In this episode, I speak with John Spencer, a former military officer and academic, about urban warfare. We discuss the challenges and opportunities of urban warfare, and how they relate to the current conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, as well as the challenges the Israelis have in order to engage in urban warfare in the 21st century. We also discuss why urban warfare is so important to the modern military, and why non-state actors should be fighting in cities. And we discuss why the economic and political engines of nations don t want to fight in cities today. And why they should fight in the cities. And how cities have always been the strategic engine of nations the object of the city, the capital of nations, the economic engine of the world, the capital of the human capital and why cities are the future of warfare. Tim s Classic Breakfast Sandwich Sandwich is just $3 when you buy any size cup of coffee. Plus tax, Canada only, limited time only, terms apply, see app for details. Tim s Breakfast Sandwich: $3.99, Canada-only, limited-time offer, no tax, no add-ons, no shipping, no delivery, no post-paid, no credit card required. Tim's Classic Breakfast Sandwiches: Just $3, $3 + tax, $5, $6, $7, $8, $10, $12, $14, $16, $15, $19, $20, $23, $24, $25, $27, $29, and so much more! Tims - Tims Breakfast Sandwich, Tims - Tim s to bring you breaking news about the latest breaking news from around the world. - including breaking news, breaking news breaking out in the Middle East, including Russia, Ukraine, Gaza, and Ukraine, Russia, Israel, and much more. Tims Classic Breakfast sandwich, Tim s classic breakfast sandwich, of course, Tim's Breakfast Sandwich - Tim's classic breakfast sandwiches, all for $3 and coffee and coffee, see app . I hope you like it! - see you on the next episode of The Middle East Today's breaking news: Tims Podcast: Tim s Besties: Breaking News: Subscribe to Tims Besties Podcast: , Learn more about your ad-free version of this podcast?
00:00:32.040I have the opportunity today to talk to John Spencer, and we talk about urban warfare.
00:00:39.200Now, John had a long military career as an on-the-ground infantryman,
00:00:43.920both as a regular serviceman and as an officer, and in combat in both positions.
00:00:50.420And then he came to develop an academic career where he focused specifically on the complexities of urban warfare,
00:00:58.260and that was actually a relatively newly developed field because most wars in the past haven't been fought in an urban environment,
00:01:06.980but the planet has radically urbanized, and so it was necessary for a new discipline to be developed to concentrate on that.
00:01:14.420That happened to be particularly relevant at the moment because the conflict between Israel and Hamas is essentially a conflict of urban warfare.
00:01:23.620Now, there are other elements to it as well, which we also discuss, the public relations element.
00:01:28.920So the conversation focuses primarily on Gaza and Israel and what the Israelis are attempting to accomplish
00:01:39.220and what the barriers are there and the nature of urban warfare, the complexities of urban warfare,
00:01:44.680and the strictures and opportunities that the Israelis have as a consequence of the October 7th events.
00:01:51.060So I found the conversation extremely enlightening, and I hope that you'll concur.
00:03:08.840I was teaching strategy, you know, full breadth of military history to military theories to different challenges or changes in the character of warfare.
00:03:19.740But I also stood up a research center that I now work for, the Modern War Institute,
00:03:23.340which was we also saw a gap in people understanding the wars that are going on now.
00:03:28.740Historians cover wars that happened in the past, and they're really rigorous about how they do that.
00:03:33.700Yeah, embedded journalists kind of cover modern wars, but really, like an actual study of what's going on now, there was a gap.
00:03:40.080So we created the Modern War Institute, and I started writing about urban warfare, and it went viral.
00:03:46.060So like an academic, it's just like a dream come true.
00:03:48.620Like, what do you mean there's an area that nobody is studying?
00:03:51.300And urban warfare, as I dug into even the institutional approach, the militaries don't study urban warfare.
00:03:59.100Because in our doctrine for years, we've been writing, avoid and bypass at all times.
00:04:14.360And there's a huge history of war, right?
00:04:16.740And there's a huge history of fighting for cities, but not in cities.
00:04:21.300And that started to change really in the 21st century where militaries got smaller.
00:04:28.080The advancements in technologies made it doesn't make sense to stand out in the open as a military, even if you're a big military.
00:04:34.240The urban areas, with the urbanization of the world, population growth, the size of peoples and militaries, the rise of non-state actors, all war moved into cities.
00:04:45.920And arguably, even on state-on-state warfare, like today we see Russia and Ukraine, the decisive battles, the battles that actually determine the future of the wars are happening in the urban areas.
00:04:56.400Urban areas have always been the prize, the object, the capital city, the economic engine of nations.
00:05:04.980But militaries have not wanted to fight in cities for all the reasons they don't want to fight in cities today.
00:05:13.940Sure. So one of the things you pointed out in your 2022 book was that in the 1950s, there were 80 cities in the world with populations of more than a million, and now there's more than 500.
00:05:24.220So that is an unbelievably radical change.
00:05:26.640And the cities are also much, much bigger.
00:05:29.300And so is that part of the explanation for why there was no specific study of urban warfare until 2014?
00:05:55.260It really becomes, you know, as I was working for a four-star general in charge of the entire U.S. Army, over a million-man force, I understood that the militaries are also institutions with cultures.
00:06:18.320And there's been many recommendations to include congressional recommendations.
00:06:21.220Like, you should have a center, an academic program.
00:06:26.260I mean, there is a jungle, at one time, a jungle warfare center, Arctic warfare center, desert warfare center, never an urban warfare center.
00:06:33.400It is the war, the battle that nobody wants.
00:06:37.180Even though it's the war and the battle.
00:06:39.340Think of any war ever where the urban hasn't been the deciding factor.
00:06:45.120Yes, one of the reasons we have urban warfare is like, you know, ancient siege warfare.
00:06:49.620You sent your army forward of your castle to destroy the other army that's approaching rather than go into siege warfare because that doesn't end well for both sides.
00:06:59.600There's a long-term cognitive kind of historical reason for that.
00:07:04.440Then some of it's also cultures don't like change.
00:07:06.980And in militaries, to include those that lead the military, envision a future war of army against army.
00:07:31.720Okay, now you said too that it's particularly dangerous for modern armies to be out in the open as a consequence of technological transformation.
00:07:40.800Okay, so one of the things that I've noticed, maybe, you know, and I don't know how accurate this is, but I've been, like, I like to think about how things can go catastrophically wrong.
00:07:53.620And it seems to me that as military equipment gets larger and larger and more expensive, that it's very much in the interest of the people who would be fighting such gigantic machines to produce very small and very inexpensive means of bringing those things down.
00:08:09.400And so we have drones now, obviously, and they're extremely inexpensive and easy to pilot.
00:08:16.820And so you said that it's very hard on armies to be out in the open.
00:09:02.500That aspect of the evolution of aerial platforms from balloons that were literally in the 1800s in wars to drone warfare today is an evolution of that air power in my mind.
00:09:14.360This is why I found myself in a place called Nagarna-Karabakh in 2021.
00:09:18.640In 2020, there was a massive war between Azerbaijan and Armenia over this area called Nagarna-Karabakh.
00:09:24.680And the use of drones, to include with Israeli drones that the Azerbaijanis has, they wreaked havoc against an older military standing in the open.
00:09:33.240So I went there because everybody said that's the future.
00:09:37.180When actually the war came to an end, a decisive end over one city called Susha, which 400 special forces climbed a cliff and infiltrated the city.
00:09:47.940All these other things were a factor in that, the drone technology, the ability to see your enemy.
00:09:52.780If you can see them, you can kill them, all that.
00:09:55.380But that urban train, again, because it was the objective, became one of the critical factors.
00:10:01.740So, yes, the evolution of technologies matters on where war happens, who has power, who doesn't.
00:10:07.800I mean, from the evolution of the nuclear weapon and the ideology of or the thoughts about attacking a nuclear weapon, which was meant to destroy a military in the open.
00:10:16.100And that's kind of gone as the nuclear deterrence and all that has evolved, not to be a thing anymore.
00:10:22.660Now it's for, you know, national defense survival, kind of acceptable.
00:10:27.700There's so many aspects to this and why, you know, we don't, we understudy this aspect of strategy.
00:10:33.540How did the tools impact the political decisions or the actual where combat happens?
00:10:39.360And this is why I get to study urban warfare because, one, nobody was studying it.
00:10:42.720And, two, there's also the evolution of it migrating into cities.
00:10:46.980There's all these people without the weapons.
00:10:48.980Like, who's going to stand toe-to-toe with a state actor like the United States, Russia, China?
00:11:41.820And if you get there first, even some—so I, you know, one of my studies is, I found out there was a lot of urban legends about urban warfare.
00:11:50.880Like, things that have happened in the past, we, as a kind of human civilization, we remember what people write about history, not necessarily what happened.
00:11:59.680So I'm going back and looking at all the urban battles, working my way back, like, what actually happened there?
00:12:04.680And a lot of them are actually meeting engagements, like the Battle of Stalingrad.
00:12:08.780Like, nobody was in Stalingrad defending it, really.
00:12:21.000But if somebody's actually in an urban area and prepares it, let's talk like in Gaza, for 15 years, prepares it, I can defend it against the world's biggest military for a certain amount of time.
00:12:32.460Defenders usually lose an urban terrain.
00:12:34.140But, you know, war is not about destroying the other military.
00:12:38.080That never was the objective of Hamas.
00:12:40.160It's about that political strategy and time.
00:12:44.100And if I can get into an urban area—this is why I wrote a book for Ukraine in 2022.
00:12:48.480I wrote a little handbook based on all that I had learned about urban warfare, and it went viral.
00:12:53.800It was just about how do you hold an urban area for some amount of time so that the situation can change.
00:12:58.760And it went viral because there's this giant gap of knowledge, even though it's there, because there's nobody who's studying it.
00:13:06.400Okay, so let's talk about Gaza, because that's almost entirely urban warfare?
00:13:49.880It's—one is, I've written things because I've studied the history of this.
00:13:55.300When I tell people that nobody has faced the challenge that Israel faced in Gaza, it's not from an opinion.
00:14:01.400It's from an analytical statement of the size of the military.
00:14:06.340So it's a 40,000 defending force that had 15 years to prepare an urban defense, which included 400 miles of tunnels, ranging from 15 feet to 200 feet underground.
00:14:19.860And the reason it kept going deeper underground, if you know—if you've ever studied Israel, is because Israel developed weapons technology that could hit farther underground.
00:14:27.960So Hamas just kept going deeper underground.
00:14:30.860So now they're at a range in many places where no military munition can reach.
00:14:35.400And unique to Hamas, like, everybody has tunnels.
00:14:38.420I wrote in my little book for Ukraine, like, start digging.
00:14:41.040Because if you're underground, you can negate—
00:19:01.200And the same thing if you use protected buildings like mosque, hospitals, schools, that's more of human shield strategy.
00:19:08.300As in, you know that that other force can't directly attack you without actually going through the laws of war on notifications and all these things.
00:19:16.940Right, and that means that they'll lose the public relations battle, let's say.
00:19:20.500I mean, one of the things I thought when this conflict started was that really all that the Palestinians, the Hamas, Hamas needed to do,
00:19:31.180and Iran, let's say, behind it all, was hold out long enough to let the Israelis obtain a victory at a cost that was too great on the human relations front.
00:19:43.920Right, is that as Israel's victory mounts and the human cost of that is broadcast, that would mean defeat for the Israelis on the public relations front.
00:19:54.800And my suspicions were that—I don't know what you think about this hypothesis—but my sense was that Iran prodded the Palestinians into the October 7th attack so that they could undermine the Abraham Accords.
00:20:07.560And so they provoked the Israelis into the response that we've seen, hoping that that would turn, certainly, the Islamic, the Arab world viciously against the Abraham Accords and cause the West and Iran's enemies undue trouble.
00:20:24.460And so far, the Abraham Accords have held, but we've seen the consequences of the public relations battle that's been produced as a result of Israel's foray into Gaza.
00:20:40.140So, is that in accordance in any way with your understanding of the situation?
00:20:48.440Why are we so stupidly taken in by the Iranian maneuvers then?
00:20:53.140Because it seemed obvious to me right from the beginning that that was the strategy.
00:20:57.000So, why do you think it is, for example, that there's so much noise and protest on the universities that's essentially in favor, really fundamentally in favor of what the Iranians are doing?
00:21:19.700Who can't critically think of, like, literally just the get your facts straight on what you did as you are aggrieved by or that you're so opinionated by.
00:21:30.620Well, Kamani himself had tweeted out two days ago his thanks to American universities for providing him with the support that they've provided.
00:21:38.920Well, even if you say free Palestine from what?
00:22:07.060Like, these are all known facts, and there is an element of proxy warfare, which is within the global international order of a thing, right?
00:22:34.840But in this sense, I can tell you that that's a part of the strategy, of course, of what happened on October 7th.
00:22:39.280But from a military strategy, what you briefed as well is, Hamas' attack on October 7th, while I walk that ground and understand it as an invasion, not a terrorist attack.
00:22:48.880It was an invasion of Israel with the intention to go as far north as they could to activate all the West Bank, to activate Hezbollah, and to really do a large-scale attack.
00:23:05.780Hundreds of Israelis, many of them without even their weapons, standing in the door, standing in what I would call the hot gates.
00:23:14.140I mean, there's so many moments that I've walked that ground in southern Israel where just an off-duty name, police person, in a vehicle, dying at a critical point, which just slowed that advance down.
00:23:33.300—who, you know, 70-year-old men who used to serve in the military heading south to stand in the door to prevent them from heading towards Tel Aviv, to Jerusalem, to other places.
00:23:45.000Hamas maps said where they were headed.
00:23:48.120And they just didn't get there because of many situations, and I hope those stories get out, and I can tell you many of them, where they ran into an Israeli who was willing to fight for their nation, which is a really big part of war as well.
00:24:09.520So they weren't defending—they weren't depending only on their military to stop this invasion.
00:24:15.120There's lots to that, as in absolutely, you know, a nation is built with this security apparatus, both the actual military whose job is to defend the nation, and then you have the security forces.
00:24:27.400There is a cultural aspect of living in Israel where you've been attacked so many times that you have to be ready, whether it is the bomb shelter that you have to jump into, or the actual how many times Israel as a nation has had to fight back, I mean, five nations at one time.
00:24:43.840I understand that history and have walked much to that ground.
00:24:47.160So does that imply in some way that one of the strategic necessities when urban warfare is a likelihood is that the general population itself needs to be prepared to fight, trained and prepared to fight?
00:25:06.940I mean, this is, again, going back to my injecting myself into the Ukraine war in a unique way through Twitter.
00:25:12.680I made a tweet, a seven-thread tweet, on February 26th of 2022, two days after the invasion, as a guy who studied urban warfare for 20 years.
00:25:23.620If I was standing in a city in Ukraine, this is what I would do, because most civilians don't know how to resist, even if they have the will to resist.
00:25:33.260But this is why, again, the history of war and why we can look at what Israel has done in Gaza under the political constraints and why it has done the things it's done, the United States wouldn't have done it that way.
00:25:45.520The whole purpose of war is to rapidly overwhelm your enemy, not destroy them all so they lose that will to fight.
00:25:52.800So like Russia's invasion of Kiev, the whole point was to rush it, get into the center, take out the government, raise the Russian flag, war is over.
00:26:02.680But the people resisted, because they had the will, they didn't have the way.
00:26:07.060So yes, if you're, this is, it's called total defense, and it goes, it's way back in European history.
00:26:13.260All the European countries had this concept of, if invaded, we're all going to stand up, whether the Finnish gun culture, the Polish, this ideal that you're going to resist, defend.
00:26:24.900Some people call it resistance, I call it total defense.
00:26:27.720It is a big part of actual having a society, especially if you have somebody, this again, which no military has faced in modern history, where Gaza is, you know, two miles from Israel and is attacking.
00:26:41.900That proximity to an existential threat is real, is clear.
00:26:46.640It's clear, if not evidenced by October 7th, which actually factors into the law of war, like proportionality.
00:26:54.060Like, this is the number, one of the terms that started getting misused on October 8th.
00:27:23.080Which, in Israel's case, would have been the elimination of a potential future threat of the same type they faced on October 7th, I presume.
00:27:32.200But, and this is, again, so this, back to that human sacrifice strategy.
00:27:36.460Like, nobody will, to include these kids on college campuses, won't listen to the words that Hamas say.
00:27:41.980Like, they imagine some aggrieved, and I know you've covered this a lot about that, who's the oppressed and who's the oppressor.
00:27:47.660You won't take the organization's words and actions for what they are.
00:27:52.200So, a human sacrifice strategy that nobody has done, Nazis, Japanese, ISIS, where they state and act in a way that they say they need as many of their population,
00:28:02.200their population to die as possible, to achieve their political goal of the war.
00:28:07.120Okay, so it seems to me that there would be two tiers to that then.
00:28:13.180I mean, my sense with regards to the Palestinians in general, and this is especially true in Iran,
00:28:19.500is that the Iranian powers that be would use all the Palestinians as sacrificial victims at any moment,
00:28:27.000if they could provide an effective thorn in Israel's side and in the side of the West.
00:28:32.060And then my sense is, too, that the Hamas leadership, given its history, is sufficiently corrupt financially and economically,
00:28:41.820and under the sway of Iran as well, so that it has no qualms whatsoever about using its citizens as cannon fodder for its designs on Israel and the West.
00:28:55.560Is there anything, is that an accurate analysis?
00:29:07.340I mean, you know, apart from what you might regard as humanitarian concerns, which I don't really think apply in the current situation in the least.
00:29:14.440And there's, again, take them for their words.
00:29:15.920Iran's strategy, they call Israel the little Satan.
00:29:36.760They need, because they believe in their ideology that martyrdom is the path.
00:29:40.800So, they're willing to martyr all of their population to achieve their political goal.
00:29:46.260Not to achieve some geographic ideal of a new place.
00:29:50.160Their goal, stated and written, is the destruction of Israel and the death of all Jews in the world.
00:29:55.360And their path to that is the death of their population, that they act.
00:29:59.340Okay, so you're saying that it isn't only that the civilians are being manipulated by the Hamas leadership in Iran, but that they're participating in this as a consequence of the fundamental doctrine of Hamas.
00:30:13.080Okay, so then I guess my question would be, to what degree are the Palestinian citizens, especially the younger ones, and I suppose this is partly what the compassionate people on the university campuses are getting at.
00:30:26.780I mean, if you're 15, 16 years old, and you've been bombarded by Iranian propaganda since you were even younger than that, into believing that your best pathway forward is martyrdom, then to what degree can you be held responsible for the fact that you believe it?
00:30:46.220And so, I mean, I have the same conundrum, for example, with regards to the protesters on American campuses.
00:30:52.520I mean, a lot of these kids have been propagandized throughout high school into this victim-victimizer narrative, and they buy it completely.
00:31:02.580And it's very unfortunate, and I think that they're very dangerous in consequence, but I've seen the consequences of that propaganda among young people.
00:31:12.540It's very demoralizing, and it's also extremely effective.
00:31:15.560I mean, we did a study in 2016 looking at the predictors of support for politically correct authoritarianism, which is very relevant with regards to what's happening on the campus.
00:31:26.400And one of the things we found was that even having had one politically correct course at any time in your life was a significant predictor of sympathy with politically correct authoritarian views.
00:31:39.420Not being very bright was one of them, right?
00:31:42.020So low verbal IQ, while that's relevant, you know, low verbal IQ is a good predictor, comparatively speaking, and so was being female and having a feminine temperament.
00:31:51.140And the fourth best predictor was ever having been propagandized.
00:31:54.540And so, how much of the doctrine that's—I know maybe I'm taking you out of your area of specialty here, you know, because this is a more political or even a theological question.
00:32:04.280But how much of the propaganda story that's driving the Palestinian civilian cooperation with Hamas do you think is a consequence of planned propagandization at the hands of the Iranians?
00:32:21.800Starting a business can be tough, but thanks to Shopify, running your online storefront is easier than ever.
00:32:27.380Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business, from the launch your online shop stage all the way to the did we just hit a million orders stage, Shopify is here to help you grow.
00:32:38.760Our marketing team uses Shopify every day to sell our merchandise, and we love how easy it is to add more items, ship products, and track conversions.
00:32:47.240With Shopify, customize your online store to your style with flexible templates and powerful tools, alongside an endless list of integrations and third-party apps like on-demand printing, accounting, and chatbots.
00:32:58.740Shopify helps you turn browsers into buyers with the internet's best converting checkout, up to 36% better compared to other leading e-commerce platforms.
00:33:06.520No matter how big you want to grow, Shopify gives you everything you need to take control and take your business to the next level.
00:33:13.540Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash jbp, all lowercase.
00:33:19.500Go to shopify.com slash jbp now to grow your business, no matter what stage you're in.
00:33:29.680I mean, this is—this—so this is the problem with the ramifications of this war.
00:33:36.520Right, because it would be a proven Iranian strategy.
00:33:39.980Spend decades radicalizing the culture from primary school on, the books, the payment structure, you know, the pay-for-slave program of the Palestinian Authority.
00:33:52.640All those are multi-decade approaches to radicalize a population to achieve your political goals.
00:34:02.180From me, as my expertise, though, this is where I think we've definitely reached that point in the war against Hamas and Gaza, is this, how do you defeat an ideology?
00:34:19.240But I am fighting on a daily basis of now, people who have spent, you know, their PhDs in counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, and saying that you're creating more enemy or more terrorist than you're killing.
00:34:55.160That's like saying you cannot remove Hitler and the Nazi regime or dismantle its military because you'll further radicalize the German population who believe in the Nazi ideology.
00:35:07.040Okay, well, you can imagine a circumstance under which that might occur, but the one that you just laid out obviously didn't occur.
00:36:46.560But then the question is, who exactly is Hamas?
00:36:49.080How do you distinguish them from the civilians?
00:36:51.060And what are the—so you said you can respond proportionately, so you're going to remove Hamas's military capacity.
00:36:57.820But if Hamas is in some ways indistinguishable from the Palestinian civilian population, then how do you know when you've—how do you know when you've won, right?
00:37:07.440And in a manner that's going to matter in the future.
00:37:28.640I actually want the laws of war upheld.
00:37:30.560There's actually very clear guidance, even with a non-state actor not wearing a uniform, what classifies as a combatant or non-combatant or as a person partaking in the hostilities.
00:37:47.960Now, who's in Hamas—this is actually my business to the IDF—like, they have a board, like, walls of every member of Hamas's military, from brigade commander, battalion commander, company commanders, and either exes for killed and captured.
00:38:01.400As they're breaking apart, the goal of dismantling a military is never, just like we talked about in the beginning, to destroy all of them, to kill every member of Hamas.
00:38:13.580And always after the war, once you remove that power, whether it is the Japanese emperor or Hitler himself, there's still going to be tens of thousands of—you have to reconcile them.
00:38:24.980You have to do de-radicalization programs.
00:39:07.700So in this case, again, it's measurable.
00:39:09.780Like, it's literally like measures of effectiveness and measures of performance are pretty clear on how do you remove a form from power is when they're—the leadership that is the power.
00:40:07.220It's not—once it gets to the point where it's not a functioning organization—so even from the political apparatus or the military, it's really definable.
00:40:14.940Militarily, you say you can destroy a military when it can't do its assigned mission, attack or defend, and it can't reconstitute itself.
00:41:15.740Like you said, they actually have a strategy that's based on time for the international community, namely the United States, like the United States has in almost every one of Israel's wars.
00:41:25.540To stop the Israel saying, look, I know you had the right to self-defense, whether it's the Six Day of War, Yom Kippur War, you name it.
00:41:34.080Say, I know you had the right to self-defense, but you need to stop.
00:41:47.200So after October 7th and the campus protests emerged and very rapidly, how much of that was a consequence of a strategy that was conscious, that was put in place consciously by Iranian actors or proxies in the aftermath of October 7th?
00:42:07.460And how much of it was spontaneous consequence, let's say, of the victim-victimizer narrative?
00:42:13.060Like, to what degree has Iran managed to co-opt actors in the West that can organize those sorts of protests?
00:42:41.320But within Israel's context, I mean, I don't want to take away from Yair Asimwar sitting in jail for many, many years thinking of what are the weaknesses of Israel.
00:43:16.640So, yes, Iran in this larger picture of the geopolitical situation.
00:43:22.140Okay, so that's why you made reference earlier to this idea that the attempts to reduce brutality can make it worse, right?
00:43:30.120Because when you change the rules, you open up new strategic possibilities that are put in place in consequence of being able to manipulate the rules.
00:43:41.100Yeah, this is the Western—we call it the liberal dilemma.
00:44:00.160We lost the Vietnam War, not because of the field of battle, of course, because the American population said, we don't see the interest in this, and the Conkite effect.
00:44:09.100So, the actual—that social media effect was there in the Vietnam War.
00:44:13.060So, it's the contest of these three wills that have led to this point, absolutely.
00:44:19.360But that weakness has also led to an aversion.
00:44:23.840So, this is my—again, because I've been in this field with the United Nations and Human Rights Watch and Human Rights groups who have risen in their vocal power to say, that's not okay, whatever it is.
00:45:56.340But one of the biggest things, to include the U.S. administration, because of this belief of the use of one bomb called the 2,000-pound bomb,
00:46:06.180is that they've used so many of them that nobody else would have done that, that Israel is purposely trying to cause destruction.
00:46:57.000And I just told you, I was in 150 feet underground in a Hamas tunnel in December.
00:47:02.060But all the criticism of a 2,000-pound bomb and Israel's use against a combatant in underground structure says, you know, it's just, you know, abhorrent that they would use this tool in war.
00:47:14.900I think it puts U.S. national security at risk.
00:47:17.760So next time when you send my brothers and sisters or our military into war, you're going to say that they can't use a 2,000-pound bomb against an enemy underneath certain buildings or in a bunker.
00:48:34.960As the number one prayer and meditation app, Halo is launching an exceptional new series called How to Pray.
00:48:41.240Imagine learning how to use scripture as a launchpad for profound conversations with God.
00:48:46.200How to properly enter into imaginative prayer.
00:48:48.580And how to incorporate prayers reaching far back in church history.
00:48:52.980This isn't your average guided meditation.
00:48:55.420It's a comprehensive two-week journey into the heart of prayer, led by some of the most respected spiritual leaders of our time.
00:49:01.880From guests including Bishop Robert Barron, Father Mike Schmitz, and Jonathan Rumi, known for his role as Jesus in the hit series The Chosen,
00:49:09.960you'll discover prayer techniques that have stood the test of time, while equipping yourself with the tools needed to face life's challenges with renewed strength.
00:49:17.420Ready to revolutionize your prayer life?
00:49:20.180You can check out the new series, as well as an extensive catalog of guided prayers, when you download the Halo app.
00:49:26.180Just go to halo.com slash Jordan and download the Halo app today for an exclusive three-month trial.
00:50:51.400That is the overwhelming number one thing that any military has ever done in the history of war to prevent civilian harm is evacuate cities.
00:52:07.660That Egypt destroyed the homes of 100,000 people on their side and evacuated all those people because there were a bunch of smuggling tunnels going in between and terrorism on their side.
00:52:25.440Well, it is the case, if I've got this right, that the Arab world in general has refused to take Palestinian refugees in any great numbers.
00:52:51.800It would be very easy for them to open that side up of the Sinai, and these kids need to look on a map.
00:52:57.360I mean, where Egypt is in this giant desert called the Sinai, there makes—it is not rational to say that Egypt couldn't have opened their side up, created a humanitarian zone outside of the combat area.
00:53:46.280So how did Israel ensure that when all the refugees went to this zone that hadn't been militarized, let's say, by Hamas, that it wouldn't just be as infiltrated by Hamas as Gaza itself is?
00:54:02.620Like, so how do they know that the refugees are refugees and not military combatants?
00:54:34.720When Israel announced evacuations to protect civilian life before they moved in to get their hostages and destroy Hamas, the world said you can't do that.
00:54:53.360Many Hamas leadership and hostages were moved during that time.
00:54:57.460As Israel was allowing for the protection of civilians, rather than, like other militaries invading a territory, do it with overwhelming force to achieve your goals quickly.
00:55:41.740So Israel did, by the time I visited in Khan Yunus, interesting, as we go through all the metrics and all the things that Israel has done that no military has done in history,
00:55:50.360I went in with the division commander who talked to me about, basically, the political atmosphere was that you had to bring the civilian casualties to zero.
00:56:00.960That's literally what the statements were, which would mean the war needs to stop.
00:56:04.200So you had a division in Gaza, in Khan Yunus, which is another Hamas strong point, doing operations with the overwhelming backdrop of you can't have a civilian casualty.
00:56:17.840So they did an example of how they prevented that, basically the migration of Hamas, although it's still inaccurate to say that that migration is not showing Israel is successful.
00:56:29.680Because dismantling the military means taking away its military capability.
00:56:35.220So Hamas wasn't moving with its 20,000 rockets.
00:56:59.680Along with the evacuation on the Palestinian side, because they had the option.
00:57:03.720So now the simple-minded consequence of what you said, my understanding of that would be that, well, Israel gave the civilian population ample time to clear out.
00:58:58.780That's, like, that's standard military operation to include in urban warfare.
00:59:02.480If you know there's an enemy bunker or an enemy headquarters or an enemy formation, you would always want to strike them as far away as you can, especially if you've done everything to move civilians out of harm as well as possible.
00:59:15.140This is the idea of, like, the 2,000-pound bomb you can't use in an urban area, which they're actually saying it doesn't matter if there's zero civilians there, you can't use that bomb.
00:59:23.060Well, that's obviously a propaganda maneuver.
00:59:25.040So, okay, so one advantage of clearing the civilians out then would be that there would be, in principle, fewer restrictions on your ability to use air power.
00:59:34.000So why doesn't, why don't the Hamas forces just move everything that they have into the tunnels?
00:59:39.800I imagine they did that to some degree.
00:59:41.440This is why they have 400 miles of tunnels.
00:59:43.540So why have anything available to be bombed?
00:59:46.280So this is what I, when I went there in December and interviewed brigade commanders that were fighting there, they would have a two-week battle on a single block.
01:00:10.940We call it the three-dimensional war, but to know, so this is a funny thing about me going into Kahn Yunus.
01:00:17.680I was in Kahn Yunus, a lot less activity, but I was taken to a location where they were searching for a tunnel.
01:00:23.740And later that they found that tunnel.
01:00:26.720I was standing on top of an uncleared Hamas tunnel on the surface.
01:00:30.960And that's what the IDF faced every moment, every step they took into Gaza.
01:00:35.360And then the houses were, you know, basically rigged to blow.
01:00:39.500There were absolutely Hamas left behind.
01:00:41.940And this is why northern Gaza was chosen first.
01:00:44.080It was the military strong point of Hamas, of its battalions with assigned geographic areas to hold with a vast tunnel network of caches all throughout the urban terrain.
01:00:54.700Same thing that you would teach somebody to do.
01:00:56.980Okay, so this whole tunnel network, it was produced over what period of time?
01:03:32.020Well, and money that they take from, you know, they basically, the market that they drive up the prices and Hamas takes that money.
01:03:40.640So both direct aid money given to Hamas, but also Hamas's subjugation of its population into poverty involves the population having to pay Hamas.
01:03:49.160What about funding from places like Iran, the direct funding for the construction of the tunnels?
01:04:19.740And what do you make of the knowledge of the international community, let's say the UN, for example, with regard to the presence of these tunnels?
01:04:27.620I mean, how much of the fact that these tunnels existed has come...
01:04:31.060Who has it come as a surprise to and who knew?
01:04:34.600So this is the idea of who is the United Nations?
01:04:39.600Or who is UNRWA, the United Nations organization in the Palestinian areas, right?
01:04:46.200So in Gaza, the UN voice in Gaza is UNRWA.
01:04:50.620So we're rational people that have facts and can make deductions off facts.
01:04:58.640If there are Hamas data centers underneath UNRWA headquarters, or if there's Hamas tunnels underneath UNRWA facilities, schools, mosque, hospitals, but UNRWA, who has been there for 15 years, says that we did not know about that.
01:05:17.080To me, that doesn't make logical sense.
01:05:19.320Well, it's either a confession of incompetence or malevolence.
01:05:33.540So Hamas is the ruling power, has been the ruling power for 15 years.
01:05:37.780And you can't work in Gaza, much like the Ba'ath regime in Iraq, unless you're a member of Hamas.
01:05:42.060And you could not be like a radicalized, martyr, fundamentalist Hamas.
01:05:48.060But you can bet your dollar you can't say anything without the threat to your life if you don't even believe in the ideology.
01:05:55.140This gets to our number of civilian casualties, like the Gaza Health Ministry, which is the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.
01:06:01.420And that we will believe their word without even questioning to where we have the national leaders of the world parroting the number, which I tell you as a scholar of this, there is no number.
01:06:13.440There's no way to know how many civilians are dying on a daily basis down to the single digit, period.
01:06:18.700Or that nobody will acknowledge that the Gaza Health Ministry provides a number to the world that, according to them, includes every death that happens in Gaza, no matter the cause.
01:06:29.920So it doesn't matter if it was a Hamas rocket that landed on a house, since 20% of the 13,000 rockets Hamas has fired have landed in Gaza.
01:06:38.740It doesn't matter if that death was caused by Hamas.
01:06:40.820And the Hamas number also includes any reported missing person, whether it's a social media post or a family member saying, I don't know where this person is.
01:06:50.940That goes on Hamas's list of dead personnel.
01:06:54.300But the world just runs with 37,000 Palestinian.
01:06:58.700Right, and I've seen that number radically adjusted multiple times, which is an indication of its, well, of its comparative reliability.
01:07:06.220But this gets to the college kids that, like, just know what the number is.
01:07:12.600The number is every death that's happened in Gaza, no matter their cause.
01:07:15.780You know, I've had some friends who've been looking at the social media warfare end of this, who are trying to understand what information the college kids who are protesting are getting and why they believe it.
01:07:28.980And TikTok, in particular, is flooded with images that suggest that the IDF are barbarians beyond belief and that the casualty rates are extremely high.
01:07:38.580And once you click on one of those, then that's all you get in your feed.
01:07:42.060And that seems to be particularly effective.
01:07:44.940The use of imagery of injured children, for example, seems to be particularly effective for women.
01:07:50.080And, of course, the majority of the protesters on the Ivy League campuses are women.
01:07:54.420And so they're the targets of this particular PSYOP.
01:08:38.240The U.S. president ordered the Marines to go in and get those responsible for that action.
01:08:44.520So the Marine Corps, over their objections, launched an operation.
01:08:48.920Al Jazeera was sitting in the hospital airing photos of children that had been casualties of the operations and trumping up numbers of civilian casualties, unverifiable.
01:09:00.460And six days into the battle, the Iraqi governing council, the U.S. allies all threatened to disband if the United States didn't stop its battle.
01:09:09.060That was basically an echo to what we have today, where you can defeat a superior power easily through the use of information warfare, the pictures of children.
01:09:40.180And so if you're playing a victim-victimizer ideological game, then obviously pictures of hurt children are incredibly effective weapons in that regard.
01:09:49.780And of course, if there is a war, there's going to be hurt children.
01:09:52.420So it's a strategy that's very difficult to counter.
01:09:56.960But there's an ideology that the IDF would do it purposely.
01:09:59.740When—I can show you the video of October 7th where Hamas psychopaths, like Jeffrey Dahmers, were standing over children making a death moan and laughing over top of them.
01:10:32.380But despite, going back to our statement, that the IDF have done everything anybody's ever thought of and created ways that nobody's ever thought of.
01:10:39.360I mean, they have drones with speakers, going back to drones, that go into enemy health territory and announce to the civilian, please leave.
01:11:31.880I don't know what the exact number was, but most of them were freed during that temporary ceasefire, whereas over 100 were released by Hamas.
01:16:50.100It would be—if you—like it's almost anti-intellectual.
01:16:53.500How do you not understand that if October 7th leads to a creation of something, despite all the challenges, it would lead to greater violence for all—
01:17:03.780No logic gets in the way of virtue signaling ever, right?
01:17:06.760There's no hypocrisy like moral hypocrisy.
01:17:47.080But you don't get more serious than that.
01:17:50.080There are 80,000 Israelis who can't go home for the last eight months at a huge financial cost to the nation of Israel, but they're literally now trying to burn it all down.
01:20:54.520I mean, the one factor that college kids don't want to acknowledge is that there are two million Arab Israelis living side-by-side in Israel today.
01:21:09.580Because things are as good for them as they would—better for them than they would be anywhere else in the Arab world, with the possible exception of the UAE?
01:21:21.880I mean, the Houthis in Saudi Arabia, they're—I mean, it's not every—it's not all good, of course.
01:21:29.660But I think this goes back to your original, the opening comments about the normalization with Israel-era nations going back to Saudi Arabia.
01:21:48.780Well, everything around the Abraham Accords, once the Democrats came into power, irritated me to death.
01:21:55.460Because I knew—I knew enough about the situation in the Middle East at that point to know that the Saudis would have signed the Abraham Accords.
01:22:14.960And part of the reason for that was that the Democrats were absolutely 100% unwilling to do anything that would give the Trump administration credit for anything positive.
01:22:27.380But on the positive side, so far the Abraham Accords have held.
01:22:32.180I know that the Signees have pulled back and are just sort of waiting in the wings and not trumpeting the fact that they've signed a peace deal with Israel.
01:22:40.100But it's very, very positive that the Accords have still been maintained intact.
01:22:45.560So in that way, Iran hasn't obtained the victory that they'd hoped for.
01:22:49.780Now, you just said that you don't know who's—fundamentally, if Israel can win this war.
01:22:56.160So do you want to—what do you think is going to happen?
01:32:46.200But there's another advantage to it, too, is that, so imagine you want to simplify the world because that's easy.
01:32:51.840But then the other thing you want to do is you want to take your place as a moral actor in the world so that you're elevated in your moral status.
01:32:58.300Well, if you've identified the victim properly, all you have to do is announce your allyship with the victim.
01:34:28.300Well, on that happy note, we could probably bring this section of our discussion to a close.
01:34:34.720I want to talk to you about some things that are probably more personal.
01:34:37.720I'm going to do that on the Daily Wire side.
01:34:39.380So those of you who are watching and listening, thank you for this.
01:34:42.220By the way, that was extremely instructive.
01:34:44.960I really appreciate the opportunity personally to, you know, to ask you the questions I did ask you.
01:34:50.440Because I'm trying to get my understanding of the situation in Israel and in relationship to Hamas and the Palestinians right.
01:34:59.580And I've looked at this a lot and I've talked to a lot of people.
01:35:02.600And, you know, it was useful to me to test out some of the conceptions I had against your knowledge to see if I'm, like, way the hell out in right field as it would be.
01:35:13.380And hopefully it's real useful for everybody watching and listening to hear a more detailed analysis of the situation that Israel finds itself in.
01:35:22.920And so I think what we'll do on the Daily Wire side for all of you watching and listening is I'd like to find out, you know, more about your military career and how you entered the academic world and why you picked urban warfare specifically as your target of inquiry.
01:35:39.580And we'll probably delve a little bit more into the details of urban warfare as well.
01:35:43.460So if all of you who are watching and listening want to join us, we'll do that on the Daily Wire side.