740 been digging over 15 years so many different levels of tunnels and the idea have shown the world much of

01:05:13.100 that and shown how they both identified like here's a two mile here's a three mile tunnel here here we are

01:05:20.780 destroying it um it's really hard to get that estimate but in the clearing of this is why you

01:05:27.260 couldn't have done it with just bombing right you could not have bombed your way to this nor could you

01:05:32.380 it's going to be hard do it quickly identify every tunnel and you have to prioritize what is a

01:05:38.380 you know a certain level of a tunnel and you won't ever be able to destroy them all because

01:05:43.900 you you're not going to find them all but you you get to a certain level of fidelity and what they

01:05:49.020 have discovered is more than anybody thought that was ever there are idf soldiers going down into the

01:05:55.420 tunnels and engaging hamas fighters in shooting battles underground or are they simply finding shafts and

01:06:06.380 dropping explosives into them and and considering that part of the tunnel destroyed when it when

01:06:12.300 it all collapses i mean what are they sending robots down there or are they doing all of those things

01:06:17.020 what what is underground warfare like in this case yeah all above so absolutely like it started like you

01:06:25.420 we were talking about you know with identifying known key bunkers and underground spaces and and

01:06:32.060 hitting those with with aerial munitions moving forward and as the idf moved forward like in

01:06:37.260 northern gaza if they found a tunnel shaft they would stop bring up the special to israel um the

01:06:43.740 unique forces trained only for underground warfare you know they have underground dogs or dogs made for

01:06:51.580 tunnel warfare and they actually lost over 30 of a very large military working dog because once you

01:06:58.220 would find a tunnel then you bring up these special units there were firefights that happened in

01:07:03.900 tunnels that they're they're very few though because once the tunnel has been found hamas has booby

01:07:10.380 trapped it and moved on or to another tunnel and there was a uniqueness to the approach in northern

01:07:15.820 gaza versus by time i visited in december or no in february in con units there was a different approach

01:07:22.060 at one point the idf were flooding the tunnels with both sea water and fresh water to flush the in the

01:07:28.460 hamas out and to clear the explosives everything has been tried but in by time i get to con units really

01:07:36.140 which is this is a hamas space and hamas is using the tunnels by time i visit the idea in you know just

01:07:43.340 a month and a half ago they were entering the tunnels before hamas knew they were in the tunnels and using

01:07:49.420 basically taking control the tunnels and maneuvering on hamas at the same time they were moving above

01:07:56.140 ground but this is the challenge of underground warfare you have to develop new types of equipment

01:08:01.020 yes they used the robots the drones that could work underground um yes they destroyed and really

01:08:07.100 there's only a few ways you can truly destroy a tunnel like the flooding that did not work to destroy

01:08:12.460 a tunnel because the tunnels are made of concrete they have uh some of them have drainage in them

01:08:17.740 you know it's just it's just not a a solid tube so the water is not going to stay in there where

01:08:23.340 explosive force is really the only tried and true way to destroy a tunnel and you have to you string a

01:08:29.980 tunnel you'll string mines together along the full width of a tunnel which if you imagine is two miles

01:08:35.820 long it takes a lot of explosives and how are they doing any of this while keeping the lives of the

01:08:44.540 hostages in mind what sort of intelligence do you think they have about the the location of the

01:08:50.300 hostages when they're simply blowing up a tunnel how can they be confident they're not killing

01:08:56.380 hostages or burying them alive yeah i mean is this information you have and and if so what do you

01:09:02.140 know about the i mean it seems to me that the existence of the hostages as is intended complicates

01:09:09.180 this picture immensely i mean yes it complicates the prosecution of the war immensely in in all kinds

01:09:15.660 of ways as you pointed out it sets the clock ticking in a way that wouldn't otherwise be true

01:09:22.300 and the idea that you can just sort of bide your time and decide you know what you know how you want

01:09:28.300 to respond over the course of weeks and months and years that goes out completely out the window once

01:09:33.260 you've got hundreds of people now being held hostage and and mistreated underground but it

01:09:39.500 also it just it's very hard to imagine how they can be confidently destroying tunnels with hamas in

01:09:45.180 them knowing that they're the hostages are somewhere underground right no it's it's a great topic from

01:09:51.740 really the highest strategic level down to that tactical level where you're not going to especially

01:09:56.860 destroy a tunnel without first investigating what's in the tunnel um so most of the destruction outside of

01:10:03.100 the aerial bombardments which are intelligence driven like they know what they're targeting a

01:10:07.820 military target underground and they have some form of human intelligence signals intelligence some

01:10:13.260 other aspect to know whether or not a hostage is present with the enemy combatant that they're

01:10:18.940 striking but once you get you know close and you're sending those drones to dogs everything in

01:10:23.900 the tunnel the destroying that i was talking about is really after you've exploited what's in the

01:10:29.740 tunnel because of that immense risk that i agree with you complicates every aspect of the war is the

01:10:35.580 fact that you know your enemies underground but there is also the possibility of your your

01:10:41.340 citizens you're the hostages in there which leads to all the even the the highest level um

01:10:47.660 which i argued in a wall street journal article that the ideal that there is an alternative to

01:10:51.740 the way that israel has done it right which does like you said would be just to wait a few years

01:10:56.780 years use intelligence to find the hostages and do raids which is really a fallacy it's never

01:11:04.620 happened where you have an enemy environment like that because a raid relies on lots of intelligence

01:11:10.700 and immense surprise and some type of like a permissive because you've surprised whether it was the

01:11:17.100 osama bin laden raid into pakistan pakistan didn't know we were coming for him they didn't

01:11:22.700 they said they didn't know he was there but to imagine that you were going to build enough

01:11:26.620 intelligence to one day just to do a bunch of raids into gaza a hostile environment by definition who

01:11:33.580 knows you're coming and that you could eventually achieve your goal of bringing the hostages home

01:11:38.620 a different way is not true it's just never it's not historically backed up but that has led to this

01:11:44.540 idea of like you said just it just gonna take you a lot of time just just leave them in captivity

01:11:49.820 let hamas survive for now and we'll figure out a different way it's just not backed up by history

01:11:55.100 yeah especially what's it to return to again the probably the least comfortable topic here

01:12:01.980 the imaginary line between the public sentiment of the palestinians and hamas i mean just you're

01:12:08.700 talking about a population that if it's not entirely supportive of the project of keeping these hostages

01:12:14.140 enough people are supportive of it that the problem is shrouded by a hostile population that is is seems

01:12:24.380 happy to collaborate with hamas's project of keeping the hostages for as long as they want to keep them

01:12:31.180 yeah but i think this again i definitely a hundred percent that factors into what could be done about

01:12:37.500 the situation but in war i'm a very i i'm in such a proponent for the law of words people just don't

01:12:44.140 understand because it's meant to put bounds on the brutality of war and that there is such thing as an

01:12:50.620 you know innocent civilian or non-combatant but people don't understand what it takes for that person that

01:12:56.540 to partake in the hostilities and make themselves a combatant you don't have to be carrying a weapon you

01:13:04.060 could be reporting on the enemy that's coming you could be doing building things there's so many

01:13:09.020 other aspects of being a combatant versus a non-combatant where yes in this world of hamas where

01:13:15.660 they wear civilians use human shields use the hospitals use everything they can to make israel look bad

01:13:23.420 it's it is the greatest challenge for any soldier let alone an israeli soldier to operate within these

01:13:31.820 all these different challenges actually let's linger on that point for a second because this is

01:13:36.860 this might help people interpret some video which is really any way you look at it it is shocking video

01:13:44.460 that i've seen i think at one point i saw joe rogan on his podcast show the video and respond to it as

01:13:52.620 really any untutored person would as just he believes he's seen clear evidence of idf war crimes and

01:14:01.580 and the video is just men who do not appear to be armed being bombed right i mean and this for all

01:14:08.780 i know this could be video from some other theater of combat i mean it could have been drone a drone

01:14:13.580 attack on by us but on on men in iraq i don't you know i don't know actually the provenance of the

01:14:19.500 video but assuming this was whether these were palestinian men you know walking among amid rubble

01:14:26.860 being killed and they're not in the process of firing rpgs or or rockets uh and they didn't

01:14:33.660 even appear to be armed how is it possible that a strike like that could have been justified on its

01:14:40.620 face it looks impossible to justify right really especially with somebody who's never seen you know

01:14:46.460 doesn't have any comprehension of the way the law of war works war works in general and i watched

01:14:52.220 joe interpret that video and he bet he and he and just by the words he was saying i knew that

01:14:59.660 he didn't have a framework in which to understand what the world was watching in that 20 second clip

01:15:05.180 right he said unarmed kids he actually said kids which is getting to this definition of what is a

01:15:10.940 you know what is a a kid or or an adult where that line is drawn in that combat situation right which

01:15:18.380 everybody acknowledged it's a combat zone you know that 30 second clip doesn't give me any ability to

01:15:24.460 understand what was going on other than there is somebody who is struck with a bomb no idea on what

01:15:29.420 that person was doing before that video started did they come out of a tunnel did they do something

01:15:34.860 before it and then they were did the idf already know who those individuals were again you can be a

01:15:42.300 a member of hamas like a designated member and that's that makes you a combatant it has nothing to

01:15:50.220 do with if you're carrying a weapon at the moment or if you're you're shooting at the idf at the moment

01:15:56.300 you're a member of the help the enemy force there's so much to that video that is unknown especially

01:16:01.820 like what were they doing before where did they come from what were their who were they what were

01:16:06.540 their intentions that clearly yes the idf meant to hit them so they have to let's say if you did an

01:16:14.060 investigation say this is again where people look at the the end results but the idf under question

01:16:21.100 would have to show like okay how did you know that was a military target because clearly they use

01:16:27.420 precision guided ammunition to strike just those four individuals which again gets to the kind of the

01:16:32.860 false negative that you would have to prove and of course they're targeting civilians right that's

01:16:37.180 what they do like no you have to see what the war the law of war the war crime accusation requires

01:16:44.220 you to know what they were doing we want to interpret we see the explosion like clearly they were

01:16:50.460 targeting those unarmed civilian kids like there's so much wrong with that we don't know so it's a crucial

01:16:57.180 detail that you just you don't know what they were doing moments or minutes before i mean perhaps the

01:17:03.660 full video is showing people who just planted an ied or did something that was obviously you know the

01:17:10.700 behavior of combatants and now they're walking away and then they get targeted or who they were like

01:17:18.860 literally the fact that joe says look clearly they're not carrying any weapons like okay that's a data

01:17:24.060 point but that doesn't mean that you're not an enemy in in in this combat area i mean the power

01:17:30.140 of facial recognition and all these other aspects you have to know what the idf knew at the time they

01:17:35.580 took that strike and clearly they they targeted those individuals that's a fact because they did it very

01:17:41.500 precisely yeah well i mean again that for those who haven't seen the footage this is um the footage

01:17:47.980 was not at night right so it's not it doesn't suffer from the same and there were no these people

01:17:52.700 weren't hidden inside of cars right so it's not analogous to the world central kitchen

01:17:59.180 false id problem where they were clearly striking people they were intending to strike they just were

01:18:04.060 the wrong people in the world kitchen yeah yeah yeah well so you've spoken about what the idf has

01:18:10.220 already done and you you seem to believe that hamas really does have to be defeated at the end of this

01:18:17.100 what is reasonable to hope for there i assume this means that the the idf by definition has to go into

01:18:24.700 rafa what what would destroying hamas look like and what would the aftermath look like i mean what what

01:18:32.620 you know if if they have destroyed hamas perhaps not down to the last man but you know rendered the whole

01:18:38.780 hamas project obviously a failure and now gaza is this hellscape that has no one to rule it except

01:18:49.180 whatever lunatics can rise up out of the ashes and be you know nearly as extreme and irresistible as

01:18:56.700 hamas it's not going to be a stable uh victory and certainly world opinion will continue to cut against

01:19:03.260 israel there what what does destroying hamas look like in the best case and how can they conceivably

01:19:10.460 manage the aftermath yeah it's a great question and it really gets to this i guess this misinterpretation

01:19:16.540 of what does them what does it mean to destroy hamas where people say it's not possible right because

01:19:21.340 they mix this you know destroy the idea of hamas versus the destroy what hamas was on october 6th

01:19:27.500 and its military capabilities and all of its resources that it it created and and immersed

01:19:32.700 and smuggled in and it was sent in everything like that one thing is that what the best case scenario is

01:19:41.020 and i don't agree although it is the most likely scenario that it it requires a full ground invasion

01:19:47.980 into southern gaza right rafa city rafa refugee camp the other areas because hamas could surrender

01:19:53.660 tomorrow hamas could surrender to include disarm agreement to disarm themselves and surrender

01:20:00.220 anybody who partook on october 7th and committed those heinous crimes they could give all the

01:20:05.980 hostages back and that would lead to a much lower intensity operation that would still in my opinion be

01:20:14.060 required because in order to destroy hamas what it was on october 7th you have to search for its

01:20:20.460 military capability its remaining rocket supply its remaining smuggling tunnels its remaining

01:20:27.980 weapons manufacturing capability you would still have to search southern gaza in my opinion to achieve

01:20:33.420 the goal of destroying hamas as both the ruling power because you don't fight an insurgency against

01:20:42.380 the ruling power you fight an insurgency for a the people or a government against an insurgency

01:20:48.940 but you you have to remove hamas from power you have to remove their military capability so best

01:20:54.140 case scenario is that the remaining four battalions are destroyed as functioning units able to do their

01:21:00.620 mission the hamas military leadership remaining in gaza is killed or captured all the hostages are returned

01:21:08.220 home then like you said is absolutely the next phase that will determine whether the world views it as

01:21:16.940 your success or not because the challenge of gaza is the that next phase that d the post-conflict

01:21:27.820 phase of rebuilding re-establishing a different framework right this is gets to the ideal which

01:21:34.060 i know will be a big challenge because it hasn't been there yet is a viable partner who actually has the

01:21:40.700 the pursuit of a better life for the people of gaza as their number one priority and not the destruction

01:21:47.500 of israel as their number one priority this has been the history of the israel-palestine conflict

01:21:53.420 right is having a viable partner who will acknowledge israel should exist to disavow terrorism and and pursue

01:22:01.900 a a path to include by action of really caring for the people so once hamas is destroyed which in my

01:22:09.500 opinion has to be done then israel has to help in creating the next governance the power structures

01:22:16.860 the security framework but also and i think they will ensure that whatever comes next in in self

01:22:24.860 determination isn't able to gain that much military capability for the sole purpose of doing october 7th or

01:22:33.580 launching rockets as their primary goal yeah which suggests that you know in the even in an ideal

01:22:41.180 world a two-state solution can't really be two states in any normal sense we're not talking about a

01:22:47.340 state that has its own army and etc because we would have a have to have a very different set of facts on

01:22:54.940 the ground for israel to imagine they can live next to a a palestinian state after october 7th right which

01:23:02.940 this has been the you know the the great lie is the ideal that israel has been the only hurdle to a

01:23:08.060 two-state solution with palestinians and israelis living side by side in harmony the great lie is that

01:23:14.540 the greatest greatest hurdle to that was israel versus organizations whether it's the pa palestine

01:23:20.700 authority hamas whatever it is whose sole you know ideal it's construction everything it does is actually to

01:23:28.860 attack israel rather than pursue a better life within the it's almost like the diplomatic laziness

01:23:35.260 just two-state solution has been especially the u.s administration's goal right but they can't nobody

01:23:41.020 can articulate what that actually is in reality in real terms and and it has been which is now leading

01:23:48.620 them the uninformed of the world on that's the solution to the violence two-state solution which october

01:23:55.740 7th can't become hamas's independence day right it can't become palestinian independence day they

01:24:02.540 did october 7th and then they should get you know all the things in return just to make the violence

01:24:07.260 stop that would just lead to a much more violent world as well but it's it's really like diplomatic

01:24:12.300 laziness to think that that's the solution like without any recognizing the decades of administrations

01:24:19.660 who have pursued that objective and failed yeah i mean the reasons for that failure as you point out

01:24:25.900 have have almost never been acknowledged but it's it is another one of these obvious and and absolute

01:24:31.420 asymmetries that strangely everyone seems to ignore which is that israel has wanted a two-state solution

01:24:39.740 i mean not everyone in israel but but a majority of israelis certainly have wanted a two-state solution

01:24:44.940 they have wanted to live in peace with a palestinian neighbor that would live in peace with

01:24:49.340 them but that has not been reciprocated on the other side there has been a pervasive commitment to

01:24:56.300 not the palestinians getting the state they want alongside of israel but rather for the annihilation of

01:25:04.700 israel the existence of israel has been the thing that has always been put in question on the palestinian

01:25:10.060 side and that's just not a symmetrical situation so you you would need a palestinian regime and

01:25:16.380 a palestinian population that actually wanted to live in peace alongside israel for there to be

01:25:21.500 anything like a basis for a two-state solution right and this is i mean to get back to the now

01:25:27.980 what is what is what comes after hamas i don't know and i don't think israel knows but it knows

01:25:34.700 like i can talk uncertainties versus the uncertainty that hamas has to be destroyed for the peace of

01:25:41.340 the middle east and the peace of israel and the palestinian people like that's step one what comes

01:25:46.140 day after the day after really matters and how the war will be viewed so israel has a lot of decisions

01:25:53.500 but so do the people of gaza but don't you see the the untenability of it being a prolonged israeli

01:26:02.620 occupation of gaza i mean the picture of the aftermath that you're envisioning does that

01:26:07.660 include a an internationalization of the whole project where you bring in some of the arab states

01:26:13.980 to figure out how to pacify and rebuild gaza or are you actually picturing a you know many years of

01:26:21.900 israel essentially being the government in gaza or backstopping the the whatever the palestinian

01:26:29.260 government is yeah that's a great question so i don't envision that at all because not because

01:26:33.740 of my own thought because israel says they don't want that that was tried and then they left in 2005

01:26:39.100 and and hamas was elected in 2008 and said that's not what we want despite the accusations of occupation

01:26:45.660 since then i mean the blockade and apartheid and all these misinformed opinions but the the other

01:26:53.660 proposition you provided with like you know an arab nation all these other actors is also not present

01:27:00.060 right this is the egypt wants nothing to do with the people of gaza they're a part of this if there was

01:27:06.620 a multinational arab nation coalition who could assist and of course there'll be rebuilding but you

01:27:14.060 know for israel not to have a a part of that as in for another terrorist regime to because the united

01:27:22.140 states wanted there to be an election in gaza and hamas was elected both in gaza and the west bank and

01:27:29.980 the palestinian authority just said no we don't do that as a legitimate election that whatever comes

01:27:34.700 next you i can't israel says they don't want occupation but they will of course be a part of

01:27:40.780 ensuring that another hamas which they're having to do in real time and they and they do own that

01:27:46.620 right they they own some of that to prevent another hamas not just to destroy and leave it in chaos

01:27:53.900 absolutely i agree with that and that's the the history of such operations as well and i agree with

01:27:59.900 you that in order for this to work there has to be multiple other nations involved on identifying who is

01:28:05.900 the other viable partner in gaza how to rebuild rebuild all the structures not just the buildings

01:28:12.540 so that they're on a path to a better life than what hamas was giving them i know we're getting to

01:28:18.220 the end of our allotted time here but i just want to ask you the um not so simple question of what do

01:28:24.060 you think israel should do must do will do about hezbollah to the north yeah that's a great question i

01:28:33.980 wish more people would ask it and recognize and and tell the facts about how hezbollah and in my last

01:28:39.260 trip back in february i went up to northern israel to the blue line i walked the line of where hezbollah

01:28:44.700 is attacking since october 8th it entered the war a second front was there and hezbollah has been

01:28:50.140 attacking since october 8th with not just rockets but taking out all the security posts and cameras

01:28:56.780 and and sending people across the blue line and violating the u.n security council i don't you know

01:29:03.340 they say and again if you if you want to listen to them say the reason they did that was because of the

01:29:07.820 war in gaza which is interesting since they started on october 8th and israel hadn't even declared and

01:29:14.060 conducted operations in gaza yet but the situation i can say with certainty can't continue there's

01:29:20.300 80 000 people just in northern israel who haven't been home in the last six months who are living in

01:29:25.740 hotels when i go there they're in the hotels that i stay at because of the daily threat of hezbollah and

01:29:31.740 hezbollah is a much larger problem and israel had and other nations have been pursuing a political

01:29:37.740 solution because it all doesn't have to turn into war for hezbollah to back up to the u.n security

01:29:45.020 council agreed framework and stop attacking israel but if they're not willing i don't see how israel

01:29:52.460 doesn't have to also use force to secure its northern border and allow its citizens which 80 000 like

01:30:00.220 the number almost surpasses people's ability to imagine what that looks like on the ground with

01:30:05.500 all these cities evacuated 80 000 who can't go home because hezbollah attacks every day i know hezbollah

01:30:13.500 is a larger problem in that they're a larger force a better trained force a better armed force they have

01:30:19.820 more rockets which is to say it's a in the end it's probably a more important problem to solve but i'm

01:30:25.820 wondering is it is it as large a problem with respect to the prospect of civilian casualties

01:30:32.460 if they decided to launch a war into lebanon i mean if the idf woke up tomorrow and and was fully

01:30:39.820 committed to destroying hezbollah as quickly as possible uh with all of its all the applicable

01:30:46.460 force available to it would they be by definition creating as much collateral damage as they have in

01:30:53.260 gaza or are things different up in the north and are the the combatants much easier to target without

01:30:59.980 the same kind of loss of civilian life right yeah it's a great question of course it's less density

01:31:07.260 there are still urban areas in southern lebanon that would require their restraint on the use of force

01:31:13.820 but there is a lot more military real because hezbollah didn't develop the same strategy as hamas of

01:31:20.220 of course it went underground and it's actually called the land of tunnels in southern lebanon of

01:31:24.700 course that's what militaries do to protect their systems and there's hundreds of miles in southern

01:31:30.220 lebanon but unlike hamas hezbollah didn't build them solely underneath civilians to get civilians killed

01:31:37.740 yes it would be a much different situation although the scale is 10 times right well hundreds of

01:31:43.100 thousands of hezbollah fighters with you know estimates of tens of if not hundreds of thousands of rockets but

01:31:50.220 they are also much more targetable from a military stance without the civilian harm because they're

01:31:56.860 but they're in mountainous terrain they're more protected it would still be a very big challenge for

01:32:03.340 the idea to defeat hezbollah but you you get to this question which again people won't recognize that

01:32:10.940 october 7th was an existential threat to israel not just to southern israel they wanted to get to

01:32:16.780 jerusalem hezbollah poses an existential threat to israel so it has to respond hopefully not with

01:32:24.060 military force but if that if you have to then you have to and it would take an immense war to defeat

01:32:30.700 hezbollah let alone just push them back to their no longer threatening israel i hesitate to pull the

01:32:37.660 question of iran in here because i i know we're short on time but do you have a uh an encapsulated

01:32:43.660 version of what you think can and should and will be done with respect to iran either by israel alone

01:32:50.300 or by some coalition of forces yeah i mean i do and i can i can i think i can do it shortly that of course

01:32:56.460 iran is the head of all these snakes first we have to acknowledge that hezbollah hamas and the houthis

01:33:01.980 are all iranian backed organizations who are trained funded finance and directed by iran themselves so

01:33:09.740 hezbollah says it like can we can we at least believe these groups when they say that they act

01:33:17.020 in accordance with iran's direction iran is the big disruptor of the middle east where you have some

01:33:23.340 people believe october 7th came about because israel was close to a bilateral relationship with saudi arabia

01:33:29.980 like it has with jordan egypt and other arab nations and that was too much of a threat to

01:33:34.620 iran who wants it has its ideals of the middle east and has pursued this proxy war using its proxies to

01:33:41.740 attack israel that's absolutely and what it did on april 14th when it attacked israel with 300 drones

01:33:48.540 cruise missiles and ballistic missiles people just kind of it was a part of the news but it wasn't

01:33:53.660 like that's huge that's historic like that israel as a nation was attacked by iran directly not through

01:34:02.300 its multi-year decades long use of proxies to attack israel but it it directly attacked and

01:34:08.860 it's kind of like it was in the news everybody wants to de-escalate so it kind of uh we'll just

01:34:13.180 keep moving forward the world has to deal with iran not israel the united states has to change its

01:34:18.940 position with iran and what what would that change look like or what should it look like i mean do you

01:34:24.460 think i'm sort of mystified as to why even prior to the attack on israel or just with the the houthi

01:34:30.860 attack on shipping why we had didn't decide to just exact some price directly on iran at that point

01:34:39.180 right like just destroying their ports or their ability to export oil it seems like the deterrence

01:34:47.260 has completely failed with respect to iran in fact it's reversed iran has effectively deterred

01:34:54.220 the united states up until this moment strangely the united states seems more averse to and worried

01:35:02.060 about and just frankly scared of a war with iran than iran does 100 no i think it's a great a great

01:35:09.500 assessment that what we've seen in the last six months has been a failure of deterrence it was a

01:35:14.860 failure of israel to deter hamas it was a failure to deter iran it's a failure of u.s foreign policy

01:35:22.380 to deter iran from pursuing nuclear weapons to using its proxy forces to attack countries in the middle

01:35:30.140 east 100 but i do understand because i understand the significance of state-on-state warfare where why

01:35:37.580 can't the u.s just strike iran well there are reasons why because that would open a whole pandora's

01:35:42.460 box of second and third order consequences but this is what you have the lunacy of iran attacking

01:35:48.940 israel and everybody's like yeah you know just let it go just let go well is the the letting it go

01:35:54.060 moment is it to what degree did iran engineer a flamboyant but nonetheless benign attack on israel

01:36:07.100 by telegraphing what they were going to do allow it making it as easy as possible for

01:36:12.700 the us and the jordanians and and the israelis to nullify everything that was incoming uh how sincere

01:36:20.140 an attack do we think that was and how much of it was just a kind of a face-saving maneuver which was

01:36:26.540 meant to say okay let's let's not have a war after we do this let's settle down yeah no i think it's a

01:36:32.540 great question because it has been the great again interpretation of the facts um the fact that even

01:36:38.620 the united states like we had no warning there was no telegraphing yes because it's really hard to move

01:36:44.860 stuff around in iran without somebody seeing it you have them satellites and everything but there was

01:36:49.900 nothing that was telegraphed and by the intentions of what was shot at israel and yeah so everybody uses

01:36:56.940 the 99 of it all shot down thanks to israel's defensive capabilities and the fact that united

01:37:03.420 states helped and jordan helped and saudi arabia helped and like like what world are we living in

01:37:08.860 where no that was a legitimate attack with full intention to really cause a massive amount of damage

01:37:16.300 and civilian casualties in israel i mean 300 drones isn't a oh i know you'll shoot all this down ballistic

01:37:24.140 and cruise missiles i know you'll get all these you know we all know i'm just trying to save face

01:37:28.300 no no the fact is that they actually had and that was a technique that has been used in like ukraine

01:37:35.180 send a wave of drones to overload their defense then send in cruise and ballistic missiles just

01:37:41.260 because it was all knocked down doesn't mean that we're intention and actions really matter but we're

01:37:47.020 living in a world where in the the result matters like that's that's not the way it works yeah so that's

01:37:53.260 that's that's another interesting asymmetry here the effectiveness of israel's defense israel's

01:37:59.100 defense in this case in concert with their allies helping them the effectiveness is being held against

01:38:05.900 israel as a sign that that any further engagement with iran would be by definition an overreaction

01:38:12.620 because nothing happened you know like they tried to kill you but they didn't succeed so like you're the

01:38:17.420 one who's now hysterical yeah what are you doing responding to this you know it's the same thing that's

01:38:22.540 happened for years with you know israel having invested so much in iron dome and in their bomb

01:38:28.060 shelters that the ineffectuality of hamas's rockets and hezbollah's rockets has delivered the message to

01:38:34.780 the whole world that israel doesn't really have an existential problem because they everyone can just

01:38:39.500 keep going to bomb shelters and and the iron dome seems to work so you know there's really no no factor

01:38:45.420 over there all the while hezbollah and hamas are really trying to kill civilians in israel it's an

01:38:51.660 amazing situation well john it's it's been fantastic to get you on the podcast and to get your expertise

01:38:56.300 here you've cleared up i think a lot of confusion even and it's some of my own confusion frankly on

01:39:02.540 many of these points so um please keep doing what you're doing and as the chaos proceeds i would love

01:39:09.340 to get you back here at some point to bring us up to the minute and help us understand what's been

01:39:13.500 happening well thanks sam and thanks for having me uh a great conversation

01:39:30.380 you

Making Sense - Sam Harris - May 07, 2024

#366 — Urban Warfare 2.0

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