Can Israel Actually Win This War?

This episode delves into the complex and ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, examining whether Israel can achieve its stated war goals.

1. Israel's initial war goals have not been fully achieved, leading to prolonged military engagement.
2. The possibility of a total victory over Hamas is debated, with varying opinions on the practicality of completely eradicating the group.
3. International influence and geopolitical strategies significantly impact Israel's military decisions and actions in the conflict.
4. The episode discusses the broader implications of the war on regional stability and future peace prospects in the Middle East.
5. It highlights the complexity of defeating an ideology embedded within a population, as represented by Hamas.

1: Introduction to the Conflict

Bari Weiss outlines the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, questioning the feasibility of Israel's objectives. The episode sets the stage for a detailed discussion on the realities versus expectations of the conflict.

• Bari Weiss: "More than 250 days later, some 120 Israeli hostages remain in Hamas captivity, both dead and alive."

2: Military and Political Analysis

Experts discuss the strategic failures and minor successes of the Israeli military efforts, reflecting on the broader implications of the war.

• Seth Fransman: "Israel is supposed to be the greatest military force in the Middle East. So why haven't they achieved their war goals?"

3: Ideological and Long-term Impact

The episode explores the ideological aspects of Hamas and the potential for lasting peace or continuous conflict in the region.

• John Spencer: "Whoever thinks that we can demolish Hamas is wrong. It is the Muslim Brotherhood that has been present in the region for many years."

1. Stay Informed: Understand the historical context and current developments of the Israel-Hamas conflict.
2. Support Peace Initiatives: Engage with and support organizations working towards peaceful resolutions in the Middle East.
3. Critical Consumption of Media: Analyze news with a critical eye, recognizing bias and varying perspectives, especially in conflict reporting.
4. Educational Outreach: Participate in or organize community discussions on the impact of international conflicts.
5. Advocate for Diplomacy: Encourage diplomatic and non-military solutions through petitions or by contacting elected officials.

When Hamas attacked Israel eight months ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel’s war goals were threefold: one, destroy Hamas; two, free all of the hostages; and three, ensure that Gaza can never threaten Israel again.

More than 250 days later, some 120 hostages remain in Hamas captivity, both dead and alive. Two Hamas battalions remain, consisting of somewhere between 9,000 and 12,000 fighters. More than 300 Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza and thousands wounded, 135,000 Israeli civilians are still displaced, and the war seems to have no end in sight.

Why? Israel is supposed to be the greatest military force in the Middle East. So why haven’t they achieved their war goals? Are their war goals even viable? And, can Israel win this war?

Here to help answer these questions today are Seth Frantzman and John Spencer.

Seth Frantzman is the senior Middle East correspondent and analyst at The Jerusalem Post. He has reported on the war against ISIS, several Gaza wars, and the conflict in Ukraine. And, he is an Adjunct Fellow at The Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He thinks Israel can and should win this war, but he thinks the past eight months have been dismal and that Israel is at risk of losing and losing disastrously.

John Spencer is a military expert who has served in the army for 25 years, including two combat tours in Iraq. He is now chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point and host of the Urban Warfare Project podcast. He was recently asked if the war was winnable for the IDF, and he said: one hundred percent. But he thinks it is contingent on a total defeat of Hamas.

Today, we discuss what has actually been accomplished by the IDF in the last eight months, why they haven’t achieved “total victory” yet and if that’s even possible, the fate of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, how the U.S. has restrained Israel and if that restraint has been good or bad for Israel, what hope there is for the remaining hostages, whether the idea of Hamas can be defeated, what a “day after” plan could look like, the war with Hezbollah heating up in the north, and, most importantly: why October 7 did not wake up the West.

People

Bari Weiss, Seth Fransman, John Spencer

Companies

The Free Press

Books

None

Guest Name(s):

Seth Fransman, John Spencer

Content Warnings:

Discussions of war, violence, and hostage situations.

Speaker A
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Bari Weiss
From the free press. This is honestly and I'm Barry Weiss. When Hamas attacked Israel eight months ago and war broke out, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel's war goals were threefold. One, destroy Hamas. Two, free all of the hostages, and three, ensure that Gaza can never again threaten Israel.

More than 250 days later, some 120 israeli hostages remain in Hamas captivity, both dead and alive. Two Hamas battalions remain, consisting of somewhere between 9012 thousand fighters. More than 300 israeli soldiers have been killed and thousands wounded. Some 135,000 israeli civilians are still displaced, and the war, it seems to have no end in sight. And many of us watching are wondering why.

Israel is supposed to be the greatest military force in the Middle east. So why haven't they achieved their war goals? And are their war goals contradictory? In short, can Israel win this war? Just a few months ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, our security and the.

Speaker C
Prospects of peace in the Middle east. Depend on one thing, total victory over Hamas. Total victory over Hamas will not take years. It will take months. Victory is within reach.

Speaker D
And when people talk about the day. After, let's be clear about one thing. It'S the day after all of Hamas is destroyed. That was just in March. Then, just last week, IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari told reporters this the notion that Hamas can be destroyed, that it can be eradicated, is simply misleading the public.

Daniel Hagari
Hamas is an idea. Hamas is a party, and it is implanted in peoples hearts. Whoever thinks that we can demolish Hamas is wrong. It is the Muslim Brotherhood that has been present in the region for many years. But what can be done is to create something else, to replace it and make the population realize that there is another party.

It distributes food and provides social services. Who is this party that replaces Hamas at the political level? And is this the way to weaken Hamas? The issue that Hamas can be destroyed and Hamas can disappear is just to throw dust into the public's eyes. If we do not bring something else as an alternative in Gaza, Hamas will remain.

Bari Weiss
So. Which is it?

Here? To help answer these questions are Seth Fransman and John Spencer. Seth Fransman is the senior Middle east correspondent and analyst at the Jerusalem Post. He has reported on the war against ISIS, several Gaza wars, and also the war in Ukraine. He's also one of my favorite follows on Twitter.

He's consistently insightful. He thinks Israel can and should win this war, but believes that the past eight months have been dismal and that Israel is at risk of losing. John Spencer is a military expert who has served in the army for 25 years, including two combat tours in Iraq. He is now chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point and host of the Urban Warfare Project podcast. He was recently asked if the war was a winnable one.

He said this 100%, but he believes it's contingent on a total defeat of Hamas. What that looks like, we'll discuss. Today. We talk about what has actually been achieved by the IDF in the last eight months, why they haven't yet achieved total victory, and whether that's possible. We talk also about the fate of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, how the US has restrained Israel and if that restraint has been good or bad, what hope there is for the remaining hostages, whether the idea of Hamas can be defeated.

What a day after plan could look like, the war with Hezbollah heating up in the north. Why October 7 has not been the waking up moment for the west that perhaps many expected. And what, if anything, could wake people up? Stay with us.

Speaker G
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specialoffer. All lowercase. That's Shopify.com specialoffer. Hey, guys, Josh Hammer here, the host of America on Trial with Josh Hammer, a podcast for the first podcast network. Look, there are a lot of shows out there that are explaining the political news cycle, what's happening on the hill, to this, to that.

Speaker C
There are no other shows that are cutting straight to the point when it comes to the unprecedented lawfare, debilitating and affecting the 2024 presidential election. We do all that every single day right here on America on trial with Josh Hammer. Subscribe and download your episodes wherever you get your podcast. It's America on trial with Josh Hammer. Okay, so we're sitting here having this conversation a little more than eight months since Hamas invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, and massacred 1200 civilians, kidnapped more than 250 israeli Israelis and started the war that's still playing out today between Hamas and Gaza and Israel.

Bari Weiss
And it seems almost glib to ask this in such a simple way, but I want to start with the theme of this conversation, the reason that I wanted the two of you to come on, which is this, who is winning the war? Because suffice it to say, no one on this conversation is a fan of Hamas, but I think the two of you fundamentally disagree on how the war is going. So, Jon, I'd like to start with you. Who is winning the war today in the middle of June 2024? It's a tough question, right?

Speaker D
It's a million dollar question, because it has to have boundaries. And I measure it by the objectives from October 7 on, on both sides. So as a military strategist, I would take both sides objectives and say, okay, who's closer to achieving their goal in that objective for Israel? Who I think is winning at this moment, but I can't tell you who's going to win, but from a metric of the boundaries of war. And I know everybody does, war on drugs, war on terrorism.

You know, they use the word interchangeably, but with actual strategic assessments. And I actually interviewed Netanyahu to make sure I was clear on what were the political objectives given to the IDF in Gaza from October 8 on, when Israel declared war against Hamas and Gaza with definable metrics. Number one, return all the hostages. Number two, remove Hamas from the governing power of Gaza and over the palestinian people of Gaza, dismantle their military capability and secure their borders from those metrics. So if you want to take return to hostages home, over half of the hostages have been returned home.

Hamas has been basically removed from the actual ability to govern the people through the use of power, except for a very small portion of Gaza, in the southern portion of Gaza, where they maintain power, because the world has put constraints on where Israel can go, how they can do it. The big metric on removing Hamas military capability can also be measured by the number of rockets that have continued to be fired or not, the number of terror tunnels, the number of rocket supplies, production capability, command and control capability of military formations. Hamas had 24 battalions, over 40,000 fighters at the beginning of this. They now have anywhere from two to four battalions left. That doesn't mean they don't have thousands of fighters left in Gaza, but they have very minimal number of organized military units and then lastly, secure their borders.

I mean, Israel's southern border is definably secure at the moment, and they've done lots to further that security element. So from a metric of war, Israel's winning. Seth, you have made the case that Israel can and should win this war. And we're speaking, and you're currently in Jerusalem right now, but so far, you have basically said that it's been a pretty dismal eight months. So I put the question to you today in the middle of June, is Israel, as John says, winning the war?

Speaker E
I think Israel is doing very well tactically on the ground. They are dismantling the Hamas battalions. What I would say, in terms of the overall bigger strategic picture, I think that, first of all, in the end of the day, Hamas is not just Hamas. It's part of an iranian nexus in the region. Hamas has a much larger goal here, which is to drag Israel into Gaza to a very long quagmire and Gaza, so that Hamas can then reach around and take over the West bank and do what Hamas has always wanted to do, which is not only commit genocide against the jewish people, but take over Israel and create a one state solution, basically.

So my sense is that Hamas has been successful in sucking Israel into a very long war in Gaza. Israel has not been able to bring back many of the hostages. The military capabilities, I think, is a kind of big general term. So you can always do a mission accomplished and say, Israel has destroyed 99% of Hamas rockets. But the rockets may not be the only thing that's going on here, which is that Hamas is part of this larger structure in the region.

And if Hamas end goal is actually to get to the West bank and commit more attacks against Israel, as it historically has always done, Hamas has been defeated many times on the battlefield, and Hamas has always shown that within a few years, it can rebuild tunnels, it can rebuild its quote unquote, battalions. I don't even know if the battalions are a great metric to measure what's going on, because my sense is Hamas today controls 80% to 90% of Gaza. Because whenever the IDF leaves an area, and what the IDF has done in Gaza is go into neighborhoods, clear out Hamas, and then leave, Hamas returns to the vacuum that is created, because, as we all know, nature abhors the vacuum, so someone's going to rule it. There's no other alternative yet in place. And therefore, Hamas is always there.

And I think it's definitely just very problematic because we look at history and we see other examples of insurgencies, whether it's the iraqi insurgency or Afghanistan or Vietnam. You can go in and you can destroy all sorts of terrorist infrastructure, defeat battalions, and destroy all sorts of things. But if in the end of the day, you leave the field of battle and the enemy controls it, you have an uphill struggle in terms of the overall long term strategy. And my sense is it is not in Israel's interest to fight a long, forever war in Gaza. It is apparently in Hamas and Iran's interests and maybe Hezbollah and everyone else.

So Israel has to be very careful in terms of what it decides as the endgame here and whether it can come out of this war stronger than it was before it went in it. And that's kind of where I see a struggle. Before we get to the broader conversation about the various sort of fronts of this war that Seth has pointed to, let's actually dive a little bit deeper into what Seth just brought up, which is the question about who is actually controlling parts of Gaza and how much of Hamas military capabilities have been defeated. The start of the war, according to the IDF, there were something like 30,000 Hamas fighters in Gaza. Some news sources say closer to 40,000.

Bari Weiss
And according to the IDF, again, around 15,000 have been killed. Seth, you had this really sobering Twitter thread last month that started this way. One of the greatest misconceptions of the war, you wrote, in my view, is that Hamas has taken heavy losses and is somehow on the ropes. But it's not. Hamas has returned to 90% of Gaza, mostly because Israel left every place that it had, quote, cleared.

And the evidence for this is that Israel has gone repeatedly back into areas like Zeytun to fight Hamas again. It literally returns immediately after Israel leaves. And I want to ask you guys, first of all, is that happening? Cause, John, you're shaking your head that it is not. So maybe let's begin with you.

Is Seth right? So I think the greatest misconception of any analytical work on Gaza since October 7 is that comparing Hamas to any insurgency war of the past, any Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, I mean, it is a fallacy in a metric of war to put the paradigm of counterinsurgency theories on top of Hamas, which was the governing power, to include all institutions with a military in a statelet. I mean, Gaza is not a state, but it is not an insurgency. So all the application of insurgency theory, hearts and minds, you're creating more terrorists, then you're killing. All that doesn't apply.

Speaker D
Yet Hamas does reestablish itself after the IDF clears an area, because until you have another power that comes in and governs, then you still have this remnants of Hamas. But the actual military definitions, which is, while tactical, also operational, and strategic is definable. You are still going to have tens of thousands of military aged males who call themselves Hamas, palestinian jihadists. That's all going to be there. But that's not the metric.

And the number of Hamas fighters is also not the metric. Military capabilities can be measured by. And why battalions is a good metric, coherent military capability. And to destroy a military can be defined as, can it do its assigned mission, attack or defend and reconstitute itself with military capability? Absolutely.

We can criticize Israel for not using the clear hold build strategy, which you clear an area. And that was the american strategy, just to be clear, in Iraq and Afghanistan that Petraeus has talked extensively about. And he said basically about Israel, that they're just clearing Israel is and leaving to fight in other areas. And that means they're going to have to do it endlessly. Is he right?

So it is the strategy used successfully across time that we figured out almost after a decade of being in Iraq and Afghanistan? Yes. It's a strategy that we implemented and now we can measure it and say, was it effective to bringing the violence down? Did it resolve all the strategic, political, cultural things in that area? Arguably, yes, is a proven strategy.

So if you want to criticize Israel for clearing an area, removing military capability, and this is where we can debate. Yeah, thousands of Hamas reoccupy areas like Bethanoon, Gaza City, but they have a lot less military capability, which can be defined. Yes. Israel should have left five divisions in Gaza this whole time. Absolutely.

But could it? So this has always been the question of, well, what should Israel have done? Well, it's a great question. If we just take a whiteboard on what you know and what even General Petraeus was asking for in Iraq, that's different than what Israel can actually get. Okay, well, let's actually put a whiteboard to Seth Fransman right now.

Bari Weiss
Seth, you've really criticized Israel for this strategy. What do you think Israel should have done? Because there's a huge range of debate in a place like Jerusalem. Like some people say, Israel just needs to reoccupy Gaza and that's what it will take to clear these places. What do you think?

Speaker E
Well, I think, first of all, since my understanding of the conflict is that this was a conflict that did not just begin with Yahya Samewar getting up one day and deciding to attack Israel and commit a genocide. Hamas leaders live in Doha and Qatar. Hamas regularly meets with the iranian regime. The day after Hamas attacked Israel, Hezbollah began a war against Israel as well, which has now involved 5000 rockets and a week later, the Houthis began attacking ships and Israel in the Red Sea. So this is obviously a regional, massive conflict, comparable to a kind of first World War scenario where one small war that began the first World war began the Balkans, but very quickly became a regional conflict.

So in the end of the day, Israel's interest has to be to defeat the regional axis that's against it. And therefore, my view would be Israel should have gone into Gaza very quickly and in a kind of blitzkrieg, or whatever you want to call it, but basically tried to destroy as much of Hamas battalions as possible very quickly, tried to secure and release many of the hostages by force. And then Israel should have cut off Gaza from Egypt in the first round, not waited to go into Rafah later, but going in first there and then tried to bring in the Palestinian Authority or some other governing body connected to them and connected to the west, connected to arab partners, and replaced Hamas bit by bit in a kind of salami politics in Gaza and remove them completely. Because I don't think that Israel can accept to have a genocide or Hamas group on its border. I mean, Israel accepted this for decades.

We learn on October 7, you cannot allow these people to be there. You have to destroy them completely, replace them with something else. The Palestinian Authority is not great, but the Palestinian Authority never committed a genocide like October 7, the worst killing of jewish people since the Holocaust. So it would be, my view, preferable to do that quickly. Within the first month or two, it may have been higher casualties initially, and then Israel should have gone after and confronted Hezbollah and confronted the other actors in the region that are the ones that are fueling Hamas and inflaming this entire Middle east.

Bari Weiss
So we know from reporting that there was immense disagreement inside the israeli war cabinet about where the focus of this war should be. I don't think there's disagreement between the two of you that Hamas is only one piece of this broader regional war being run by Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah being two of its proxies. And I think only, you know, historian will be able to tell us whether or not the path that Israel pursued was correct. John, it struck me from October 8 or whenever it was, that Bibi set out these three aims of the war, that they were contradictory. The idea that one aim of the war was to release the hostages and another aim of the war was to obliterate Hamas seemed to me to be totally at odds with each other.

And that that has been a tension over the past eight and a half months. And I'm wondering where you sit there, you know, today, I think, 115 or so hostages, dead and alive, still remain in Gaza. This is the dilemma that Hamas wanted to create, right? The leader of the military wing in Hamas sat in prison for years thinking of the greatest weaknesses of Israel, and the hostage situation is one of them. So, absolutely, by design, it creates this dilemma of, you can come get them by force if you are able to.

Speaker D
This is where I agree with much of Seth's analysis. But the idea that Israel was able to pursue that course of action, again, we're talking about the war against Hamas and Gaza. Yes, we could expand that to be the Israel Palestine Israel Iran struggle, conflict, whatever. But by defining the war, then what are the means that can be used to pursue the ends? Israel relies on external support to survive.

So it had to listen to international pressure. If the five divisions that Israel wanted to launch, which mobilized a reserve force of over 300,000, how long could Israel maintain that amount of mobilized reserves as a nation at the cost to pursue those objectives quickly? And I agree with Seth, and I've said this since day one. The way wars are won is through surprise, speed, and overwhelming force. And that's what Israel initially designed.

And then the world said, while you're doing that, you can't continue it, or we're going to stop protecting you. We're going to stop providing certain arms. So this is where, I mean, war is politics. I agree that another course of action would have created a better result quicker, but that option wasn't available to Israel as it's being attacked, relying on its allies, especially the United States. So, yes, five divisions could have achieved the goal of bringing the hostages home and dismantling Hamas a lot quicker had they stayed at the job using a joint air, land cyber sea campaign.

But when the world starts criticizing Israel on day one, like, why are you using bombs? You can do it a different way, or we're going to basically force you, with the UN Security Council resolution, to stop altogether. Again, a strategist provides leadership with alternatives. So if you're not going to do it that way, what's the other way you can return to hostages. Negotiating with Hamas.

Hamas has a history, and that alternative would not have led to favorable outcomes, especially the return of hostages. Quickly, let's go back to the morning of October 8. If you guys are in the war cabinet, or let's say you're Benjamin Netanyahu, with all of the sort of goodwill, so to speak, that existed for about 48 hours, how should Israel have pursued this war that's now dragging into its 9th month. Because remember, in March, Bibi said something like, our security and the prospects of peace in the Middle east depend on one thing, total victory over Hamas. Total victory of Hamas will not take years.

Bari Weiss
It will take months. Victory is within reach. Really doesn't seem to me to be that way. So if we could go back in time and Israel had all of the support from. You're talking about the international community, but let's be real.

It's really the US. What should it have done? How could the war be over by now? How could the hostages be returned by now today? Seth?

Speaker E
Well, I think. I mean, I was there on the border on October 7. I drove down there that morning, and I went down the next day, and I've been down there as much as possible throughout this conflict. So I would say that on October 7, that night, Israel was mobilizing huge numbers of forces. By October 8, they began to arrive, bits and pieces of tank divisions and infantry.

On October 8, Hamas was still in chaos, because, we have to remember, Hamas had attacked Israel, and Hamas had thrown everything at this gamble. I mean, I don't think Hamas imagined it would be this successful. It knew that it was facing what it probably thought were overwhelming odds because this was a high tech army. It thought that it would probably lose at many of the points that it attacked. It thought its men would be shot down.

It assumed it would take some places, and it only wanted to get less hostages. It assumed if it got 50 or whatever, that would be debilitating for Israel, and then it could get a ceasefire. I think Hamas was in chaos when it returned to Gaza. Whats left of it returned. I think if Israel had gone in immediately with whatever it had, into some pieces of Gaza, for instance, going into the Philadelphia route would have been controversial, but probably could have been done.

I think it would have destabilized Hamas and it would have had a higher chance of returning hostages who were kept in civilian homes. We know that many of the hostages were initially kidnapped to civilian homes. I think that that would have been a better policy to go in quickly. It would have been chaotic. People would have died, but lots of people have died anyway.

So I think that that would have been preferable. The international community was very much on Israel's side those first few weeks. I remember one of the strange things in the first few weeks was that Israel chose to wait and train soldiers, and Israel did what it usually does in these wars, which is gather all its force and then prepare, which is smart, usually. But the thing is, Israel had so many casualties, it might as well have just gone forward. I think that waiting for all these foreign leaders to come to Israel, I think that slowed down Israel, and I think it gave Hamas time to catch its breath and also gave Hamas time to consult with all of the foreign backers who back Hamas, which is Russia, Turkey, Qatar, China, Iran, of course.

And that gave Hamas the ability to sit back and decide on its strategy for the next eight months or years. And I think Hamas was given that breathing space. I think it should never have been given that breathing space. But, look, we can't really go back. In the end of the day, wars are wars.

You can't rewrite history. We are where we are now. I wouldn't go back to October 8. Right. Because understanding the constraints of who you would have launched immediately into Gaza, which would be the alternative.

Speaker D
Right. Launch the Gaza division, which is already in disarray. In the beginning, it took a while to mobilize the forces to implement. The number one recommendation from external actors to include the United States, was, don't do it. That you'll lose tens of thousands of soldiers and that you won't achieve your goals.

So Israel moved forward despite the recommendation. I would go back to November to say, how could Israel have done this differently? And not say, how Israel could have done it differently, how the United States could have done this differently. As in war is a contest of will. We have to go to Hamas.

In Gaza strategy, both its grand strategy, which is pretty much not contested. Right. The grand strategy of the political organization of Hamas is the destruction of Israel and the death of all Jews. From this war, which can be defined from October 7 on, Hamas strategy is only to buy time and use of the hostages and use of the international media to force the United States to force Israel to stop. That's a strategy that can be defined.

War is a contest of will. The reason that Israel hasn't won yet is because Hamas believes it can win. It still has the will to fight. Why does a bunch of Hamas members start forming up in al Shifa hospital after it's been cleared? Because they still think they can win.

Because Hamas is still the political power in Gaza. And the number one signal to them to continue to fight is the international community of, yes, we're close to forcing Israel to stop. Yes, we've caused Israel to slow down its bombing campaigns, to reduce its forces from five divisions to four to one brigade, to where it can't even go into Rafa with two divisions. No, it has to go with one. I would go back to November and say, leave four divisions, conducting a very discriminate, targeted, massive urban campaign to dismantle Hamas and remove them from power, while implementing every civilian harm mitigation strategy any military has ever thought of in history.

And don't give Hamas hope that they can win this war. And that's what the international community did. Okay, well, let's use the case study of Rafa to talk about what the US wants versus what Israel is doing, because it's a good example of Israel sort of defying its main allies will in this war. Right now, Hamas two remaining battalions in Gaza are hiding underground and amongst the 1 million civilians in Rafa, which is the southernmost city in Gaza, a city that borders Egypt. And according to Israel, Rafa is basically Hamas final stronghold.

Bari Weiss
Six weeks ago, I think about six weeks ago now, Israel went into Rafa against the explicit wishes of the US in order to root out Hamas there. Two part question. Why was the US opposed to Israel going into Rafa, and was it the right move to defy american wishes and go in there? Seth, let's start with you. Well, I think we all understand that Hamas has very powerful connections far beyond Gaza.

Speaker E
And its connections include, for instance, Qatar, which is a US major non NATO ally, and Turkey, which is a NATO ally. But Qatar is more key here. I think it's clear that Hamas has been sending signals systematically through Doha to tell the Americans, listen, get Israel not to do stuff on Ramadan, as John said. Get them to withdraw their troops. Maybe we'll be flexible on the hostages.

Whatever. Hamas wanted to preserve itself in Rafa, and Hamas had gathered around it, as you noted, a million people or so, to hide underneath them, as it always does. And it wanted to preserve its control over humanitarian aid and the smuggling tunnels. So I think that, unfortunately, the international community bought into that, because the international community has systematically bought into all the nonsense that Hamas puts out, whether it's about famine or other things. Hamas is just very good at playing this game.

They've done this for decades. I mean, Hamas should never have been allowed to control Gaza in the first place. I mean, it's a criminal terrorist organization. To sort of play devil's advocate to what you were just saying. You know, there's a lot of fingers that could be pointed directly at the home of the prime minister for allowing Hamas to remain in power, in fact, for emboldening Hamas in Gaza.

Oh, Israel's strategy has been problematic and probably historically disastrous here, which is the idea that it's kind of okay that Hamas is there because it divides it from the palestinian authority, and maybe in the long term that's preferable, because then the Palestinians are united, et cetera, et cetera. No, 100%. There's a lot of cooks involved in this stew that has created a huge disaster. Unfortunately, on October 7. Now we have to put all the soup that spilled back in this, too.

But as you mentioned about the issue of America opposing the Rafa offensive, I think America had said something like, well, it's okay if it's a limited offensive, but we want Israel to come up with a plan. And Israel eventually kind of came up with a plan. I think one of the timetables here was the United States wanted to get that temporary pier that actually doesn't work. I wanted to get it going so that when the million people left Rafa to go somewhere, that they'd have enough aid and then Israel could dismantle these battalions. I want to point out, though, that it's true that Rafa is a bit of a last struggle for Hamas.

But we should remember that Hamas continues to control central Gaza, which is four major urban areas, what's called the central camps, which is Dehrabalach, Magazi, Bereis, and Nusera. It controls a huge area there, by the way, in the end of the day, after Rafa, which today Rafa is mostly. There's no people there today. Most of them have left. Israel will defeat Hamas and Rafa in the next few weeks, and that'll be done.

It'll be finished, and then Israel will have to decide if it's going to go to the central camps. By the way, in Nuserat, in the central camps is where Israel found and freed the four hostages recently. So Hamas has a huge, teeming presence there, and Hamas probably has a lot of guys hanging out with the humanitarian zone in Moassi. This is an extremely difficult campaign ahead. It's going to be another months or a year of fighting unless someone can find some magic wand to get this done with.

Bari Weiss
The rhetoric from the US in the beginning of this war, from the israeli perspective, could not have been more supportive. And yet, as the war has dragged on, I think a lot of people have watched the US go from being overwhelmingly supportive to leaving a lot of people asking the question, why does the US not want Israel to win the war? First of all, is that question hyperbolic, or is it well founded? Does the US not want Israel to win the war? I absolutely believe they do.

Speaker D
And there's been, what we would say, bipartisan support for Israel to pursue that. The challenge has been all war is politics. Every country, especially the United States, is politically divisive. So as the condemnation and as people woke up to what war looks like, the administration and others started to one listen to misinformation to include casualty numbers of civilians that have been totally debunked. But to parrot the terrorist organization's information added on to international community, like the United nations, the force of the ICJ case, the ICC applications, all of it builds this political tension, and we are in a political year.

So I don't do politics, although I understand the politics of war when we say what Israel should have done versus what Israel could have done while still maintaining its number one ally for its survival, while an army ten times more threatening, Hezbollah, is attacking in the north while also trying to achieve the goals. Although, again, what are the comparative metrics of? Well, Israel's taking too long to achieve their goals. It took 100,000 security forces nine months to dig out 4000 ISIS fighters out of the city of Mosul. Nine months.

And they lost 10,000 iraqi security force soldiers to do it. So I don't know if that's the model of what right looks like or if you want to get into the US's wars again, it takes us weeks to remove the power because we don't allow other people to say, well, you can't do it that way. We do it with extreme force. Remove them. And, yes, building nations of this is the one question I would give everybody who doesn't agree with Israel's strategies thus far to achieve their goals is who is the other party, the other power that Israel should have been working with to hold areas other than leaving a force, which is if you think it's possible, if you want to go to counterinsurgency, we say you need one security person for every 50 of the population.

So Israel would have needed over 50,000 troops deployed and staying in their combat areas for the last eight months in all those different zones. But even when that's possible, you still need another power. Who's the other, not Hamas force that would allow Israel to hold areas and start rebuilding all that stuff while they're still trying to remove the power under the constraints that they have to operate under. And this is what I saw when I was in continus. I saw the IDF trying to fight an enemy underground with what the guidance at the time was, zero civilian casualties.

That was the goal, which is just ridiculous. Impossible. Yeah, it's impossible, but they were doing it. I mean, the 98th division was doing operations to do this clearing thing. Now, in this new world that they were living in, where the IDF have to do the Rafa operation with zero civilian casualties.

So we're asking the IDF to do the impossible, but we're also asking Israel to do the impossible quickly. But who's the other power that you want me to work with? Why don't you make a recommendation instead of the demand?

Bari Weiss
After the break, I ask if Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar is right when he says, we have Israel right where we want them. Stay with us.

The Wall Street Journal had a really incredible piece recently in which they obtained dozens of these text messages sent by scenewar, one of which said, I mean, they were all sort of indicating everything we knew, but it was sort of bone chilling to read them. In other words, he was talking about how it's a necessary sacrifice for limitless numbers of palestinian civilians to die. Obviously, we know that this is literally part of Hamas strategy. But one of the text messages said this, we have the Israelis right where we want them. What did he mean by that, Seth?

Speaker E
Well, unfortunately, let's remember, Sinwar grew up in Khan Yunus. He started his young life as a thuggish murderer, basically a kind of Mafia hitman who was killing what they called collaborators, basically Palestinians that they said were working with Israel. And then he got his schooling in an israeli prison for decades. Right. And he was then released, unfortunately, during the Shalit deal.

Bari Weiss
And crucially, I just want listeners to remember this. He was also treated for cancer by Israel, right? Yeah, unfortunately, yes. I mean, in a sense that not unfortunately. I mean, medicine is what medicine is.

Speaker E
You have to do that. But I think that it just shows he was already just an awful person. He came out of this experience obviously extremely arrogant. Having studied Israel, he thought he understood Israel very well. And so, in his view, he believes that he has sucked Israel into what he sees as probably a big trap of getting Israel to fight a long, slow, endless war in which he thinks he will survive this.

And if he doesn't survive it, he'll be some sort of great, wonderful martyr. And then Hamas leaders, let's remember, Sinwar is one man. Hamas leaders live in Qatar and Doha. They live in luxury. They live in very nice hotels, lots of money.

They will swoop back into the West bank, and that's what they want to do. They want to take over the Palestinian Authority and then use it as a basically launchpad to do more. October 7. But from the West bank. So Sinwar views it as a massive success story.

The guy planned October 7, he, I'm sure, never thought he would achieve what he did achieve, probably in his wildest nightmares, I mean, and he's gotten where he's got, and he's been, in his view, successful. Mati Friedman wrote a piece for the Free Press in December that I want to read a tiny bit of it to you. It was called the wisdom of Hamas. Here's what he wrote. In many ways, Hamas understood the world better than we Israelis did, the men who came across the border and those who sent them.

Bari Weiss
Many have grasped the current state of the west better than many westerners. More than anything, they understood the war they're fighting when many of us didn't and still don't. He goes on. Hamas knew that when faced with heartbreaking images of civilian death, some western leaders would eventually buckle and blame the Israelis, helping Hamas live to attack another day. It took about five weeks before this happened to Emmanuel Macron of France and Canada's Justin Trudeau.

And Hamas knew that the international organizations that bankroll Gaza, like the United nations, having mostly turned a blind eye to Hamas vast military buildup at their expense, would focus their fury at Israel alone and do their best to blunt the consequences of Hamas actions. All of this shows not a miscalculation by Hamas, but an admirable grasp of reality. John, I would love for you to respond to that. In other words, when I hear senior's text, what I hear is, you know, heartbreaking to say it, but I think he's right. And I wonder if you agree with that.

In other words. I see. And Matthew wrote those words in December. They've only become more true since then. The world's only turned against Israel more since then.

And as Douglas Murray said the other day at the monk debate in Toronto, Israel's the only country in the world that when it's attacked, when barbarians cross the border to murder and mutilate its people, it's attacked and blamed for it. So is Sinwar. Right? And are we sort of living in a world that he understood better than we did? I won't give a vile terrorist credit.

Speaker D
Somebody who states in other Hamas leadership, the goal is not to protect our people. We like to have shared human attributes. Right? We all think everybody doesn't want to see children harmed. We don't want to see innocents harmed.

Nobody will acknowledge it. No, we don't share that with the senior Hamas leadership. They actually want the death of the children. And they say that's the path to their victory, the ultimate grand strategy victory. I love Maddie.

And he's absolutely right. That's historical, right? Israel being stopped in defending itself, whether it's attacked by five nations or a vile terrorist proxy force, which proxy warfare is a thing. And we know that all these organizations, Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, Iran backed Shia groups, are all proxies of Iran. Israel could have done things on the public relations front.

It could communicate about its actions. Better to try to fight in that narrative war. Right. What are you doing to protect civilians? But Israel has even, like you talked about, over the objections of the world, continuing to move forward and dismantle.

But that's why I can't tell you who's going to win. If Sinwar survives this war, he has achieved victory. So he has to die for Israel to win the war, in your view. Killer captured. Killer captured.

Bari Weiss
He's surrounded by civilians under tunnels and maybe hostages themselves. There are hostages who have reported meeting him in the tunnels, who have since been rescued or released. So how's Israel going to do that. Under the constraints that they're under now? Very slowly, methodically, they can't leave Gaza.

Speaker D
This is, again, getting to the day after plan, the establishment of new security areas. It's the ideal of the ABC zones. You still need another partner. The biggest thing that Israel can do to pursue that path is not be forced to stop. That's where Yahya can say, we have them right where we want them.

When you get to the point where the United nations joins a UN Security Council vote that says that Israel must stop its operations, and because of the threats of Hezbollah and Iran and all the others, the threat is real to where Israel could be forced to lose. That's different than saying that Yahya can win. Israel can be forced to win. And that's the goal. Again, stating the strategy of Hamash from day one, it was to create what is now in existence, a world against Israel and a world about to force Israel to stop before it gets to Yahya senuar and the senior leadership, and whether it's just one man or the other senior leadership and where they can establish a new power.

Right? So, yes, if they get to him and then somebody else stands up like, you know, cutting the head off, the snake, it is not finished. But who is that other actor? I mean, Seth said the Palestinian Authority. Would that lead to a better outcome in Gaza if the Palestinian Authority wasn't placed and then you had to back them up because it's just like we did.

Doesn't matter if they're good guys or bad guys. If you're going to put another power in place, you also have to back them up so they can maintain power. This was the 2008 election that Israel was forced to allow Hamas to gain power. Condoleezza Rice and other actors said, no, no, you have to accept that vote. You have to allow Hamas to be elected and seize power in Gaza.

Bari Weiss
Seth. I mean, unfortunately, October 7 has become a bit of a black swan event. This is a much bigger conflict than Sinwar. Sinwar is a very bad, evil man, but he's in charge of a declining terrorist power in Gaza. But the real story is a much bigger story, which is that Iran and all of Iran's friends in the region, all of its proxies, like the Houthis, sinking ships, Hezbollah raining 5000 missiles down in Israel, iraqi based shiite militias in Syria, Russia, which is friends with Iran, acquiring lots of drones, trying to reset the world order because we just saw Putin hanging out in North Korea and Vietnam this week.

Speaker E
This is all part of a much larger nexus. And what Sinwar did was he carried out this massive, unprecedented black swan event, which has accelerated all of the bad things happening in the world. He's accelerated the processes of anti western groups of countries, whether it Russia, China, Iran, etcetera. All of them are basically being put on steroids through what's happened in Gaza. And we have to kind of try to put this pandora's box back in the box.

This is where Israel's western friends, and we were talking a second ago about whether they've held Israel back and prevented Israel from winning. This is where the west has to wake up and decide that October 7 is not just about Israel. This is a defining moment in civilization for the next decades or 100 years, and we have to work now together and get things right. And that's just where we are, unfortunately. And so Sinwar is a very awful, evil man that will eventually maybe be forgotten, but the larger story that was unleashed will not be forgotten.

Bari Weiss
I struggle to understand with the point you just made, Seth, which to me feels so morally obvious, about the lack of moral clarity and conviction in the west about it. How do you each understand if war is about fundamentally will and conviction and determination to win at whatever cost? And the stakes of this war are about whether or not we want to live in a world in which groups like Hamas are allowed to carry out the kind of attack that they did or not. And we see their sympathizers in western cities all over the world now taking aim. There was yesterday in Montreal, a jewish restaurant had bullets through the windows.

I'm sort of holding my breath for another Amiya bombing like event. You know, the 1994 attack on the JCC and Buenos Aires carried out by Hezbollah, it was. And that seems like that's in the offing right now. And I'm at a loss to understand why people don't viscerally understand that. And I ask myself, well, is it because I'm a jew?

Is it because I've spent a lot of time in Israel and I understand. How do each of you understand why the west doesn't seem to have woken up? Because I have to admit, on October 7, I thought to myself, this will be the moment where people certainly can no longer deny the sort of grave threat to civilization that this set of ideologies presents to us. Call it Islamism, call it the axis, whatever you want to call it, this group and this ideology that says we care about death more than you care about life, and we want to bring in a new world order that is a reflection of those values. To me, there just can't be anything clearer than that.

And yet it seems like a lot of people aren't grasping that. Jon, why is that? You know, I don't live in an echo chamber, but I know a lot of people that do see it this way. But I also understand what you're asking. And why does the western societies in their worlds of trying to make compromise in their human endeavor, of peace and appeasement strategies.

Speaker D
If you just give them this, it will lead to a better outcome if we just stop. Of course all the death will stop. It is a very systematic societal problem that is lacking of leadership. I'm not talking about certain political parties or anything that has been proven over time to lead to greater violence and disruption and fragility in the world. This is where I adamantly have been so strong about my I'm not pro Israel, I'm not pro anything.

I'm pro reality, I'm pro truth, and I'm pro consequences of action or inaction. This is where October 7 redefined Israel. It will have a generational redefinition of everything. But I agree and disagree with Seth. There is a name behind it.

It is Yahya senuar. It is like saying 911 wasn't just Osama bin Laden. It was an ideology against western societies and their involvement in the Middle east. It has definable metrics. But October 7 absolutely is Iran's strategy to redefine the Middle east and prevent it from going in a direction it was going.

And if it is allowed to, it will be a proven strategy of using proxies that have been fostered, like Hamas, over decades of radicalization. Using those proxies to attack Israel and through Israel, the United States, and the western way of life. I don't know how to wake people up to that in their 32nd sound bite attention span, but it is a reality that inaction can lead to greater violence. And it's like our societies of World War Two have forgotten how much is. It, the fact that we're coming off of 20 years of these so called forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and people, but especially Americans, look at the massive amount of blood and treasure that went into those wars that we lost and say, sorry, it's just not possible to defeat these kinds of terrorist groups.

I think it's there. Absolutely. You know, again, terrorist organization versus a counterinsurgency campaign where you're actually fighting for the people or an illegitimate government that is corrupt. All these things. The US military is really great at removing things from power.

We're really bad at building nations that look like us forcing a type of government, all this on other people. Absolutely. That is in our society at this moment. Like, it isn't in Israel's society, because those weren't existential fights. And to get somebody to understand that, yes, the war on terrorism after 911, things like that, but after that, you get to these undefinable metrics of what does winning look like now?

And it's not an existential fight, since war is a contest of wills, and we've said it, but it is not just a contest between the belligerence of the war, as in Hamas, versus the idea. War is a contest of wills of societies, the will to continue the war. Like, do we want to spill blood and treasure for this goal? What is the goal? Well, the goal here is to stand up this democratic government.

Like, what does this got to do with me? And that's what a lot of people start to ask, like, what does this have to do with the United States? Or what does this have to do with whatever country it is? I can say with clarity from study that if Hamas is successful, if Iran is successful in achieving its goals in this moment, it will lead to greater violence and the degradation of us interests in the Middle east, period. Mm hmm.

Bari Weiss
Seth, you're in Jerusalem. We're not. Do you think that, you know, thinking about israeli society and where they are right now? I mean, every family I know in Israel was affected either by the 7th or by the war efforts since. And one guy, I interned at his think tank when I was 19, I think he has three or four sons at this point in Gaza.

Like, it's affected every family. It's a tiny country. Eight months, nine months into the war. Do you think that that will is there still? Yeah, I think the will is there.

Speaker E
Like Israel. As you said, it's a very traumatized society. And I've spent a lot of time in the last eight months with IDF soldiers in the field in Gaza, on both the fronts. Everywhere I go, it's a huge awakening in Israel. The soldiers will go on to the end regardless of the politics in Israel, which is divided and all sorts of other weird issues going on, but they will come back traumatized, and there are lots of people that are injured.

This is an existential war for Israel, and the hostages are still there, and Hezbollah has depopulated Israel's north, and there are rockets falling on the north in an unprecedented way. Israel was never in history forced to evacuate two borders. Israel fought lots of wars against multiple enemies, like 67 and 73. And in 67, people in Jerusalem were digging trenches in their backyards and stuff. They were prepared for an existential war, but Israel just didn't generally have to evacuate masses of people.

And eight months is an unprecedented, long war for Israel, for a country that historically said, we have a week or two to do this. So this is very difficult. But look, this is a traumatizing event. Israel will come out of this traumatized, like any country that has gone into. Into a terrible, long war.

Bari Weiss
The press in the states has just been inordinately focused on Gaza. But there's this unofficial war, as you've referenced a few times, that's happening in the north of the country. Basically, Hezbollah has successfully changed the border of the state of Israel. Give us a preview of where you think that's going. Going.

And I think for a lot of us watching, why it hasn't exploded. More like, why hasn't Hezbollah, which is exponentially stronger than Hamas, why haven't they taken the opportunity further yet? And is that coming? Hezbollah wanted to rewrite the rules of the game in the north. Iran basically encouraged it to do that.

Speaker E
Hezbollah jumped on the opportunity October 8 and figured, okay, Israel's focused on the southern front. Let's jump in on this other front. Israel won't want to fight a two front war. And they gambled on that. And from the first day, when they began dropping drones and missiles and rockets on Israel, and Israel responded proportionately, they understood, okay, it's a proportional battle.

And for them, that's a huge win because they get to drive Israelis out of Israel and basically fight a war on Israel's soil. And if you fight most of the time on the sense the enemy's soil, well, you kind of win. So they basically extended the security zone into Israel and are fighting a kind of war between the wars inside Israel, which is very bad for Israel. Israel has been understandably focused on Gaza and doesn't want a two front war. Even if Hezbollah stops tomorrow, it will believe it has achieved a massive victory.

And not only that, it already has. Yeah, unfortunately it has. And not only that, let's remember every day Hezbollah tests drones, precision attack kamikaze drones by trying to fly them into israeli defense institutions and bases. Hezbollah is using this war to test the capabilities for the next war. And that's very problematic.

I think Israel has to decide how it's going to handle that. Israel could go to war in Lebanon. Israel doesn't want to do that because it will cause missiles across the country. Israel is trying to get some sort of diplomatic solution. But I mean, historically, diplomatic solutions don't really work in Lebanon.

This is a huge cloud hanging over Israel. And I spend a lot of time in the north and we don't know where it's going to go. And it's very difficult. Let's take the sort of aperture and pan out even higher. Let's look at the broader region.

Bari Weiss
If we think about the war not as Sinoir and not as Hezbollah, but as the grand massive war, which is the iranian Israel war, or maybe it's the group of democracies versus the authoritarians that want to change the balance of power in the Middle east. How do we win that war? John, let's start with you. We haven't even mentioned that on April 12, a state actor, not a proxy. Again, Hezbollah is a proxy in Lebanon.

Speaker D
We can argue their political status, but it's a proxy. Iran attacked Israel with over 300 crews, ballistic drones, and with legitimately trying to harm a state actor. And everybody said they didn't really want to hurt you. And the triple standard is, look, I know you were just attacked by another state, a giant act of war. You can't respond these problems that Israel faces.

Like which of these attacks do I address in what sequence, based on its legitimate threat to not just the existential threat and the survival, like you said, 80,000 civilians for eight months living in the hotels that I go to in Israel because they can't go home while the world says, you have to stop fighting Hamas, that will mean Hezbollah will stop. And that's not what they said. I don't know what the sequence of events to deal with these, but I understand the dilemmas when you ask Israel to do it a different way. Okay, which one of these threats and attacks do you want me to approach? And I can't do it by myself.

I asked this my last time I was on the blue line in the north of Israel. I asked Israel and the IDF very clearly, could you fight Hezbollah without the support of the United States? Absolutely not. Not in weapons. So is one of the big takeaways since October 7 that Israel needs to become less dependent on the US?

It could be. But you look at the size of Israel in the Middle east compared to its neighbors, to include the ones that are attacking it, could you become completely independent? No. Your strength is your allies, period. Like from Sun Tzu till now.

Your strength is your allies now. Could you build less dependency on certain things, even though most people don't understand, like when the United States gives aid, it also is to buy certain technologies from the United States. On October 8, Israel's first act of help was to the United States to send more iron dome interceptors and JDam kits that it would need to defend itself, period. Let alone move forward and attack. I mean, I think step one of Hezbollah in Iran, right, is this one.

Stop appeasing Iran and giving them billions of dollars to fund their proxy wars against the United States and against Israel. But, guys, why is the US doing that right now? I mean, it's many administrations. So it's not just the United States, right? It's been a long path of just hope.

And this is where I will push back on, you know, Israel propping up Hamas, where they. They hope that aid and economy will lead to a political organization pursuing prosperity for the people, not the death of their people for Iran. The same thing. Right. But isn't that just based on an extremely almost self centered idea that everyone shares the same values we do?

In other words, I've said that a couple times, right? Yeah. Hamas says they don't. I mean, just to put it crudely, that somehow Iran, which is very clear in its aims for itself and the world and the jewish people, will change their mind because the US adopts the JCPOA. Like, I don't.

Bari Weiss
I'm at a loss to sort of, like, how to understand that position. I call it foreign policy insanity, right? Trying the same thing and hoping for a different outcome, despite the actors that, you know, you want to put a rational actor theory on some of these people when we actually don't want to listen to the words they say, but the strategy of foreign policy and sanity just doing the same thing, hoping for a better outcome is reality, and most people don't understand it if they take the time to study it. But I've said this a couple of times. It has been this human interest to find commonality, even in your enemies.

Speaker D
Like, we all don't want to see innocent people harmed. We all want a better place. This is the idea again. What does Hamas want? Hamas doesn't want a two state solution.

Hamas wants the death of every jew on the planet, period. They say it. It's not my words. So why do we keep hoping that they won't want that anymore and they'll want a better life for the palestinian people? They aren't a resistance force.

They're a evil ideology. It's. It's a cancer. Seth, I don't know if you want to jump in there. I would just say that we.

Speaker E
This, this war is a huge learning experience. Lots of countries go into wars not knowing if they had the right tools in the beginning. Right? I mean, when the United States was trying to prepare to go into the second world war, it was doing the Louisiana maneuvers and all sorts of training and stuff, trying to bulk up an army that was very small and eventually turn it into a five or 10 million man behemoth. Right?

I mean, that's life. You have to learn. October 7 was a huge wake up call. That Hamas, which everyone thought was kind of a small organization that was deterred or whatever, was actually very much worse than Israel thought. Israel didn't have the right plans to go in and destroy them.

Now Israel has to rethink the two front war and multi front war strategy. And it's not a question of not being dependent on the United States. Israel builds a lot of its own munitions. It doesn't build everything. Israel has to learn from this, what type of artillery shells it needs, what type of new vehicles it's rolling out, what exactly it needs, and what it doesn't need as much.

And there's all sorts of new technology coming off the line, new drones, new artillery rolling out, all sorts of stuff. Israel is going to have to learn that. And the larger picture is the United States and our allies have to learn how to defeat a bunch of Houthis who are using small boats that they've turned into drone boats that can sink commercial cargo ships, which is mad. I mean, we shouldn't have to be contending with that, but we should be sweeping the seas of those people and perhaps finding ways to go after some of these iraqi bait shiite militias, which also have been appeased for the last five or six years. So these are all learning curves.

Israel will have to learn how to do what it can do. And the United States and other countries should be stepping up and not just doing in the Red Sea these proportional responses. When a cargo ship is sunk, that should be a world defining event. You can't have cargo ships being sunk in a major trading lane. And it's just like what's happening in the Pacific with the Philippines and China.

We can't allow these enemies to keep chopping away bit by bit at us until our proverbial tree falls. There's a lot of drama inside israeli politics right now. We don't have time to get into all of it, but just a few important points. Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkat have recently quit the war cabinet over sort of a lack of strategy. Over the war.

Bari Weiss
Gadi Eisenkat lost one of his sons in the fight in Gaza. The IDF spokesman, Daniel Haghari, is saying that the war goal of defeating Hamas can't be achieved. Here's what Hagari said. If we don't bring something else to Gaza, we will end up with Hamas again. Hamas is an idea.

Hamas is a party. It's rooted in the hearts and minds of people. Anyone who thinks we can eliminate Hamas is wrong. And Bibi Netanyahu, who sort of rebuked his comments. What is all of that?

And there's much more. Tell us about, to put it gently, the misalignment inside the israeli leadership over the war right now. Tragically, this war came at the worst possible time for Israel. And obviously Israel's enemies understood that Israel was very divided prior to the war. The politics were extremely toxic here.

Speaker E
And Israel went into the war initially, trying to have a kind of unity government for a while. But Benny Gantz and Eisenkatt had very fair critiques of the war, which is that they would like to have an actual day after plan of what's going to come next. That's a very fair thing to ask for, I think, the questions of having an investigation, other things. There were lots of fair critiques, and those are things that they wanted the prime minister to decide, and he didn't decide, so they left. I think the other question of Hagari's, Israel's IDF spokesman's comments, I think, have been misinterpreted.

He basically said what we've been saying on this show, which is if there's not an alternative, then there's going to be a vacuum and Hamas will just stay there. And that's what he said the cliche of, well, Hamas is an idea, or whatever. That's another issue. But he just said, look, if you don't come up with an alternative, Hamas will remain. And we've just said this on the show, you can go after the military and governing capabilities.

If you don't replace them, they're going to be there. They'll just be much weaker. Well, I want to talk about the cliche you just mentioned, Seth, and I think this is maybe a good place to end, which is sort of like the theory of the war. In other words, a lot of very smart, pointy heads have said since October 8, you can't defeat Hamas because Hamas is an idea and it can't be defeated. And I wonder if people said the same thing about Nazism, and I wonder where this notion came from and what you each make of it.

Bari Weiss
You know, is Hamas an idea or is Hamas a group that can be defeated? John, let's start with you. It's both. I know where the idea came from. Right.

Speaker D
It's this long legacy of counterinsurgency and the global frustration with being able to define that and defeat it. All this. How do you defeat an ideal? Is it insurgency? Is it terrorism?

Is it a ruling power of an autonomous region, et cetera? But it isn't the IRA. It isn't al Qaeda. It isn't ISIS. It's something different, and it can be defined.

I 100% agree, though it is also an ideology with a charter, with a goal, all this. But I agree with your analogy. This is why when you intermix these frameworks of war, war, counterinsurgency, post conflict resolution, nation building, stability, and you get a statement like, what, you're not going to destroy Hamas as an ideal this way. That's like saying, you can't remove Hitler from power. You can't defeat the will of the nazi army because it will radicalize the german population towards the nazi ideology, which was an ideology, right?

It was a political theory. Everything. That's ridiculous. A rail against this idea. Yes.

This is very well known that if once you remove homage from power, if you don't emplace something else with all the deradicalization strategies, I mean, these are like large fields of study. You'll have to reconcile with tens of thousands of Hamas former affiliated collaborator members. All this is well known. And what it needs to happen now, what. What is the realm of possible?

So when you want a day after plan, like, okay, let's start with the whiteboard. Like, what's the realm of possible here? Who is the new power that we will stand up? Is it tribal leaders? Is it the Palestinian Authority?

Light without the pay to slay program and without the terrorism? What is the solution here when the western societies have done this? We brought our powers with us when we went into Iraq and Afghanistan. Here's the new people that are going to lead. You can't answer that in Gaza.

So it's going to be very difficult to see a strategy when you don't have some of these critical components. And when Israel says, we will not occupy Gaza, it takes that off the board. So what is the strategy? Come up with a solution, not a demand. Look, the KKK was an idea, but you can destroy and defeat ideas all the time.

Speaker E
Hamas, by the way, is not some amazing, romantic idea that people in Gaza get up every morning and say, oh, it's amazing. Hamas. Hamas is a bunch of older men. These are people that are basically a mafia cartel of murderers. And that's how they function.

They steal humanitarian aid. They act like Pablo Escobar. You can hunt down these people. You can eliminate them. And the fact is, the idea of Hamas is ossifying and dying, and eventually it can and will be replaced, maybe by something worse.

Unfortunately, who knows? But the fact is, Hamas is not some amazing idea. This isn't the 1980s. This is something that's growing old on the vine. I guess the last question that I'm thinking about a lot is this.

Bari Weiss
Do you think that the wake up call that happened for Israel on October 7, that I think for many Americans, feels like some very far away, abstract thing? Do you think it's coming for us here in America? I personally, as an american, 100% agree. They say it like, I don't have to believe that that's what they say. It's what Iran says daily, that this is their path to destroying America and the western ideals that we do.

Speaker D
When Putin says the reason he does the things he does, they say these things. And this is where inaction can lead to greater violence, death, destruction, loss of. This is the connections that most people can't see, whether it's the global trade or even a way of life. Iran states daily it wants to destroy the United States. The great Satan, and Israel's the little Satan.

Absolutely, they're coming for us. I mean, literally, Hezbollah was picking out the countries that they're threatening, and they're absolutely coming for other nations, and they're doing it right now through proxy. And people can't understand that. I don't know why. Seth would love to give you the last word as our man in Jerusalem.

Speaker E
That's very nice of you. Look, they're coming for us. I think it's broader. China is coming for us as well. Russia.

Yeah. It's a global war. We're going to face this, unfortunately. Our generation, the people coming after us, are unfortunately going to grow up in a world that is much worse and probably more dangerous than when we were young and much more chaotic. And that's unfortunate.

And hopefully the western civilization can get its act together and begin to act in concert against this. Well, Seth Fransman, John Spencer, thank you so much for making the time and for coming on. Honestly, I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks.

Bari Weiss
As always. Thank you for listening. If you liked this episode, if it provoked you, if it made you rethink the war or the IDF strategy and goals, great. Share it with your friends and family and use it to have an honest conversation of your own. Last but not least, if you want to support honestly, there's just one way to do it.

It's by going to thefp.com, comma, the free Press's website, thefp.com, and becoming a subscriber today. We'll see you next time.