Gaza Changed Urban Warfare

There's no bloodless war.

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Jamie is joined by John Spencer, an author, former colonel in the California State Guard, and urban warfare expert with 25 years of experience in the Army, to examine Israel’s tactics in Gaza and weigh in on allegations the IDF is committing genocide and/or war crimes.

The Agenda:
—Joe Rogan accuses Israel of genocide
—John’s experience in Gaza
—War is not quantitative
—How to determine proportionality
—“High threshold of civilian death”
—We are at war with ignorance
—H.R. McMaster’s “zero-dark-thirty fallacy”
—Reception of his expertise in Ukraine vs. Gaza

Show Notes:
—John: Israel Has Created a New Standard for Urban Warfare. Why Will No One Admit It?

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Comments (49)
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  1. Avatar photo
    Tim

    Coming to this late, but I found this to be a frustrating and, honestly, pretty bad interview with a pompous ass. Jamie is usually good at pressing guests, but that seemed to be mostly absent from this segment, as this guy lampooned imagined arguments and failed to back up his own. The guest was quite quick to point out how others do not have the specifics to second guess Israel's targeting decisions, but then seemed pretty eager to defend Israel without also having the specifics on those targeting decisions, and then seems to say that if you disagree you are believing Hamas, as if that is the only place criticism could originate from. That seems like a bad characterization of an argument, but I just relistened to that part of the interview, and I don't know how else to describe it. The amount of straw men he slays during this interview could truly fill a hayloft. He obviously has a lot to share about the difficulties of urban warfare and had some interesting and informative points, but they way he strung them together to essentially say Israel is doing a great job across the board seemed to steal more bases than I could count. For example, at a couple points he seemed to say that if you are a man of possible fighting age in an evacuated area, that you must be Hamas. That seems like quite a jump in logic. There are a lot of people who did not flee from the evacuated zones, for all sort of reasons, especially earlier in the conflict. Are the women and children who didn't flee those areas also Hamas, or just the men? He regularly made comparisons to other situations that had completely different constraints, like seeming to analogize the US dropping a bomb on a bunker in Iraq, but then saying the difference is that there are no military bases in Gaza. OK, so then what is the point of this analogy? His jumps in logic and bad analogies were so distracting that I spent more time thinking about the holes in the logic of his arguments than I have in any other Dispatch interview. To be so flippant and dismissive about other people's assumptions and then to turn around and seem to have a host of them yourself really turned me off. There are enough examples of events that run counter to some of his assertations that I just don't believe this guy, like the juxtaposition of the photos of the devastation at some of the hospitals in Gaza and the medical supply shortages that have been widely reported, compared to his telling, which made it sounds like they have never been anything but nearly fully operational. Maybe the devastation to hospitals is unavoidable if your objective is to root out fighters who are holed up there, but that's not what is seemed like he was really arguing. It might be different if he had stopped to explain through some of his claims, but he just sort of asserted something, complained how bad other people were covering the subject, says he was on the ground and the IDF told them they were doing a good job and that he collected 'information', and moved on without describing a lot of it. Maybe he's right, but he certainly didn't give enough backup for my likes, and left me worried that this is the sort of arrogant person our military is relying on as an expert. One more example of something that stopped me in my tracks - when he started talking about the battle of Manila, which happened 80 years ago during a war that used tactics that would no longer be deemed acceptable due to civilian casualties and mass devastation, he totally lost me, especially since his justification was its level of coverage on national news at the time. There are so many things wrong with that analogy, not least of which is an examination of news censorship from the front lines during WW2, that I'm not even sure where to start. Truly bonkers. That example alone made me lose a lot of respect for the guest.

    I'm also struck that there wasn't really a discussion of whether fighting this way is helpful or harmful to Israel's long-term security, or what other things they should be considering in the conflict, as they try to wind it down. Seems like a big thing not to talk about, from an expert in this kind of warfare, unless you think your expertise doesn't have to extend to the effects on the population at large, and what the ramifications of that are. Obviously not an original thought, but seems to me that if you end up angering the population of Gaza on the whole you just make it easier for Hamas' (or other extremists groups') future recruitment, not to mention setting back cooperation with other regional powers. There doesn't seem to be much of a day after strategy that I've seen articulated anywhere, and if you don't have one, how do you know if the costs of your tactics is in line with your goals? I would have been curious to hear his thoughts on that dimension of the conflict, especially since the US military was forced into recognizing this as one of the most important pieces of fighting terrorist organizations, and I honestly don't see how Israel isn't at risk of empowering adversaries with the amount of devastation they are causing, and with the vacuum they seem to be creating. Again, not an expert, but this seems like it should be one of the most important topics to discuss, and yet wasn't really part of the conversation.

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  2. Pohl

    A rather prickly and arrogant guest, which isn’t the norm here. I am glad the Lewis article was brought up, though, and, while he commits a few errors, the article was more informative than this interview and the linked Newsweek article by Spencer. It is worth checking out Lewis’ article just to see how civilian casualty numbers can be arrived at, though the author admits post-war investigations will be necessary, which is normal. It is also worth reading about Gaza’s Health Ministry, run by the PA from Ramallah, and their record in past conflicts. They are arguably as incentivized to undercount to make Hamas appear less destroyed. At any rate, their reputation is at least middling. And Lewis uses a conservative number for civilians based on Israel’s higher number of Hamas deaths at the time of the example.

    And I could take issue here with many points from Spencer but will just mention one—the phrase “existential war.” This is a stolen base, not just a rhetorical flourish, whose effect is to magnify the stakes of each discrete strike, of which there have been tens of thousands. But Hamas is essentially the same terrorist organization that Israel hemmed in for years, the same as existed on 10/06. They learned of a new, ferocious, and evil facet of Hamas on 10/07, but it wasn’t completely out of left field. Thus, the pace and conduct of military operations are not set in stone because the retaliatory aspect of this war is in tension with the purely defensive one.

    This is an area of legitimate disagreement, though. But it’s definitely not as reductive as Spencer writing, “The sole reason for civilian deaths in Gaza is Hamas.” There is an element of choice in each Israeli strike, in other words. And he acknowledges as much in the beginning here when discussing proportionality and the required precautions to limit civilian death and destruction. One can’t absolve Israel of all civilian deaths in one breath and talk about the laws of war in the other as if these things aren’t related.

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  3. Austin from Atlanta

    This was a great interview. It is fascinating to see the division in the comments between people who focus on the ideal and people who focus on reality, which is what so much of the political divide comes down to.

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    Kyzyl Tuva

    Great interview Jamie. Iran debet superari.

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    Cal Amari

    Excellent interview. While listening I was thinking about the JustSecurity article and how I should comment a link to it... but then Jamie mentioned it! Amazing!

    I don't pretend to know all the answers, I'm a poor armchair general and am comfortable being told I'm wrong, but I think I overall lean towards the views of the Lewis article, Israel is doing a good job, but could be doing more. At a certain point war is quantitative, we need data to evaluate proportionality and the strategic advantage of continuing a high intensity conflict.

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    Earl King

    I had my TV privileges taken away often. I just seemed to piss my mother off, all the time. Teachers as well. My step father would ask me if I wanted the paddle ball paddle, a belt or a hanger.
    So weeks without being able to watch TV I would read. Throughout my middle school and early on HS I would go to the Library and read WWII biographies, histories, fiction it didn’t matter. My father had died in the Air Force...and of course I was curious. I read book after book after book. Pacific, European, German vs Russia...I read a lot.
    In the book a Bridge Too Far...a British adventure to end the war early, there is House to House combat in Arnhem. A Dutch town. It is the most graphic intense account of urban warfare I read, until I got to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. American Sniper was the last book i read about urban warfare.

    War is hell, people die, civilians die....Americans shot wounded Germans to put them out of their misery and Americans shot their own to put them out of their misery. Life become cheap. The Bonzi charges on the pac islands? Ludicrous. The battle for Stalingrad....you’ve got to be kidding me. What we do today, what Israel is doing is the best that can be done. War is awful.

    When I hear the wailing about war....genocide...these idiots have no idea what genocide is. None whatsoever. The sacking of Nanking for example. I can hardly listen to the complaints. War is awful. People die. Lots of people die.

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  7. CCA

    The guest, touted as an expert, didn't provide as much depth and specificity as I would have liked. We kept hearing he was just in Gaza, but I didn't get much of a sense of what he was doing there, what, precisely, he witnessed, and more detail supportive of his positions.

    My sense is that, of course, the civilian death toll as reported is suspect, given the source. I also agree that the interpretation of "outcome" based statistics as a means of determining the right and wrong side of combat is silly. But I think those things are obvious.

    I was hoping to hear more about tactics.

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      BrandonAlleman

      I also came away not learning much new. Questions were answered by criticizing others for assumptions while stating that he was there and listing credentials. Specific details, argument and persuasion from on the ground were missing.

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  8. Allen Z

    Fascinating interview, especially in light of the IDF war end-game strategy for Gaza. Whether IDF should evacuate civilians and go into Rafah or surround the place and, in effect, wait out an isolated Hamas and see what develops. The so-called Zero Dark Thirty Tactic (conducting specific raids) as a substitute for invasion, as proposed by the US, has its drawbacks.

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    Ben Connelly

    Great interview

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    Slp

    The statement that none of Gaza's hospitals are offline or destryed needs more backup. Can we have some fact-checking please

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      George.Skinner

      Probably the best independent evidence comes from satellite imagery, which can show evidence of damage to buildings but doesn't tell much about whether the buildings are still operating (unless they're clearly destroyed.) CNN has had a couple of pieces where they use satellite imagery to look at the impact on hospitals. It's interesting, but I think they get a bit out over their skis at times regarding whether a facility is actually a hospital (as opposed to something Hamas claims is a hospital), or whether damage is significant or not. It's also exasperating to read language like "Israel claims to have been battling militants for 10 days" at some place like Al-Shifa hospital - if Israel wasn't being engaged in combat, they would've had control of the hospital in far less than 10 days. It's as if the reporters assume that Israeli troops are just going to park themselves in front of a hospital and lob shells and gunfire at the buildings for kicks.

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    2. Bigdonmck

      Spencer had tons of stats. Too many for my taste. A bit of overkill in my mind. Fact checking is definitely in order. Especially after the latest tragedy at that hospital.

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        Slp

        Thanks. I don't watch TV news so I hadn't seen any of that. I was wondering about remote sensing, but of course you're right. It doesn't really tell much about the interior and then there's the basic lack of information. It does seem that there should be pre-war info on where the hospitals are though.

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      Anne W (Raw5254)

      You mean, like the information we’ve been getting from Hamas? Because we certainly haven’t seemed to care about fact checking them.

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        Slp

        I don't trust a word that Hamas says. And I wouldn't expect The Dispatch to use any of their information in a fact check.

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          Anne W (Raw5254)

          Thanks.

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