← Ask Haviv Anything
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- [00:05]
A
Hi everybody. Welcome to Ask Khabib Anything. This episode we're going to tackle, I think the thing that is on most people's minds, the thing that worries most people right now, the question of the Gaza City operation, the expansion of Gideon's Chariots or Gideon's Chariots 2 operation, possibly whatever you want to call it. The IDF has decided to call up tens of thousands of reservists. The cabinet has reapproved the call up of hundreds of thousands. If the IDF needs it, it's not that they're going needed, it's that these are all signals and these are all kinds of preparations for what looks to be a very significant operation in this new kind of war, the taken hold kind of war rather than the raiding war that we've had before, that we have talked to Major John Spencer before about. I have expressed some deep concerns, frustrations, especially on the question of information war on humanitarian aid, which besides the moral questions and those are debated endlessly. And I've had three episodes, I think on it. So we're not going to rehash it now, but just strategic questions. You know, the war fighting is to a very significant extent seen by the enemy as primarily an information war and a humanitarian aid war. In other words, a war where humanitarian suffering in Gaza is weaponized. And just for that strategic reason. This should have been a major focus of the Israelis and a lot of the terrible mistakes and certainly what I have considered God awful rhetoric by some Israeli officials that did not actually reflect the actual conduct of the war in Gaza should not have happened. And again, all that is besides the moral questions which I think are important and valuable. So I have had a lot of concerns about where this war is going and whether the people in charge know what they're doing. And luckily fresh off of the Trigonometry podcast. So that's exactly where you should consider this podcast, right up there with them. I have managed to get John Spencer to come back and to try and answer some of those questions and concerns. And just to clarify the urgency of this episode, IDF soldiers are already in the outskirts. There are already battles. And so we're talking about where things stand and where things are going to go right at the moment that this operation appears to be gearing up. Before we get into it, I also want to tell you that this episode is sponsored by Gideon and Lance Drucker and their firm, Druker Wealth, a financial planning and wealth management firm. They asked to use this dedication to introduce our audience to an organization called the Legion, a non profit Organization to help American Jews learn how to defend their families and their communities. Anti Semitism is spiking. FBI numbers tell us that the number one target of religion based hate in America are Jews. And we've seen deadly attacks on Jews unfortunately in the last two years. And of course not just in the last two years. You can learn more at their website www.legionalpha. spelled just like the words.com the drukers would also like to dedicate this episode to Gideon's former officer in the IDF, Major Ariel Ben Moshe, 20, a commander in the elite Seirit Matkal unit who was killed in combat at Kibbutz Reim in the gaza envelope on October 7, 2023. Ariel and his wife Yuval were on vacation, camping on the Golan Heights, far away from Gaza. On October 7, he received a notification from the army and within 15 minutes he was already in the car on the way south to engage Hamas at Kibbutz Reim. By that evening he had retaken with his men almost all of Reim together with his patrol. And at the last house where Hamas fighters had barricaded themselves, he entered first and was killed in the gun battle with the Hamas terrorists. Ariel's brother Shavit, an IDF paratrooper, also fought in the south that day and heard of his brother's death in the middle of his own intense fighting in Kibbutz Cholit. Shavit survived severe injury himself in a gun battle. Ariel is also survived by his mother Galit, two younger brothers, Shavit and Adar, and his wife Yuval. John how are you Havi?
- [04:17]
B
I'm well. It's great to see you. Great to see you back home.
- [04:21]
A
Yeah, I people should know. I we tried to do this while I was on the road in Norway and failed miserably for technical issues on my end. So thank you so much also for your patience and being willing to tolerate that. I want to dive right into it. Was Gideon's Chariots the brand new method that the IDF has used, moving from a raiding war where they go in again and again and again to the same place, to taking and holding and they now control slightly over 75% of Gaza. Was it a military success? In military terms, how do you see it?
- [04:59]
B
Yeah, it's a great question. And Havi, we're close friends, so academically like we like to say, we don't disagree. I just like to add a yes and context to a statement or a position. Gideon's Chariot interesting because it did change, although it's actually changed Multiple times since October 7th the the IDF at its culture and at its core is a raiding military. It has the the capability to raid into dense urban areas like UN any other military with the D9 bulldozer, the Merkava tank and infantry and many innovations since then, but especially at the beginning of the war, it would raid an objective in an area like Al Shifa hospital where it would surround it, empty it of Hamas terrorists and then leave. Once it searched everything, there wasn't a lot of clearing as in by military definition of clearing. Eventually by really at the beginning of late last year, they started going into areas and holding them and clearing them more methodically. Now Gideon's chariot was briefed to be different as in the hold portion. Right. So this clear hold build, which is a very military synonymous, very well known thing that we discovered rediscovered in the US military after six years of trying our own version of, you know, staying away from areas, raiding insurgent holds when we see them. It took us six years to figure out really a clear hold build strategy that ended up working in returning areas to normalcy.
- [06:38]
A
Can you explain that to us? That's very identified with Petraeus. It turned around a lot of the situation in many areas of Iraq. What is the strategy and have the Israelis done it?
- [06:50]
B
Well, yeah. So I highly recommend a book that General Petraeus and Sir Andrew Roberts, just, you know, two giants of warrior scholars and Sir Andrew Roberts, just a historian, impeccable reputation, walks you through the evolution of where do we get to this hearts and minds population centric strategy. But also the tactical, but it can almost be operational approach of clearing an area. Like you move in to clear an area of an enemy insurgent, holding it, as in staying there and then building security and other forms of essential services around that security. But I want to put caveats. I mean there are nuances on how it's been done. Even during the Iraq war, from the second battle of Fallujah, which was an enemy held city that was surrounded, emptied of 90 plus percent of the population, then you attacked it, killed or captured all the insurgents and then immediately brought in local Iraqi backed security forces with the US military held it, searched every building like 68,000 buildings and then started to build up normalcy, transition to the mayor. That's different than the way it's done in Ramadi in 2006, where it's done very incrementally called cop in a box. But I mean I think it's pretty easy to explain to people about you clear an area, you hold it and then you build up a New normal there, you put a new power there. But there are nuances to what it's been done and especially in the last 30 years that people come almost hand wave the difficulty of it or hand wave the history of it, where most of the time even us in second Battle of Fallujah had Iraqi army services with us, we immediately transitioned to Iraqi local leaders, to Iraqi police. Even in the counterinsurgency math, which I think really will come out in our discussion, Habib, about what's the realm of possible. How could the IDF or even the Israeli government instructed the IDF to do this differently? Is it, you know, all of these other clear hold and build situations were essentially counterinsurgencies fought for the government of the new government, whether it's the Iraqi provincial authority, right. A new government that they were standing up and you had Iraqi government forces or Afghanistan forces that are with you, trying to build legitimacy in the new government. Nuances. But even the, what we call the counterinsurgency math, right? So which really gets to really where you're frustrated, I think, in the leaving of areas, which is. It's just cultural. There's some cultural issues here with the IDF where they'll go in and clear an area, even like Khan Yunus where I visited, where they thought they had cleared a very great majority of the military infrastructure, and then they leave and then people move back. And we see it in hospitals in Gaza. The math though, right? So the counterinsurgency math, which is really where when you get to build, you're talking about you bring the population back, you build up a new normal. There's called inkblot strategies, even called the Disneyland strategy, where you build a small area of good and show everybody all the services that area gets. That's what we called it in the battle of Solder City, where we build a wall on one side of the wall. The commander said, well, I want this side to look like Disneyland where I want to give all the essential services and you know, all the government, all, everything's going well. But the math is, it's called counterinsurgency math. 20 security forces to a thousand population. So if you have a million, that would be around 20,000 soldiers who don't leave an area ever, right? So they're there, they're helping local security forces. They're the security that is foundational. So in Gaza, you would need about 44,000 IDF soldiers not rotating out, permanently stationed in that area, developing just a security framework and usually backed by hundreds of thousands of other security forces. And we never achieved that, that math in Iraq, but in clear hold build, you need to never leave. And the question to you that I wanted to ask, you know, as an Israeli as I've faced this, it isn't just that the IDF is a raiding force, but it's also a reservist force. Most majority of the forces are reservists who while some people say have been basically actively fighting for the last two years. They're only spending, not only, but they're spending about two to two months in Gaza and they rotate back where they're going home and everything. And I've actually even talked to Israeli mothers saying of course they can't go longer than that. I want to see my son, I want to see my daughter, I want to bring food. In order to commit a force to that phase that everybody is frustrated that isn't happening yet is could the IDF or the Israeli society see that happening? Where you have forces that go into Gaza with no return date. So they're there, they're the part of the, the holding force. Because even in Gideon's chariot, like you said right now, they said that Gideon's chariot would be different. As in you would clear an area and then you'd hold it and you'd stay there. And what, what the IDF really did was clear up to a certain point and then somewhat hold it. I wouldn't say they control 75% of Gaza at this point. Control for me has a military definition. I understand. Yes, there's four divisions right now. They rotated brigades back in preparation for the bigger operation. But control, for me, you have actual control of those areas. What the IDF has done is cleared up their certain area. And yes, the population is in that last bigger 25%, but they're not interacting with the population. And this is really where the nuances start to become important. And what you see the, you say the Iraqi government, I say the IDF pushing back on plans that would actually foresee them taking control of areas with their population in them.
- [12:48]
A
So you, I mean, we've done, we've gone right to the heart of the matter in Fallujah 2, in the Second Battle of Fallujah, that Iraqi force, that Iraqi government, we often use the example when people look at images of the destruction in, you know, Khan Yunis or Rafah, and we say, well, look at images of the destruction of Mosul, and it's absolutely correct. That's a kind of fighting that produces that kind of damage. And, and you know what? If it's the day after, it can all be rebuilt Very quickly and with the sympathy Gaza has and the incredibly wealthy friends in the Arab world who want to come in and be the thing that de radicalizes Gaza through building Gaza. The money's all there, the sympathy's all there, the rebuilding is all available as soon as Hamas is gone, which is also true of Mosul. Right. But the thing that was there in Mosul that we don't have is that the ground for the United States was the air force was the envelope was maybe Special Forces, the ground forces were Kurdish, Peshmerga and the Iraqi security forces. In other words, there wasn't. The problem that we talk about is the day after, we don't really mean the day after. We mean who runs Gaza, who isn't Hamas and who runs Gaza and has sufficient coherence as a force, as an ideology to fight Hamas. And would The Saudis send 20,000 member police, security, rebuilding military force of some kind into Gaza if Hamas will harass their lines and murder their soldiers? Now I submit to you that the Saudis, after the third dead soldier, will leave and not rebuild Gaza. And so Israel alone, without the local force, has to do this thing while Hamas is still embedded in a supported civilian population with that tunnel system. So it's a challenge that doesn't exist, hasn't really been done. So you need to hold without the Iraqis. And so I guess I have many questions. And this isn't even a criticism of the Israelis. So far I've only just articulated the challenge the Israelis face. It took an awful long time to come to a serious strategic grappling. I do hear now a serious strategic grappling on the Israeli side with this. I do believe that this was delayed in part because of political problems. Smoterich was pulling in one way. Ben GVIR was pulling in one way. Netanyahu very much wants to win and he doesn't, I think, want to get dragged over into those spaces. But he's limited even in being able to talk about it. So much of winning a war like this is shaping the narrative around the war, denying the enemy the narrative around the war. And Netanyahu was unable to speak because of those political problems. And so it did affect the war. But so now we're at a point where we have to already make some fundamental decisions. Gideon's Chariots was supposed to be the make or break. The worst thing for me was the rhetoric of the government around the latest Gaza City operation. It is entirely possible, I'm extremely convincable that this has to happen. I'm extremely Convincable that if we do reach a ceasefire with Hamas now, that gives us our hostages, we're back at this war in five years and Gaza can't be rebuilt in the meantime. And so I don't understand anyone who thinks that's a pro Gaza position that Hamas survives this. I have never, I've debated a lot of these people. I've been screamed at by a lot of these people. I've never reached the point where anyone's explained to me Gaza's future with Hamas in it. I've reached many points where people explain to me how much Israel has to leave. And you know what? I desperately want Israel to leave as well, but only when Hamas isn't in it or we all have to do this again. So how do we get there? And given Gaza's the difference in Gaza, where we don't have another force that isn't Hamas and I'll just say beyond that there's also, and I want to get to this to ask you about the information, we're to ask you about the humanitarian questions. One of the great problems we have with humanitarian aid isn't just the Hamas is stealing it all. It's probably not stealing it all, okay, it's stealing some piece of it, but it's not all of it. But what Hamas is able to do in Gaza is disrupt anything it needs to disrupt at any point. It still has that power and it's a very low bar to have that power. And so it'll be very hard to deny it that power. So moving forward, given that Hamas not just is willing to see Gaza suffer, Gaza's suffering is its strategy. How do we create a take hold, you know, clear hold, build strategy where we don't have the Iraqi government on our side and where we don't have and where Hamas only wants to destroy, it doesn't actually want to conquer and control.
- [17:18]
B
So I don't have all the answers, Habib. I can definitely give context. More challenges and considerations. There are lots of differences. Even in the Mosul situation, There are about 10 factions that were actually involved in that operation. And ISIS was three to 5,000 fighters. 3,000 to 5,000 fighters in a city of a million. It wasn't the population. There was some population support, but once they were defeated then there was no fighting left. And there was actually, and like you're right, even the other forces which were told quickly to leave because there were Shia backed militias, there was a whole bunch of groups that were involved in the liberation of Mosul that were rapidly told to Leave and it was transitioned to the federal government. You know, you had local leaders back in there running the city. So many nuances there. And just to be clear, Operation Gideon's Chariot B, as far as I can tell, has nothing to do with holding or building an area. It has to do with clearing Gaza City. And that hasn't been done yet of in, you know, Hamas stronghold infrastructure, sanctuary. It's really sanctuary, which really goes back to even Fallujah, because if you know the history of the two battles of Fallujah, first battle of Fallujah is a failure. The city is encircled. A local force is assigned security within it called the Fallujah Brigade, and it becomes a sanctuary for enemy forces for six plus months. Eventually the government says, we can't have this anymore. And then you clear it. The plan that I see in Gaza City is to once again evacuate the civilians and then go in and clear the Hamas fighters that stay or that are trapped to fight. And there is some differences here before, but the plan isn't to have the population there because it shouldn't be. Right. In order to minimize civilian casualties, you got to move the civilians out. But one of the challenges, I think that's being missed by a lot of people is that the population is a factor in this. Right. So even if you know the, in eastern Rafah, right, You have the, these Bedouin tribe with supposedly dubious backgrounds, they have a Hamas free zone. Right. And that's a, that's a model, like a, A light of hope. And I think that, personally I thought that should have been amplified that you have this zone. I mean, the guy wrote a Wall Street Journal op ed on, I'm not hamas. I have a zone here where you can bring food in. I think it was brilliant and I think that should have been protected. You put up a wall around flooding resources into that as a light of possibility.
- [20:03]
A
That's not Disneyland. In other words, to show Gaza what could be.
- [20:06]
B
That's right. Disneyland theory. I mean, he wrote a wa. A while. Yeah. But then you immediately, as soon as the person's name, then you get attacked by like he's, he's, you know, a terrorist, all these things. This is the idea again that you're going to create something that is almost near impossible in, like you said, de radicalization, which is, everybody knows that in order to have a Hamas free zone, you'd have to have some form of de radicalization after Hamas is defeated. All these different techniques that have been tried thus far is about removing Hamas from power or lowering their power to where anything else to survive, you pointed out, and I agree with you, you couldn't assign any other force to come in there and secure a portion of Gaza right now that wouldn't face daily attacks unlike we've ever seen in any other area that we could say is where there's this clear hold, build happening. Right? You have to bring Hamas power down in order to do that, you have to do the clearing part, which is kind of frustrating. But also, if you peel back the onion of the cultural aspects, even what General Zamir is saying now, when he, he violently refused or commented about the idea of having a humanitarian zone in southern Gaza that, you know, Defense Secretary Cox was talking about, right? We'll have a zone here that we've already cleared. We'll let people back in it, we'll secure it. Right? Because then that's again, a commitment of IDF soldiers securing a population, not a piece of terrain. And then you have the issue of even being able to clear Gaza City. Some of the context that I felt that was missing in your conversation about what happened with the humanitarian aid. What was the history of northern Gaza in getting the civilian population to move south so that IDF kinetic operations or offensive operations could happen against Hamas in those areas. And then this entire time, of course, there are portions of Gaza City that the IDF haven't gone in, but there's also a population that has, no matter the how many notifications, hasn't moved. Right. I don't know if you remember.
- [22:14]
A
So let me, let me set this up, because I said something and you thought that was just crazy. And I think that's extremely useful to hear that. It's great. And also you're always a gentleman about it, so it's easy to, you know. But basically I said, you know, and I said this in the context of the hunger in Gaza and the data, of the price data and things like that that showed us that the UN has lied again and again and again and again and again. But, you know, roughly in May, it was no longer a lie. There actually was hunger in Gaza. And one of the things I said was, you need to clear the civilians. You need to separate the civilians from Hamas. The best way to do that I suggested, and this was something that I suggested 20 months ago, but I'll just say when I suggested it 20 months ago, it was a flippant, you know, side comment in just trying to clarify the scale of the difficulty of the civilian problem. So I was not a great wise man 20 months ago, but it was obvious that the problem was profound. And fundamental to the war. And I suggested, well, you know, we can't send them into Egypt because Egypt won't take them. The Arab world won't let Egypt take them. There was, by the way, in January 2024, February 2024, a year and a half ago, more than a year and a half ago, Egypt actually was willing to contemplate in Rafah some kind of refugee camp for Gazans. And since then, Egypt set about building the biggest wall Gaza has ever known. The entirety of the Gaza Egypt border with Barbe, you know, totally impenetrable. So the Gazans don't even accidentally dream of putting a ladder over a fence and climbing over. So we have a situation where the Egyptians won't take them. The Arab world discourses don't let them out. The Israelis will never let them back in. So I've suggested, I don't know, a month ago, so let's build a massive refugee facility in Israel and let's bring international aid agencies into the facility and let's have Israeli Arabs running the facility. These are Israelis who know Hebrew and Palestine Palestinians who know Arabic. And they're the same people. So they are that bridge. It might even have a de radicalizing element in that context. Gazans don't know the story of Israeli Arabs. They have only a very ideological version of that story. They haven't actually crossed the border as populations basically since the second intifada for 25 years. And so this could be something fantastic. Plus the civilians are out now. This is a terrible idea you said so I will not interrupt you. Maybe it really is silly and the problem remains and you can't solve it with just Khaliv dreaming. But what's wrong with this picture?
- [24:59]
B
So one is Israeli society. I don't know personally and you would know better than I would if the Israeli society who suffered October 7th and you're talking southern Israel which say yes, we can take the population out of Gaza and put them in Israel after knowing what happened on October 7, which included thousands of Gazans who weren't Hamas crossing the border to do awful things in Israel. That's the first step, right? Because Israel's a democracy. Any plan that gets put forward, and you've even seen it recently with Gideon's Chariot versions, that wasn't the version that went into the conversation. It was, you know, a much broader plan. And then for the vibrant democracy and different figures, it got changed. So I think from a societal perspective, I don't think it would have flown two, just from a security perspective. Right. So this is the ideal and I think that it's present. Right. And I try to be as objective as possible, even about holding areas in Gaza. Is that, well, how would you screen those that would be moved to this area if the international community let you do that? Right. So they. There is that factor. I want to come back to Egypt, though. But the international community said, yes, you can displace. Now, forced displacement is illegal. In all forms of the law of war. There's voluntary or temporary displacement. So you could say this is temporary. But then who would be the person to say this person isn't Hamas, this person isn't Palestinian Islamic Jihad, this person isn't lion's Den? Because as we've seen in even the hostage release videos, there are many terrorist organizations in Gaza who have aligned themselves in participating in the hostilities. Some of the hostages that are held right now aren't being held by Hamas. They're being held by Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other groups. They have consolidated, many of them. Hamas bought some from civilians, if you remember. So there's the practical perspective of who would be the determinant. And then from a military lens. So those are political considerations. Political, societal. From a military lens, who would secure this force? Right. That goes back to the math. I mean, even the last few months that you talk about kind of what was attempted in Gaza, about trying to move all the humanitarian aid to southern Gaza in preparation for clearing of northern Gaza, it's a variation of a plan that I disagreed with in the beginning. If the WHO would secure this force, how many tens of thousands of IDF soldiers would be responsible? And if you use, you could use, you know, magob, you could use police, blue police, you name it. But how many would be assigned to that to secure a displaced person's camp? And then when would it stop? When if there was some type of violence, eventually during this last few months, you had the whole Israel, Iran conflict. This is even the Gaza Humanitarian foundation, which does amazing, very courageous work. We're serving food during when Iranian ballistic missiles were raining down on Israel, who would have secured this force? So for me, all courses of action have to be feasible, acceptable, suitable, sustainable. Like all these military terms that we use. One ahistoric, of course, I like to point that out because I'm a very factual person. Like there's never been a history where a military who is trying to overthrow a government, a force to remove us, takes its population into its own territory and then houses it. You know, like you said, what would they say about concentration camp? Because it would look more than what people use in hyperbole. It would look like a very closed in prison if you were to create a camp to do this. I just don't think it's feasible even from a perspective of who would be the population. I don't want the conversation also shifted off of Egypt. You and Israelis kind of, I think have already like, well, you know, Egypt says no, it's not an option. I'm on the other lens of no, it should be a part of the, the national international conversation every day. And it's not. And it's so ahistorical double standard that it's not a part of the conversation that you have the ability to create the same camp you're envisioning just on the other side of that gate in the Sinai. And there is no. And I actually wrote the article this week trying to again say it like there's no practical reason why this isn't the demand of the international community, the world and should be the number one topic of the September UN General assembly that's coming up is create this camp that would allow the civilians, which is very historical, to even clear hold build operations. If you look back to like Ramadi, you actually searched every individual coming out of the city to make sure they're not a terrorist or a part of the organization. And then you searched everyone going back into the community. That's very historical and that's been a part of the conversation. And I point out about Ambassador or Minister Dermer who said look, I don't know why this isn't a conversation. And this whole idea about forced displacement which would be a part of their conversation about moving into Negev is you could pass a UN Security Council resolution saying we're going to ensure that the Palestinian people of Gaza move back into the areas once Hamas has been defeated. But I don't think that Negev was reasonable for many reasons. I don't want the conversation shifted off of the Egypt conversation. That door, the fact that they closed that door, it should never have been closed. And you're right, and I'll put the caveat that there actually has been about 100,000 Gazans who have left through the Egypt crossing if they pay enough money so anywhere from 2,000 to 10,000American dollars, they can get out through that gate. So the hypocrisy is rich here. But this is all the context of what are the. What could, what could we do at this point? What can we do?
- [31:21]
A
I think that you're right that it's unique. I mean there isn't a war zone in the world or possibly ever in the history of war zones where civilians were unable to flee. Maybe, you know, a specific siege of a specific city by the Mongols, you can't find fleeing, but that's because of that. Right, but usually the enemy wants them to flee. Usually that's something that is useful to civilians. And then they come back. We saw that in World War II. We saw that always, always. Everywhere. That's unique here. It's not just unique here. It's one of the many things that are unique here. That tunnel system is unique. Its scale is unique. 60,000 tunnel entrances under, I mean, tens of thousands of buildings throughout Gaza's cities. That's unique. That has never been done before in war. So so much of this is unique. Hamas offering the people of Gaza up on the Al Are is a unique feature of war. That, by the way, is an enormous strategic advantage for Hamas because they can afford, and the whole international discourse around the war is built to ensure that they can afford higher Gazan losses than the Israelis can afford. And so, you know, while the Gazans are left in place, everything in the system is built out to ensure Hamas survives this. And to me, that means that everyone in the system is probably Gaza suffering because Gaza suffering serves, I don't know what a theological. We saw this with Macron and Keir Starmer, who insisted on recognizing a Palestinian state. Not in a way that helps Palestinians, for example, as a condition conditioned on Hamas disarming, then I can have a debate. Good idea, bad idea, diplomatic, whatever. But as conditioned on the current opinion of the UK is, the day Hamas disarms and evaporates, we will recognize the Palestin, you know what, but at least you haven't given it as a gift to Hamas. But they chose to actually do it as a gift to Hamas in September, if there's no ceasefire, meaning if Hamas refuses a ceasefire.
- [33:15]
B
Right.
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A
They've incentivized. So everything about this conflict in that sense is unique. I take your point about guarding it. I take your point about it not just being called a concentration camp because they're going to call us everything under the sun, but that it will actually have to have massive, you know, barbed wire fences all around it with armed guards making sure nobody escapes and there'll be escape attempts and they will probably get shot. And so it will look like.
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B
I also didn't say the cost heavy. So one of the, you know, one of the things we do as a military, we test this.
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A
2 million people.
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B
Yeah, yeah. The cost in Shekels So how many billions of dollars? I think the estimate of even the southern Gaza humanitarian zone that, that they were discussing was like 3 billion shekels or the expansion of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. The other actor here is the United nations and all NGOs, right? So if you go back to even Jonathan Conricus's story about setting up the Al Muasi humanitarian zone and the United nations said, no, we won't help you in that, we won't provide any resources. So the ideal here in this create the humanitarian zone in the Negev would be that the international community would be a part of just like they are in every other situation in the world of the resourcing and cost of it, right? The food, medical services, all this doctors, everybody would rush into that area. And actually the history since October 7th is no, they would actually fight this and they would not assist. So it would be 100% on the Israel government to fund and resource that initiative.
- [34:47]
A
So let me challenge two things. One, Egypt in that sense doesn't help us either. Because if the only way to do this is to have them voluntarily go. The best surveys we have, and I don't know how trustworthy they are, but some surveys of Palestinians even in wartime in the past that I have seen have actually been very reliable also consistent and rational over time. So maybe they're true is that half of Gazans would walk out if they could today. That leaves half in. That leaves a million people in. So even if Egypt agrees, okay, the civilian death toll would go down, but the military problem of a civilian death toll and having to target around civilians wouldn't dis. So even Egypt, Yes, I'm absolutely for leaving, you know, the light on Egypt. I completely accept that this is a terrible idea, but nevertheless we have to be thinking in these terms. By the way, I'm still not convinced the Israelis couldn't do it. In other words, couldn't build out that aid organization. There is an Israeli aid organization working right now in Gaza that can scale up massively. I know something about the IDF's aid aid agencies and capabilities.
- [35:53]
B
The government would fall if that position was taken and that attempt was attempted.
- [36:01]
A
No, I think Bibi would know how to sell it if he thought that was the strategic thing to do. I think Smoterch would leave right now. By the way, the government fell and still hasn't fallen. The ultra orthodox parties because they can't get the bill they want for exemptions are no longer in the government, except that nobody's holding the vote and they're not going to vote against and they haven't toppled the government, even though the government technically doesn't have them. So I think there would be a way forward to deal with that. But I'll put it this way. If the government falling alone is the reason not to, and it's not. You've said 16 reasons that have nothing to do with the politics. But if the government falling alone is the reason not to, then our problem is, then that's what's holding us back from properly winning the war. So, okay, so even Egypt doesn't solve. I want to suggest to you, and this is a question, this is a classic Israeli question in the sense that it's a speech. So I want to suggest to you that even Egypt is ideally would only solve half the problem. And that ideal is not available to us. And it's not going to happen, no matter how much pressure you bring to bear, because the entire Arab world would tell the Sisi regime that they're traitors. And so right now we're in a situation where the civilians are going to be stuck in the way and the IDF still has to get at Hamas and a massive invasion of Gaza City is going to result in destruction there on the scale of Rafah. And now the question becomes, how do we win?
- [37:19]
B
Yeah.
- [37:20]
A
So how do we remove Hamas? One thing I said, one sentence just to give context of what listeners have heard, if they've listened to all the episodes up till now, is that in places like where you've had guerrilla forces that have been defeated by standing armies, like Peru and the Shining Path, like the Greek Civil War where the Yugoslavs supported these communist militias, all these other places, the successful ones, they separated the civilian population from the, from the guerrillas, sometimes violently, sometimes by forcibly moving the civilian population, sometimes by giving the civilian population the thing that the rebels were promising them, you know, help and structural changes in society and all kinds of other things. So however they did it, the separation itself was the key to success. How do we. Is that the key to success here? Is it even possible here? And if it's not, is it just more of the same? Are we just continuing this path that Hamas keeps seeming to survive life?
- [38:14]
B
So, yes. And, and again, on the caveats on what has worked in the past is each we say, you know, history has to be studied in width, depth and context. So that's why again, I recommend that book by General Petraeus, because even the idea where did the. The statement of hearts and minds came from? It came from a guy named the Tiger of He was A tiger because he was vicious against the enemy, but separated the civilian population. And that can be done in more than one way. You can arm other factions against the enemy that you're fighting and still technically be separating the population. I don't have what, what is the necessary path towards winning. I can say that again. Any feasible solution can't be surrender, right? So most people agree that, well, even these European countries are like, well, of course Hamas has to lay down their weapons. Now you have the Arab nations, you know, what is it, 11, 14 Arab nations saying, of course Hamas has to lay down its weapons and give up power. But nobody has the solution where surrender can't be the solution given all the current constraints. I agree, we actually agree on, I believe there should have been at this point a, you know, General Gallant called it bubbles, you know, creating these Disneyland like that southern Gaza section, which is very small and it would be very hard to do, but doesn't mean there shouldn't have been an effort to it. It's all been forms of trying to attack the will of the enemy. And you have rightfully criticized the attempt of the movement of aid. And I put nuances to southern Gaza in an attempt to continue to break down Hamas's power over the aid distribution. But up to this point, Israel has allowed Hamas to have a sanctuary to run command operations, hold hostages, everything inside of Gaza City for, you know, concern of the hostages, concern of the difficulty of the cost that it will take to enter that terrain. Because it's a denser terrain than the IDF have ever faced technically, in my view, in the history of the idf. The central Gaza City, the urban canyons would be a, will be a human humongous fight. But the fact as an objective observer is that you've given Hamas a sanctuary this entire time, which has made it very challenging to convince it that it needs to do what the world is saying, lay down its arms and surrender to any other form of government, any other faction, Palestinian led faction. For me, as an objective observer, even the clearhold build strategy doesn't leave sanctuaries. Right? That's again going back to all of these other situations where it was used even in a counterinsurgency faction where you're fighting for the government, saying, like, I have an enemy city here. I can't deal with, I can't have that. Mosul was thereafter Fallujah Rama. All of these were enemy held cities within a functioning national system. You don't give them a sanctuary because that never leads to their, their surrender. Even the ideal of sieges I hate sieges. A siege, and a lot of people call things sieges that aren't where you surround an area and then use that as the form of warfare to convince the enemy to do whatever it is you're wanting them to do, give up hostages or surrender. If you besiege an area, you can isolate an area before attacking it. In my perspective, what Gideon's Chariot be is radically different than even Gideon's Chariot, which was to me, if you go back to Gaza 2008, a little bit of the same of clearing Gaza up to a certain point, keeping the population away from where you're clearing. And then you say you've gotten up to that line literally in the sand, and say, I've cleared this much area. I've achieved my goal. That was Gaza 2008 as well. What the plan is being briefed for Gaza City is five divisions against one city. That's historic in IDF history and historic in the operations in Gaza.
- [42:40]
A
You could ask the largest force to ever enter a city, the scale of Gaza City City.
- [42:45]
B
Correct. And you could say, why wouldn't. Why didn't they do that before? Well, then we got to go to constraints, right?
- [42:52]
A
No, no, I want to ask that question. I literally have it written down here while you were talking. So denying sanctuary is the key to the old strategy and to the new strategy and to every strategy. Then it should have been done much sooner. So this is two points. One, why didn't they do it sooner? Does that mean that the strategic thinking is not as clear as it should have been? Forgive me, it's 22 months and I have family in the war, and so I am prone to think that maybe something isn't always happening correctly in the highest levels of Israeli government. Denying sanctuary is the key. Should have been done sooner, and therefore this could actually be the beginning of the end. Because there isn't anything after Gaza City of significance.
- [43:37]
B
I mean, you still have the central camp, you have Dera Blan and other areas that were taken off of, of the overall plan to finish off technically. Right. And this is again, where, as a military guy, the nuances here, like the IDF haven't cleared 75% of Gaza. That's just a fact. Having been there multiple times you've said that.
- [43:56]
A
They have explained that. What's the difference between what you call clear and what the IDF has done?
- [44:00]
B
Yeah, so what I call clear is that there's no military infrastructure or resources left for an enemy to fall back on. Right. So you're talking tunnels, weapons caches, weapon Manufacturing plants, supplies, cash, the whole gambit. Even unexploded ordnance, which is a weapon for Hamas. Right. So the 10% of the IDF munitions that have been dropped on enemy forces in Gaza are unexploded. And Hamas like ants, comes out later, grabs those and uses them to make explosives to lay in the roads and then the houses and everything to clear an area. It literally means you cleared of enemy activity and that means its infrastructure, its weapons and everything. So if you, if hamas only had 25% of its supplies, I mean it doesn't have the rocket supplies that it had, of course this would be a different occasion. But you can't control and clear something unless you're there for a very long amount of time, right? So that means clearing every structure, every tunnel, even in a netrine corridor, there's still tunnels there because to remediate a tunnel is very expensive, timely, everything. So to say you clear an area for the idf, that means that there's no active military enemy forces fighting you. Right? Hamas is not there. That's different than the way I call something cleared. You're cleared of enemy infrastructure is a part of that, that conversation what the question of clearing Gaza City. Right. So this is where the forecast of how long it would take are like I'm again, it's fine to be critical as long as you provide all the context. You know, Gaza City is a city of a million. The densest part of Gaza had never been touched once. How are you going to do that in a matter of two months? You're going to fight the Hamas that stay there to fight, you're going to clear through, you're going to discover intelligence. But to actually clear that of that would take a significant amount of resources. And the fact that there is five divisions is a very big sign of an actual commitment to doing the clearing. How likely is it that they, those five divisions would stay there and hold that area? It's just not going to happen. Right. Just based on Israel society rotating reserve forces, call ups. I think that you know, 70 days a year is one of the sayings at this point.
- [46:35]
A
But so you're saying not just that there's still infrastructure all over Gaza, it actually has to be cleared properly for Hamas to be sufficiently degraded for let's say the Saudis, the Arabs or the UN to come, or the Americans to come in and rebuild, de radicalize and all that. You're actually saying in one sense, if you take the population rather than this geography, half of Gaza has been done, the other half has yet to be done. The capacity of Hamas to hide in Gaza City, a city of a million, is immense. That's half the population of Gaza. Those tunnels are enormous. It's almost the entirety of the war. Again, in terms of the objectives the IDF actually has to achieve in there. And you're saying not only is it not going to last two months, two months is just sort of rushing along the ground, maybe blowing a few things up. You're actually talking about hunkering down and massively, systematically destroying all of those infrastructures. And those infrastructures are deeply, deeply embedded in all the other infrastructure, the civilian, the buildings. I mean, all these buildings become, in one way or another, part of either tunnel entrance or IEDs. So we're in for a very long slog in Gaza, all of Gaza, and a longer and more difficult and focused and concentrated slog in Gaza City. And that would be do the job. And anything less than that is the Israelis just hemming and hawing and unable to actually give the kind of concentrated push that would finish it. Is that?
- [48:07]
B
Yes. And so this technique that the IDF have used, it's very idf, this raid in and out, but it has been arguably very successful in doing what would have necessarily taken hundreds of thousands of troops. The fact that Hamas doesn't have a military today, its leaders are gone, its brigades don't function, its battalions don't function. Yes, there are fighters. The goal in war is never to the death of every enemy fighter. The goal is to convince the enemy to do your will. And could the operation in Gaza City, doing it the IDF way, tip Hamas to the tipping point of what everybody has basically been on the same sheet of music, is agree to the disarmament and surrender. That is a great question. And I think more likely than to say that this would do. The other goal, which is the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip, which I think rightfully so. The Israel government and military leadership are saying that's later. We're trying to break the will of Hamas and it's not the radicalization ideology, but just the leadership to continue the war to that point. That's, I think, the phase you're in. We're still in phase one of the Gaza war, in my understanding, but I will say in credit, again, as an objective analysis, that this IDF methodology of in and out, in and maybe clear a little bit in, out, based on Israel's society of continuing the war. Right. So the amount of time a reserve force can be used has been effective at, and some people would argue this returning hostages, the military pressure with political pressure. I mean of 200 hostages returned in various ways, Hamas doesn't have a military, it doesn't have a rocket supply, it has a sanctuary. Of this 25% for many reasons has been left there. And you're right to say this should have been done a long time ago. And then I'll say at what month did you want to do it? Did you want to do it during the attack against Hezbollah? Did you want to do it against the attack against Iran? Did you want to do it against when the American government said you couldn't go to Rafah, which was a sanctuary at the time and then they moved. I mean even the Al Muasi humanitarian zone where Mohammed Death was killed world, it's a sanctuary at this point. It's where Hamas could go and operate without. And even what we've seen this morning in Al Nasr Hospital where Hamas was returned to operating a command center inside of a hospital is these sanctuaries that are there. But I do it with a little bit of understanding of the Israel way, the constraints that are on the idf, but agree that this operation against Gaza City was a necessary means not because of it's the lack sanctuary is because all other things that have been done to try to convince Hamas that they're not going to win. But the daylight, right? So this is the daylight that people have talked about. Even Secretary Blinken said anytime there was daylight between Israel's society and Israel's government, Israel's government in the United States or anybody else, that's when Hamas gets resolved to well, even if we only have this 10% left as a sanctuary, we can hold out. We're going to win here. And that's for me what this Gaza City operation will be. It won't clear Gaza City. It will remove the sanctuary and the hope that Hamas has had. And I think personally this is why Hamas is now, okay, wait a minute, we're willing to give up some of the remaining hostages because if you remove that sanctuary, they have a lot less cards and a lot less resolve that they are going to be successful because of this daylight. And the Kirsdahmers of the world and these threats against Israel is creating. It puts resolve in Hamas to not to do what even the Arab countries at this point say they shouldn't be doing, which is holding out.
- [52:07]
A
Okay, so the Israeli strategy is not bad. We should not seek. It's a reasonable given Israel's constraints, which are demographic constraints. I mean there's only 10 million Israelis in the world. I mean everybody talks about Israel more than China. But nevertheless, given these very real, unavoidable Israeli constraints, it doesn't have America scale, you know, military capacity to engage and stay and hold and clear and all that. So this is a very good strategy that has achieved a very great deal. 80% of hostages back is not something that on the week of October 7th, anybody in Israel thought was going to happen. So many of them, of course, should be said dead. Right, their bodies are back. But nevertheless, that is not something that anybody thought was available to us. As we go into Gaza City, what happens to the hostages? The reasonable threat of going into Gaza City has possibly moved Hamas. We heard today, allegedly, not actually from his mouth, but a report of a leak of somebody saying that the Chief of staff has said that there is a hostage on the table now, which there wasn't a week ago or whatever. But now Hamas appears really wanting to have a deal, have some kind of a ceasefire, delay the entrance into Gaza City. If that gets us out 10 more hostages, great. Not great, flippantly. I mean, great. Then we stop and do it. But ultimately, Hamas never gives up the last hostage. And so ultimately this has to go forward even at the cost of hostages, lives, because you don't leave Hamas this massive sanctuary and, you know, an entire city and all the tunnels, etc. Is that fair to say? And let me before Ibefore you walk into this terrible trap where you're never going to please anybody. I have said that ultimately, removing Hamas, teaching the lesson that we have taught our enemies that hostages are our strategic Achilles heel, we need to teach our enemies that our hostages are their strategic Achilles heel. They cannot survive this. The very fact that they will have us negotiating for our hostages is why this ends with them dead. And it doesn't end until then, because we can't have another strategic. In other words, I have agreed with Netanyahu multiple times on these kinds of questions. On the Philadelphia corridor when he was fighting with Gallant on the questions of hostages, on the hardest decisions of the war. I've criticized him a thousand times on a thousand things. On the hardest decisions of the war. I think he's generally been right because of what Hamas is. So having cleared the way, get angry at me first, people. Ultimately we lose some of the hostages. To take Gaza City, to deny Hamas that last sanctuary, is that right? Or is there another way?
- [54:45]
B
Way. So I don't think it's binary. I think everything you just said is accurate. Right. So you. You reached the point that all other means have been tried and now you have hostages that are near death, like actually being starved to death. That's an assessment of some of the, the living hostages. It's hard to argue against that. But I don't think it's black and white. This is again the different operational methods. I have been surprised by the IDF operations from the beginning. Whether it's the initial attack, going around Hamas's offensive, coming from the beach, coming from the sea. There are surprises that are yet to be known. And there is always this risk, but how they are going to mitigate this risk. So to say that if the IDF moves forward, they're saying, look, we understand that the hostages are going to die. I don't think that's accurate secret for as straightforward as a statement as we've reached the point where all other things have been tried. And you're right, if Hamas comes to the table like they have in the past and say, look, we want a 60 day hold, but it usually, and it's not me saying this, right, they have passed on five deals that would end the war, but they won't do that because they want to either keep military arms or keep political power. It's, it's both, but they want to survive. But you're reaching a point where, you know, this goes again to the history of Hamas. Like you said, if you go back and, and it, it was very enlightening to go back to 2008 after, you know, Gilad Shalit, after Hamas rocket attacks. Where did the IDF stop and why did they stop? And they didn't give Gilad Shalit back, right? It was years and, and then what was exchanged for him? And there is a lot of history to Hamas hostages, Gaza, the strongholds that IDF have never gone into in the history of Gaza. And we've reached a point where, you're right, the cost will be great. But does the cost outweigh? This is always, even in proportionality, excessive to do you want to. Because there will be loss of IDF life as well, right? The IDF soldier loss of life, you know, getting to the point of 900. As an analyst, as an objective analyst, I would have on October 7th imagined thousands more. But because of this IDF way of fighting, it's different. Even if you do the proportionality of other wars, right? The Iraqi soldiers lost 10,000 soldiers in taking back Mosul. It would have been much more. So there will be loss of IDF life, but it isn't that. There are, they aren't all calculated risk. Right? So this is the, it's not black and white because I do believe that the IDF Will, of course, like they did in Gideon's chariot, and gather intelligence about the whereabouts of living and dead and retrieve dead hostages. To be frank, I. Yeah.
- [57:51]
A
One of the most painful things at this moment among Israelis is this furious debate between. It isn't really left and right. It's almost more secular versus religious. Most of the hostages belong to the secular subculture of Israel, and a disproportionate number, not most, but a disproportionate number of the dead soldiers in Gaza and the fighting in Gaza since October 7 belong to the religious subculture of Israel. And those two populations feel those two different sides of it differently. And so there is this. In Tel Aviv, you can't drive down a highway, you can't turn a corner on a street without seeing a sign for hostages. And in more religious neighborhoods, in more religious areas, the death of soldiers. You know, you'll walk into a restaurant, and one wall of the restaurant will be dedicated to this tradition that's developed in this war of bumper stickers with a quote, one of the soldiers, you know, a quote that the family picked out from the soldier's social media or whatever about being good in the world or about, you know, the need to do for people in the world, things like that as a memorial. And so there are these stickers for hostage stickers and these two subcultures of Israel, and they're almost forced by Hamas, by Hamas strategy to debate, you know, whose blood, whose blood is worth shedding or worth risking more. It's incredibly painful and explains a little bit. I don't think the world understands the extent to which, no matter what the world sees out of Gaza, Hamas continues in that sense to radicalize Israelis against Hamas because it will release these hostage videos, it will talk about the hostages, and it will mock the deaths of soldiers. And in other words, you know, I don't know how Gaza ever comes out of this if Hamas is. I literally don't know, and I don't know anyone who can explain if Hamas isn't removed. I want to finish. Thank you so much for your time. I want to finish with the last critique I had of this government, which I've saved the best for last because it's the one I understand the most, and that's the information war. Now, this government, I believe this leadership, and by the way, also the idf, which I blame less because it had more things to deal with, but it also should have understood at a strategic level, the IDF understands at this point that cyber is a phenomenally important strategic front in war. And the cyber capabilities of the IDF are commensurate to that understanding. But the information war is almost completely lost. I mean, not just lost. There's nothing there. There's nothing for the vast majority of this war, Netanyahu literally had no English language spokesperson and also didn't really take to the airwaves and explain Israel's position because explaining that we're not going to build settlements in Gaza would have caused trouble with some of its coalition partners. And so they got to put on, you know, massively televised, internationally, you know, seen press conferences about how Israel's going to take Gaza, kick out the population and build settlements there, while Netanyahu sat silently off in the corner, not causing himself political problems. The information war hasn't just not been, we're going to lose it no matter what. Okay, I, no, I'm not imagining that we're not, but nobody even understood or wanted to understand or cared that this was phenomenally central to this war. And the only reason, I think one sentence that it was phenomenally central to this war, as you've said, as every single expert has said, that's why Hamas thinks it can survive. That's why if it's got, finds its sanctuary, hunkers down, all it has to do is let the world pressure do its thing. We are losing friends and allies to the genocide claim, nevermind to specific complaints about specific airstrikes. And partly we're losing them. They would be susceptible to Israeli explaining what the hell's happening, but Israel isn't explaining. And so the most radical extremist pieces of Israel are the only ones talking. Have I gone overboard or is that, that a reasonable. How do you assess the information war landscape of Israel?
- [62:04]
B
Absolutely. So I join you with a yes to and could have done the information operations completely different. I have some nuances there that there wasn't a starvation campaign, but Israel did fail to explain what they were doing and why they were doing it. I, I know more of the context.
- [62:23]
A
I meant the claim of starvation. The campaign is that they claimed it was intentional starvation.
- [62:27]
B
Okay, okay, good, good. Because there was a pause in the, the, the aid delivery, the standup, the GHF, the what was happening during the 42 days. You're 100% right. And it's just a case study of that. You, that there has been a horrible, if not not planned, whole of government information strategy. Right. And this is the way you can compare it to others. And you rightfully say, you know, know. And people say, well, they won't believe us anyways. Who's responsible for putting out information and when. Right. So I agree with you. And you could fix it today where you're. You are producing daily information within the, the, the threshold of operational security, where the entire world could go to and listen to a daily day, a press briefing on whether that's Kogat, the IDF and Israel government. And usually you'd want them all to be on the same sheet of music. And I. You just haven't come back from India and watching India's operations during its war against Pakistan four days. But you saw that, that all three echelons were putting out information. It was all on the same and it was daily. The only way you beat the misinformation is put out information daily. And even David Horowitz, you know the Times of Israel editors as. Because they just don't put out any information. We'll ask questions. There's no answer. I agree with you.
- [63:51]
A
I couldn't. Just to clarify, I couldn't get answers on hunger, on starvation. I had to go find this very talented Hebrew University economist who by the way, votes left, but who said and was deeply critical and explained the criteria and had the numbers and had the. I couldn't get real information out of this government. Never mind. Why would a BBC person who doesn't know who to call in Hebrew, you know, from Israeli officials any. Anyway, it was a. I want to ask you more than that. It's not just. Yes, obviously they haven't been explaining anything. This is foundational. This is as much as cyber. Imagine the Iran war, but you have no hacking capabilities. You would not have had that targeting. You would not have been able to get Iranian air force officials into the room together to kill them all in one shot. You would not have taken out the air defenses ahead of the airstrikes. Right. You wouldn't if you didn't have. It is foundational. It is central. Israel is flying this mission without an air force and hoping, you know, balloons carry the day. And the information space is Hamas's foundational strategy. That's why Gazan suffering is something Hamas magnifies at every turn. And so my concern is that I'm being unfair because this is a radically new version of that, that information war. Israel has to innovate. Yeah. It's just now catching up 22 months in that it has to innovate. Nobody else has done this before. It's not screwing up in the sense that it's forgotten what people once knew. Nobody has had to deal with this or. Which is what I feel in my Gut. They literally just can't imagine it culturally and have just abandoned this field and will not now, even now, 22 months in, build a serious information war infrastructure.
- [65:33]
B
You're right. And if you were to dig deeper, right. Do investigative reporting on why, like why is this. I've asked the questions, you know, I'm embedded with the idf. Why aren't you putting out this. Well, that's. That should be the Ministry of Defense's responsibility. And then you ask them, they're like, well, that should be the prime Minister's office. So it isn't just one group. It is actually a. A young country struggling with, with even the civ mill hierarchy. Right. So the, of course military gives best military advice. But even within Israel you have retired military who become, you know, voices of opposition thing. There is some nuances here. You're right. It's a case study of not the way to do it. Even with KOGAP putting out daily information, it's not rising. So there's one aspect of you need to. I agree with you, I 100% join you, Habib. You need a hierarchy of almost an army to fight in the information operations domain. And actually the IDF spokesman grew their. The organization greatly after October 7th. And as I continued to visit it, it was getting smaller. The problem wasn't getting smaller, but for many reasons. But it's also being. So this is a new template. So we can be critical of Israel for that, but we can also say that all other countries don't think you're excluded from this happening to you if you ever face a war of this scale. Right. This is the hashtag and the misinformation. Right? This starvation, this genocide that gets a stamp of approval from a legitimate organization and then it goes viral, right? The United nations say 14,000 babies will die in 48 hours stamp of approval. Viral. And you have to fight that. So you have to have an army ready to fight the misinformation. Right? So the kernel of truth that gets told in a story, that's a lie. So it isn't just putting out the heart. I agree with you. But you, I think you should have. I can be critical. Like you saw the starvation claims coming. You should have developed a whole campaign against that one thing which they came to it later, as you have seen and you ripely criticize. Like later you've come to it and the visits to the GHF and even explaining what happened there from the beginning to now. And you have these people taking their 15 minutes of fame to say how it was when they were there, even though it's not the way it is now, it's so you're right. And I don't know what the solution is though, because it's deeper than just fix it because it is political, it is societal, as it has to change, it isn't right. It will be a very big challenge to achieve victory. Not addressing it, not saying that it's not, it's not an option. Right? Failure is not an option. But you could be doing a lot more to assist. Even at this point.
- [68:31]
A
My sense is that we have to have a catastrophic failure. That's how it works. In Israel in the 1980s, we had to debase our currency twice because of triple digit inflation over eight years where everybody's life savings were wiped out. We were like worse than Venezuela. And then we actually passed the laws and the reforms that broke the labor unions and made monetary policy independent and created these conditions for the massive prosperity of Israel since the 90s. But first we needed to crash. So the Israeli culture, Israel's intelligence community, was built out of 73 where it collapsed catastrophically. So for some reason, I don't know why we do this to ourselves, but for some reason, Israeli culture is, is you drive off the cliff, you're falling, you're falling and you're still bickering, you still don't notice. And then an inch before the, you know what you smack on the ground, look at your bloodied body and say, you probably should fix this. And then the Israelis go and do something stunningly professional and serious. So, you know, maybe it's not bad enough. Maybe that's the answer before the culture takes notice. I thank you very much for this because I come away from this saying, you know, again, I don't know what the answer is. It's war. This the enemy, by nature surprises you. That's what an enemy is. And there are many, many factors that we can't know. But I am at least satisfied that this is rational, that this is not silly. It's not politicking. It's not. And that to me is an important thing to know. My last question to you. So are you optimistic? Are you optimistic at the most baseline level, without too much caveats, just, are we going to win this thing? Are we going to see it through? Is Hamas ultimately dislodgeable and are we going to achieve it, in your estimation?
- [70:12]
B
That's a tough one, Haviv, because the Israeli society decides whether they continue and will are willing to pay the price. I think there's a heavy Price still to be paid to actually defeat Hamas democracies. The society decides that. Not the military, not the politicians, the society. And you know, the Knesset could reconvene soon. The society decides that. Am I optimistic for Israel? 100%. What Israel has achieved since October 7 is unthinkable. Much like it was, you know, after the Yom Kippur War and others. The ring of fire, Hezbollah status, the Lebanese army moving against Hezbollah. Syria, Iran is far from where they were at this point. The Abraham Accords upheld, maybe signing an agreement with Syria and Lebanon. I am very optimistic for Israel. Other people are saying that Israel is doing detrimental harm to its national security and continuing to not surrender to Hamas. I disagree holistically against that. I'm actually optimistic. But in the actual final things that need to be done, the taking of the sanctuaries from Hamas, the getting a day after plan, once that happens, I have apprehensions because it's not. It's very complex at that point for the society in whole.
- [71:36]
A
Thank you so much. I'll let a sentence from me. I don't want to blame you for it. Our government, if it had focused on an information provision to the Israeli population, would have more resilience among the Israelis to see it through. A great many. I mean, most of the protesters against the government are for a ceasefire deal, a permanent total ceasefire that ends the war. War brings back hostages. As many as are available as Hamas will let go, but ends the war. Most of those protesters in Israeli society say they don't trust. It's not that they don't want Hamas defeated. They don't trust the government to be doing that or to be able to do that or not to be politicking. I don't think Netanyahu is extending the war out of sheer politics, but I respect people who do come to that conclusion because I think that there has been the same information failure as well. There's just months without interviews. I mean, just months not explain to Israelis what's happening. So that again, is not your critique. That's my critique. Israelis do need to be shored up as well. One of the things we saw with Winston Churchill in World War II that Netanyahu likes to compare himself to, is that he constantly was telling the British what was happening to them. Even if we lose this, know that this is why we're fighting, the thing that we might lose. So thank you so much, John Spencer. You've cleared up a lot and I really appreciate you coming on. Once again, thank you, my friend.