What Is Hamas’ Strategy? | John Spencer

Hamas's military strategy was never to defeat the IDF on the field of battle. It's never been like 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, to stop the Israel saying, "Look, I know you have the right to self-defense, whether it's the Six Day War, Yom Kippur War, you name it. I know you have the right of self-defense, but you need to stop."

Right? So that's hence the protests on American campuses; that's the Hamas strategy working. Right? Right, of course, of course. But this is, but how much of that, all right? So after October 7th, when 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, and how much of it was spontaneous—a spontaneous consequence, let’s say, of the victim-victimizer narrative? Like, to what degree has Iran managed to co-opt actors in the West that can organize those sorts of protests?

Yeah, um, all organize all history learned. I mean, I can take you back to battles in which the United States would stop through that use of social media, Al Jazeera and others saying they're being—they're violating the laws of war, too many civilians are dying, they're being—if to stop. But within Israel's context, I mean, I don't want to take away from Yaya Sinwar sitting in jail for many, many years thinking of what are the weaknesses of Israel—its reliance on the United States, its casualty aversion. Like, the IDF, the Israel has stopped wars from a very low number of IDF casualties. Hostages, of course, I mean, a nation that small, you know, they've held a single guy for years and gotten thousands of prisoners in exchange. Hamas has, right? Right.

So yes, Iran in this larger picture of the geopolitical situation, okay, so that's why you made reference earlier to this idea that the attempts to reduce brutality can make it worse, right? Because 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. Yeah, this is the West's—we call it the liberal dilemma. Yeah, right? And enemies of Western societies have learned that war is always a contest of will—of three populations: the military that is fighting, of course, the politicians who are ordering the militaries to fight, but their populations.

Yeah, we 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, in the K effect. So, actual, that social media effect was there in the Vietnam War, sure. So the contest of these three wills has led to this point, absolutely. But that weakness has also led to an aversion. So 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, now that's weaponized.

That's why you have Gaza. Yeah, that's why you have 400 miles of tunnels underneath civilians. That's why you have every hospital serving as a military purpose, tunnels. It's also why the Iranian Quds agents, let's say, can twist the moral force of the West to their own advantage. Why you have urban warfare.

Okay, expand on that. If I—as we've been talking—if I'm a non-state actor or a great power, my actual long strategy is to defeat you. I'm not trying to defeat you; I'm trying to turn your population against you. So I pull you into an urban area, show you photos of dead children, right? Right, right, and you will stop your government and force your government to do things they don't even want. And this has been the—like an example that—have you heard of the 2,000 lb bomb? Is it the bunker buster?

Yeah, how awful it is to use in urban warfare. Okay, no, I don't know about that. So one of the many criticisms against the IDF's operations in Gaza has been the use of bombs. Yeah, matter of fact, there's a misnomer that if you bomb less, there'll be less of these cases. We can talk about if you want, but one of the biggest things to include the US administration because of this belief of the use of one bomb called a 2,000 lb bomb is that they've used so many of them that nobody else would have done that—that Israel is purposely trying to cause destruction.

Okay, yeah, it's a vilification of one. Right? Right, that's an effective communication strategy, right? Because it sounds monstrous—a 2,000 lb bomb, and okay, I can see how that would work effectively. And then you found a bunch of human rights groups which can tell you how much, how what size of the explosion is, how much concrete it—then you find different people who say, "Well, we didn't use that many of those in the last 30 years, and Israel's used this many." We used over 5,000 2,000 lb bombs in the one month of the invasion of Iraq. You know why? Because there were military complexes underneath buildings.

Right? Right? So you have to go deep—a 2,000 lb bomb only goes 50 feet underground, a bunker buster. Right? Right? And I just told you I was in 150 feet underground in a Hamas tunnel in December. But all the criticism of a 2,000 lb bomb and Israel's use against a combatant in underground structure says, you know, it's just, you know, appalling that they would use this tool in war. Right? I think it puts our national security at risk.

So when 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 lb bomb against an enemy underneath certain buildings or in a bunker, right? Right? That's really where we've gone. But it's the evolution of this hitting at the West, the liberal democracy, or the liberal dilemma to say that you can find a different way—y-y got it.

Okay, so tell me what Israel is doing and has done. So they're fighting urban warfare, you said, with a 15-to-1 disadvantage. Fundamentally, now my understanding is that the IDF is doing what it can do to minimize non-combatant targets. Do you believe that that's the case?

I've written with evidence that Israel is doing more to prevent civilian casualties than any military has done in the history of war. Okay, okay, okay, so you think that's valid. So what sort of things do they do to make that a reality?

Sure, and this is why I went back in February. Like, I wanted to see it for myself, not just what the access to information everybody else has. I wanted to ask them, like, how are you doing this? Yeah, given the complexity of a combatant who uses human sacrifice, right? So the number one thing that people have done, although again, the strategy to win wars is to do it rapidly, right?

So—and is that also because opposition to the war mounts as it protracts politics? Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So the more dragged out it is, the more dragged out a victory, the more costly it is on the public relations side. That's right, because the losers start to look like victims. Right? Or if they have—I mean, this is Ukraine—had to hold for a while; it had to slow Russia down from achieving an overwhelming coup, which is overthrow the government and the fight's over, right?

Right? So it's always to get in there and rapidly achieve your goals. Yeah, uh, if you can slow the army down, then all these other political elements. Sure. What Israel did, though, was implemented things to prevent civilian harm after October 7th. They waited three weeks before they entered Gaza, right? They did evacuation.

That is the overwhelming number one thing that any military has ever done in the history of war to prevent civilian harm is evacuate cities. Although, well, and that's a very strange thing in this situation because the city is the target. This was the misnomer, too. I saw that Gaza is the densest place on Earth. I saw that on October 8th, and I study cities for a living. Like they're not even—it’s not even the top 100. It has ten massive cities, a total of 24 cities, um, that are very dense.

But there's also—it’s not one continuous urban area. But you are right that in any war I've studied, there's never been a population trapped in the combat area. Although in the 2016-2017 Battle of Mosul, a city of a million, the Iraqi government told the civilians to stay in the city. Yeah, 850,000 of them to stay in the city during the battle because they didn't have a place for them to go. Eventually, it told them to go. But because of Egypt, the Palestinian people of Gaza had nowhere to go.

Right? So Israel, can you explain that? Why did the Palestinians have no place to go? Because of Egypt, and there's a long history there. Um, to include there is a city, Rafah, that used to be on both sides, and that Egypt— that history escapes our campuses. Like, yeah, you might say that, yeah, that 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, right? They don't want a radicalized population, right? So they don't want to bring in the—right, right? Well, 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.

That is the case. This is the reason, the reason that you just described, depending on what nation you're talking about. Absolutely. Some say it's because they don't want a forced displacement, so they use that as an excuse. But for Egypt, it's very clear.