John Spencer, chairman of the Department of Urban Warfare Studies at West Point, has visited Israel since October 7 to see up close the war being fought in Gaza. “Taking a look underground: West Point expert reframes Hamas tunnel issue,” Jerusalem Post, March 2, 2024:
Dismantling tunnels is an issue that modern armies still aren’t fully equipped to handle.
While Israel boasts advanced capabilities for detecting and neutralizing tunnels at a tactical level, the strategic challenge posed by Hamas’s time-based strategy cannot be understated, he says. Destroying deep-buried tunnels requires significant time and resources, playing into Hamas’s objective of stalling Israeli military efforts….
The tunnel network is so vast, and so deep — both vaster, and deeper, than the IDF could possibly imagine. The IDF has already uncovered more than 7,000 shafts used to enter (and exit) the tunnels, with 1,000 such shafts uncovered in Gaza City alone. As of late February, the IDF estimated that it had destroyed a little more than half of the tunnels. And it estimates that several thousand more shafts remain to be found, and destroyed, along with the tunnels that they are connected to. This is tremendously time-consuming work, which is why both Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant have estimated that the IDF will be fighting in Gaza for at least “several more months.” And during those months, Hamas will do its best to paint itself as an innocent David trying only to protect itself and its people against the ruthless Goliath that invaded Gaza last October. All over the Western world the young and the ignorant are wrapping themselves in keffiyehs, shouting “from the river to the sea/Palestine will be free” and “Stop the Genocide,” while the UN’s Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the EU’s foreign minister Josep Borrell, the NGOs Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and many others among the Great and Good, demand a “permanent ceasefire” at once, which would mean an outcome with Hamas still standing, and Israel prevented from achieving its stated war aim of demolishing the terror group. Hamas would regroup, and ready itself, as it has promised, to attack as it did on October 7, “again and again and again.”
If Hamas continues to exploit the factor of time to blacken Israel’s image (as it has just done with the more than 100 deaths in northern Gaza when thousands of Gazans, in a stampede for food, crushed one another, that have been blamed on Israeli gunfire), and Israel succumbs to the immense pressure on it to agree to a permanent ceasefire, Hamas could still, despite its terrific losses in manpower, weaponry, and tunnels, be left standing, and that would be hailed as a victory all over the Arab world.
Professor Spencer has also written about Israel’s extraordinary efforts to warn Gazans about places that the IDF is about to target. More about this can be found here: “Israel minimizes civilian casualties more than anyone in history – expert,” Jerusalem Post, January 30, 2024:
Israel has done more to prevent civilian casualties in Gaza than any other known army in the world has, John Spencer, who is both chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point and a retired US military officer, argued in an extensive thread posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday [Jan. 30].
In the thread, Spencer provided multiple examples of precautions that the IDF takes that he argued other armies do not, at least not to the same extent, or even at all. One of the most well-recognized instances of this that he mentioned is the way in which the IDF implements various methods of warning before commencing with an assault against Hamas.
He referred to this in his numerous replies to commentators on his thread. “In some cases, the IDF will call, text, and drop small munitions on the roof of a building,” he explained.
He even addressed some measures that the IDF took at the cost of its tactical advantage to save lives. The army will “provide [a] warning and evacuate urban areas/cities before the full combined air and ground attack begins. While the tactic does alert the enemy defender and provide them the military advantage to prepare further, it is one of the best ways to prevent civilian casualties,” he said….
Spencer concluded his post with the following statement: “Again, Israel has implemented more measures to prevent civilian casualties than any other military in the history of war. While some have argued Israel could have waited longer, used different munitions, or not conducted the war at all – [they] all [failed] to acknowledge the context of Israel’s war… [they are overlooking] the hostages, rockets, tunnels, existential threat of Hamas, and more.”
Most significantly, he determined, those condemning Israel for its military strategies are overlooking all that Israel has done to protect human lives.
Hmm. Let’s read that one more time: “Again, Israel has implemented more measures to prevent civilian casualties than any other military in the history of war.” That’s the American West Point Professor, John Spencer. And then there is British Colonel Richard Kemp, who has called the IDF “the most moral army in the history of warfare.” Spencer and Kemp need to have their messages amplified. Why not have Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the American ambassador at the UN, take the occasion of the next unhinged Israel-hatefest in the General Assembly, to quote both of these distinguished military men on the IDF’s extraordinary measures to minimize civilian casualties. Some will stop their ears. But others will listen.
Maria says
Israel is the most human nation in the Word
Israel Will win because it is the best nation in the world
Hugh Fitzgeald says
I am reminded of what Vladimir Nabokov said in 1942 at a “Why We Fight” rally held at Wellesley College. He said “morally, democracy is invincible. Physically, that side will win which has the better guns.”
Tony Rice says
We must remember who gave the world the TEN COMMANDMENTS, to be the LIGHT UNTO THE NATIONS
Martyn Jones says
If only westerners lived for an extended period amongst these Hamas trash, there would not be this stupid here support for these savages!
Buzz says
OK, you did try to be the better people
and it didn’t work
so now
try to be the only living people in the middle east
THAT WILL WORK!