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Rabbi Ami Hirsch
Rabbi.
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John Spencer
I'm Rabbi Ami Hirsch of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York. And you're listening to in these Times.
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Host/Interviewer
John Spencer is the Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute, Co Director of the Urban Warfare Project, host of the Urban Warfare Project podcast, and a founding member of the International Working Group on Subterranean Warfare. He began his 25 year career in.
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John Spencer
The US army as a private, saw.
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Host/Interviewer
Two combat deployments in Iraq, and retired with the rank of Major. And he's a colonel in the California State Guard. John is one of the few people in the world who researches and studies urban and underground warfare. And he's taken four research trips to Israel and Gaza since October 7, making him uniquely qualified to help us understand the fighting that's been happening there.
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John Spencer
Major Colonel Professor John Spencer, welcome to in these Times.
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Rabbi Ami Hirsch
Well, thanks for having me.
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John Spencer
You're an urban warfare expert. Could you explain what that is? How do you become an urban warfare expert?
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Rabbi Ami Hirsch
You spend a lot of time studying urban warfare, to be frank. So I study what we call the full spectrum of military operations in urban areas. You know, villages, towns, cities, mega cities. I've been doing it academically for over a decade, so that's, you know, books and over 100 articles, research projects, field research around the world, either studying cities or operations that have happened in cities. So I specialize in studying urban warfare.
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John Spencer
And you also experienced urban warfare as well in your term of service in the military, is that right?
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Rabbi Ami Hirsch
That's right. I did. You know, of course, I was an infantry soldier for over 25 years preparing for urban warfare. But I had two combat deployments to Iraq and saw plenty of urban warfare, which, you know, every event is different, but it also kind of set the seats into me on how challenging it is. It is the most challenging, complex, hardest place you could ever ask in military to do operations from really disaster relief to you know, high intensity combat, as we call it. I have my own experiences. I try not to rely on my own experiences. I rely on the research of what has happened in history to include what's happening now. And that's a big part of my approach, for sure.
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John Spencer
How many urban warfare experts are there in the world and how, how many of them are, are, are out there?
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Rabbi Ami Hirsch
So I often say that in jest that I'm considered one of the world's leading experts because there's not many of us out there. So it's like by default, I actually, if there is somebody who has done significant work, I know of them or they're very close friends and we work together. There are in the United States, surprisingly not many. And there, there's a long list of reasons why even in Israel and other places you'll have professors of international relations, war studies, historians, all of that, but nobody who specializes in just the urban battles and attributes of war. I can count them on one hand and most of them are very close friends of mine who have done projects or continue to do research in this world of urban warfare.
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John Spencer
So when you get some responses and perhaps some critique on your work, are they considered experts like you are in urban warfare or do they presume expertise that they may not have?
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Rabbi Ami Hirsch
I try to take on the positions that the person is saying and not the person's actual expertise, to be honest, because I don't claim to know everything. I also have a lot of confidence in the research I've done. So when somebody comes to me with a critique on a statement I'm making or a position that I'm taking based on, on the ground research. So usually it's have you been to that place that you're talking about? And other one is like the history of urban warfare where I can argue with a, you know, a four star general, former secretary of defense from our world because I know they haven't done the research in urban warfare specifically. But I, you know, I don't want to be presumptuous to say that, you know, whoever is critiquing hasn't done the work I have done. But what is the body of knowledge and research and data sets and history that you're relying on to form your analysis? That's different than mine.
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John Spencer
You've become, especially since October 7th, but I think before as well, you're quite an observant student of the IDF and Israel's operations. Was there something beyond academic interest that drew you to Israel and the Israel Defense Forces?
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Rabbi Ami Hirsch
No, I mean, I think originally it started with an academic interest and I, and like you said, I've been studying them for years because I study urban warfare and I study underground warfare. So tunnels and there's, there's probably not any place on the earth that faces or has prepared or has conducted as much urban and underground warfare as the idf. And I've been going and writing case studies on everything from the 1967 Battle of Jerusalem, actually before that from, you know, the ancient Battle of Jerusalem when King David went, you know, through the water tunnel to capture the city of Jerusalem, to, you know, the battle of Suez city during the Yom Kippur War, all of these things. But there's no Escaping that. It's a very special place in the world. I don't think you'll find any where that's more special to more people. But it started, of course, with the academic warfare studies part of it. But I have lots of friends in the IDF on top of that, you know, from just my engagements and people who have welcomed me every time I've gone. And I usually get the question of why I've been so Vocal know since October 7th. There's a lot of individual, moral, ethical character attributes of that. But also I knew a lot of people that were in southern Israel on that day and faced all those horrors that occurred on that day.
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John Spencer
So if I can ask you about the fighting in Gaza that was launched as a result of October 7th, before we get to the moral ramifications where you have very strong opinions, just tell us about the landscape itself. What was Israel facing on the eve of Saturday night, October 7th, that is at the end of the first day, what were they facing in Gaza?
- [07:14]
Rabbi Ami Hirsch
So by the end of the first day, they're still basically dealing with the military invasion that happened of southern Israel and fighting back and securing Israeli land, that the scorched earth strategy that Hamas and the thousands of Palestinians, civilians or Gazans that crossed the border. From a military context though, because on October 8, one Hezbollah attacked northern Israel, but Israel, in accordance with all international law, declared war after being attacked on Hamas, the governing authority and military of Gaza. That's a really important part of this, is what is the context of the war? The context of this war is that Israel was invading. On October 7, the Israeli government, sovereign nation, declared war against Hamas in accordance with Article 51 of the United Nations Charter for Self defense. I set three goals that haven't changed. Returned the hostages, the over 250 hostages, remove Hamas from military and political power in the Gaza Strip and basically secure Israel's borders. So, you know, no threat comes from Gaza ever again. That's the political context that drives all wars. From the military lens, the IDF based in the Gaza Strip, if you've never been there, it is a small geographic area, 25 miles long, 5 to 7 miles wide. For the IDF, though, in facing and achieving those political goals, the IDF faced an urban warfare scenario that no military has faced in history, let alone modern history. You had this, you know, Hamas, the government authority in Gaza, with a military ranging from, you know, the estimates are 30 to 50,000 militants, which is a very large force to be facing in war, especially in urban battles. And that's again where the context of Comparison comes into it, there's 24 cities in Gaza, there's 10 cities, over a hundred thousand. Gaza City itself is over 600,000 people. The population in that small area is 2.2 million. The Hamas military, which is the primary goal, to remove the political power and its military and its will to fight that 50,000 military force, had 24 battalions set across the Gaza Strip with assigned geographic areas, brigade commanders, battalion commanders, company commanders. It had uniquely roughly 20,000 rockets and then all other armaments of a military that you would expect, from anti tank guided munitions to bombs, to rifles and machine guns. Unique to Gaza though, is the preparation that Hamas had turned the environment into. Hamas had over 400 miles of tunnels underneath the Gaza Strip, ranging from just underneath the buildings to over 200ft underground where no military bomb can reach. And those tunnels were military only tunnels, which is unique as well, because I had just gotten back from four trips into Ukraine, analyzing the Ukraine, Russian war, where in all the cities of Ukraine there is underground networks where the civilians saw refuge, especially in the beginning of the war. So you had this 400 miles of tunnels built underneath the Gaza cities for the sole purpose of using what's called a human shield strategy, where a, you know, basically somebody who doesn't follow the law of war will use the protected populations, which is non combatants, and the protection sites, the hospitals, the schools, the mosques, the UN facilities and basically hide military capabilities in them or under them. Also something that nobody has faced. Hamas uses a human sacrifice strategy where Hamas, both the political and the military organization say and act to get as much of their population killed as possible. And this has been something I've tried to explain to people from a military analysis perspective. That's something unique. That human sacrifice strategy wasn't deployed by the Nazis, the Japanese, isis, Al Qaeda, name your terrorists. Usually they're trying to kill, you know, civilians, but they're not saying we need to sacrifice and even sometimes kill our own civilians to achieve our political goal, which for Hamas has always been the destruction of Israel and the death of all Jews. Lastly, ami, from a military context, most urban centric battles of history are meeting engagements where, you know, two militaries will meet in the urban environment. It's like the greatest, one of the greatest urban battles of history is the battle of Stalingrad during World War II. And two massive militaries of over a million men meet in the urban area. This war, the IDF, for entering an enemy territory who had prepared for 20 years for that battle. So that every aspect of the urban environment to include building the urban environment was designed for their strategy of war, which is to use their civilians to create this international condemnation so Israel will be stopped in retaliating after being attacked. All those variables are very unique to what the IDF faced in this highly contested urban environment, where the goal is clear, that nobody disagreed with a goal, but they had all these different ideals on how the IDF could achieve those goals under those very historical, military, contextual variables.
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John Spencer
Are you saying that as part of the war aim of Hamas, they wanted Palestinians, their own people, to be killed and to suffer and to be bombed, even in these very difficult urban conflicts? Have you ever encountered a force that. It's one thing to say, okay, we're kind of callous about the suffering of our own people, but that actively wanted the suffering of their own people, the killing of their own people, the bombing of their own people in order to further their war aims?
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Rabbi Ami Hirsch
No, one, I've never seen that. And two, I'm not saying that Hamas is saying that Hamas's leaders, and this is a weird war where nobody listens to what the other side says. They have said in public statements, in press conferences, we need the death of our men. Women and children are elderly. We need them to achieve this greater political goal. That's their strategy, and then they act that way. Have I seen other militaries like ISIS use civilians for shielding themselves? Yes, but even those, all those other evil things that have popped up, none of them have used this strategy. And one of the examples I give is that all 2 million of the Gazan civilians could fit in Hamas's tunnels with ease. But there's not one recorded event where a single civilian is allowed in Hamas's tunnel. And on top of that, Hamas is again publicly said, these tunnels are not for the civilians. That's the UN's problem. The civilians, it's almost like they disassociate themselves from themselves. The tunnels are for us, for our military to achieve our political goal, which is really important. So I'm not saying it. They're saying it and all evidence shows that they're acting that way to include shooting their own civilians, preventing their civilians from fleeing from combat areas. It's just absolutely unique to this war.
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John Spencer
So there's something insidiously, uniquely evil about this. I don't like comparisons. I never like comparisons to Germans or Nazis, you know, but there's something, there's some dimension of this Hamas perspective that is uniquely evil. Worse than isis. The Nazis, you know, they. They didn't purposely sacrifice their own people as a war aim. Is that Right. Am I understanding this?
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Rabbi Ami Hirsch
That's right. I mean, and I'm sure, and we can talk about it, all of these people were, were absolutely willing to lose civilians in the pursuit of their goals, but none of them put forth. Their primary strategy is the death of their civilians to win the political objective, which is this, you know, international condemnation, the abandonment of Israel, the seclusion of Israel, and the ultimate forcing Israel to stop before they achieve their goal. It's historic. It really is.
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John Spencer
So two questions. One, how do you fight such an enemy? And two, how do you assess their degree of success? They, they did successfully turn much of the world against Israel.
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Rabbi Ami Hirsch
This is where I've, I've really been vocal as well, because I think this has a lot of meaning for the future of war. How do you defeat an enemy who does that? One very carefully, following the laws of war and your own moral ethical code of despite what the enemy is doing, you still target the enemy's military capabilities, its military, even when it's trying to sacrifice its civilians. You do everything that is known to man to protect even its civilians while using strategies which are proven to defeat an enemy. And by defeat, I don't care about his ideology. During the war, the goal is to remove their will to believe that they can win. But we've kind of gotten a mix up in our modern societies of what war's goals are. War is the pursuit of political goals. It's a battle of wills to defeat the other side's belief that they will maintain power. And that's why the goals for Israel were very important to, to keep in the forefront of what is the goal here? It's removing Hamas's military capabilities and remove Hamas as the governing power of a region. Now where people get mixed up into that is they start thinking about, okay, but how are you protecting civilians? And you have to have that end goal. We have a heuristic in what we've lived through. So a lot of people have lived through counterterrorism and counterinsurgency campaigns where the, you know, the support of the population is very important to you. Achieving your goal, which is to separate the insurgent or the terrorist from his population so that another government or another power can exist. In a war like this, the goal is to defeat the enemy. How do you do it while they're trying to sacrifice their civilians is you target the military capabilities and you make really hard decisions along the way.
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John Spencer
And how do you think Israel did?
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Rabbi Ami Hirsch
I think Israel has done exceptionally well in destroying Hamas's military capabilities. It's gone While doing more than any military in the history of war, as in more measures, more steps to protect civilians, even with Hamas's strategy than other militaries who have never faced this context of the terrain, the tunnels, the enemy, all of these things. I think Israel has done exceptionally well and there will be a lot of lessons for the future of war so that, you know, another Gaza is not created.
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John Spencer
Well, what do you think? What is the American military's perspective on the IDF generally, but in particular the post October 7th hostilities? Do they respect the IDF? Do they admire the IDF? Did they learn valuable lessons from the past 16 months?
- [19:46]
Rabbi Ami Hirsch
Absolutely. Everybody I've ever interacted with that is a member of any military agrees, like, of course they're doing everything they can. And what they've been able to achieve is significant in dealing with the challenges that I've been writing about for years. Right. How the defender has the advantage, how the underground is a nightmare. Absolutely. There are lots of lessons, just like there are lots of lessons after many of Israel's wars when Israel does the unthinkable. And the one example I give people is that after the Yom Kippur War, the US military sent lots of people over to study, like, how did Israel survive the Yom Kippur War? How did they do it? We commissioned 27 different studies that fundamentally changed the way the US military fights. The equipment that we had the. That led into the first Gulf War for us. I was just in Israel in December at a lessons learned conference that IDF was having. The relationship between the US military and the idf, it goes back very, very far. Absolutely a lot of respect between the two militaries since there's so many similarities to our professional, ethical, moral, militaries. But also the challenges that are faced. The IDF face, challenges that the US military has. You know, Israel sent bulldozers during the Battle of Fallujah because the Israeli bulldozer is very unique to many of the defensive properties that an enemy can get if they get into the urban terrain first. So lots of lessons. I'm trying to record many of them. Right. I written a really big, for me piece on how Israel dealt with the tunnels, which was an extreme challenge that no modern military has ever faced. This aspect of where the underground is more important to the enemy than the surface and clue it to its population. The tunnels was where Hamas was, it was where the hostages was. It was the primary strategy to delay the idea, to create this international condemnation. But there's lots of lessons here too, Rabbi, about what the world sees in a war and then how they, they basically come to their conclusions on what they can see without expertise. They don't care what John Spencer says. They just see the videos and the footage and the death and destruction that is it is war. And then they make inferences to say they don't have the time, the care to research themselves. They just make inferences that somebody is doing something wrong. That's really important as well for a lesson on this narrative, this information warfare this quarter. Public opinion has always mattered in war, but now we live in a different world. And this also revealed a lot of anti Semitism, to be honest. And I don't have any other way to explain it as a objective analyst of war. When I say that, like this civilian to combatant ratio that I'm sure you've heard of, nobody was asked, nobody's ever asked out of any other military during a battle, go, yeah, but what's your civilian to combatant ratio? Because that's not the way the law work. That's a Israeli question that I don't want to go forward because it's not the way that war works. It's the question is what are you doing to protect civilians? And then I can list out, you know, the 20 things that Israel does to protect civilians and not the civilian to combatant ratio where you take the enemy that is actually killing their own civilians, we shouldn't be using their number. And it's, there's, there's lots of lessons. Absolutely.
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John Spencer
I want to press you on that for a moment. Maybe you can give us some insight. It's pretty remarkable, isn't it, that you have this such a uniquely evil group of people who invaded a sovereign country. The war took place that first day. It was on the Israeli side of the border, it wasn't on the Gaza side. Part of their war aim is that as many Palestinians be killed as possible in order to swing Western opinion against Israel. And they represent so much contrary to what the west represents in terms of values and egalitarianism and equality and feminism and so on and so forth. And you have a military here who's, which is representing a democracy that is trying its best to avoid civilian casualties. And it's not only public opinion, it's also major international institutions, NGOs, governments, international courts of justice that have not only condemned Israel, but accuse Israel of genocide and hold its leaders to work arms prosecution. Again, I want to ask you, how do you explain that? You mentioned anti Semitism. Perhaps that's, that's it. Or that's a big part of it or how do you explain all of this?
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Rabbi Ami Hirsch
I can't explain it because I'm the one trying to fight for the truth from a war perspective. There is an anti war crowd. They think that if they demand the sea state, you know, the stop of it all wars, there'll be, there'll just not be any killing and we can figure out some other way. Despite. I do firmly believe, even from an objective point of view, that there is evil in this world and there are people with evil intentions that rise up and gain power. And I find it really hard after watching the October 7th video and as somebody who has seen a lot of evil in the world, that that's a very unique type of evil. But people somehow can't separate that to the framework of war where you're protecting civilians, you're targeting only military targets, and they don't care. They just want to take the, the, the evil that was done on October 7 and relate it to the actual execution of a just war fought justly. There's the anti war crowd, there's the anti trust crowd. Like, don't believe anything that anybody says. Just judge it from what your eyes can see only, right? So this is where, you know, I thought like, well, if we're going to believe everything that Hamas says, which is a, you know, internationally designated terrorist organization who shouldn't be listening to them at all, well, then we should at least listen to this democratic sovereign nation, you know, every. We should listen to what they're saying as well. Their information, their numbers, everything. And there are so many really problematic things that have been said, like the genocide claim, like the starvation claim, like the, you know, bombing claims that are all counterfactual. You know, I actually was on a podcast with Jordan Peterson where we were discussing, like, here's what I've seen on the ground, here's what facts we actually know and the evidence. And he basically said, now what's your evidence that evidence convinces anybody of anything? This is emotion, right? This is what Hamas has tried to invoke. Just the emotion, not critical thinking, not evidence, not the framework of war, not a shared understanding. They just want the emotion.
- [27:19]
John Spencer
It's pretty depressing, don't you think? I mean, if Hamas, who are obviously a group of highly intelligent people who strategize and they have a plan, part of the plan was to take advantage of the weakness of the west and its inability to distinguish between terrorism and self defense. It's very disconcerting. And even at the highest levels of the Western intellectual world, you're an Academic. It seems like the more degrees people have, the less they're able to distinguish between basic morality.
- [27:58]
Rabbi Ami Hirsch
I agree. And it is. I don't let it get me down because I still believe that the truth matters. I still believe in critical thinking. I still believe in, you know, evidence based research strategies. But when I try to answer like, why have you published 33 different articles since October 7th about every aspect of the war? You can, or, you know, been so vocal, Because I believe that this is about more than just Israel. This is about Western society. This is about intellectual thought. This is about every, you know, there's so many, you know, from our, you know, academic institutions creating the dumbest people on the planet who are actually protesting in support of this evil that we're talking about. And they have twisted reality so much so that they believe Hamas are the oppressed and Israel is the oppressor. But I still believe that, and as a, as a father, that it's important to fight for values, for good, for all of these things. My tools are trying to get people to understand the framework of war. Unfortunately, and I believe this as well, is that only the dead have seen the end of war. But in some of these smart circles, people think that they can, we can have this peace dividend and that all war can go away. I would love that. But there are evil people who have narcissistic intentions or even grander evil that are sometimes backed by religion, sometimes they're not. I mean, the, the reasons that people go to war haven't changed since ancient time. Fear, pride and interest. I believe in what we call the global international order has reduced wars. And this is what we wanted, right? We wanted, after World War II, we wanted no more world wars. But a lot of these problematic thinkings have led us into greater suffering. When things happen like the invasion of Israel on October 7, and they're like, yeah, but no, there's no. There's no. Yeah, but there is. There's. The reason you have a military is to defend your sovereign nation. We all want our children to have a better life than we did. We all want to not see innocents suffer. But the problem is we're listening to people that don't have that. That's Hamas. They don't have those shared human values. So it's really hard to have a shared conversation when we don't have those shared human values. And there is this group that have radicalized themselves to not having that shared value. And it's really hard to fight against that. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't, because if you don't, then it only grows.
- [30:49]
John Spencer
Are you worried that terrorists around the world are learning a lesson that taking hostages actually pays off? One, Israel fought a different type of war because there were hostages in Gaza than eventually what they fought in Lebanon because there were no hostages in Lebanon. And secondly, in terms of the numbers of terrorists that are being released by Israel, some of them with lots of blood on their hands, are you worried that people around the world are looking at this and are concluding, well, it actually pays off to take hostages?
- [31:27]
Rabbi Ami Hirsch
I mean, that's just fact, right? I mean, where the motto of we don't negotiate with terrorists wasn't like some thing of pride, it was after a rise in airline hijacking and taking up hostages that it, you can't reward the practice or you're encouraging it to continue. So absolutely. That is one of the many worries of responding to October 7, is that the price that Israel is willing to pay has increased over time. Forget the Gilad Shalit one IDF soldier where Israel exchanged a thousand prisoners to include Yahya Sinwar, the architect, you know, of October 7th. It has, absolutely. This is teaching terrorists of the world that it's highly lucrative to take hostages unless you put a stop to it. But there are many other concerns I have as an analyst of war to Gaza, like the fact that it wasn't just a hostage taking, but Hamas created everything from the using every hospital for a military purpose, the schools, the mosque, the UN facilities, like it's all creating a standard. And if there is value to, if you don't follow the laws of war and you're rewarded through this international condemnation, like, okay, you can't touch a hospital no matter what the enemy is doing to it. You get to more people, more terrorists, putting civilians, putting protected sites in danger because they get an advantage out of it. But one thing you said that's important is, you know, looking in a short amount of time at the difference between Hamas and Gaza and fighting Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. One of the variables that we didn't talk about is just the fact that the civilians able to get out of harm's way in a war unique to Gaza because of Egypt. Egypt said, look, I don't care what the international norm is. I will not allow people to leave the combat area into my territory. Nobody. They'll close the gate despite signing like African refugee pact saying that they would always do. It's, it's very abnormal for civilians not to be able to get out of harm's way during a war, especially if time is given. But in Gaza's case, because Egypt said not one will leave into the Sinai. When you see the war finally start against Hezbollah after a year of kind of this liberal idea of just negotiate with them and they'll stop sending rockets into Israel. Israel did the same thing it did in Gaza, which is announce civilians please get out of harm's way in these areas. The civilians left. Nobody's talking about the civilian casualty rate in the war against Hezbollah. And Hezbollah didn't build an entire world underneath the civilian populations, although it did use human shields and built, you know, rockets into civilian homes to disguise them. It didn't build 400 miles of tunnels underneath the civilians to sacrifice the civilians to achieve their goals in just that short amount of geography. And I'm sure you've been there, you know, that three hour drive difference to people's ability to understand the variables in the war that are so unique to Hamas, that wasn't present when Israel fought Hezbollah.
- [35:00]
John Spencer
Just from a military perspective, were you impressed with the IDF campaign against Hezbollah?
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Rabbi Ami Hirsch
Absolutely. And, and because I've focused so much on Gaza, it's been underreported again in this kind of court of public opinion. But what Israel was able to do to Hezbollah in a matter of a few weeks is historic, is highly discriminate. It's unparalleled from the pager operation to the complete eradication of a terrorist army for Israel within two weeks to completely eradicate, as in kill the entire leadership structure of a terrorist army. It's unparalleled in the history of war and absolutely impressive the political goal of war, which is to re establish deterrence and so that Hezbollah stops attacking Israel and Israel can repopulate its entire northern part of its country. The ability for Israel to do that in a matter of weeks, which led into the eradication of the Islamic regime in Iran, which is the head of all this, its influence in the region, its ring of fire itself, the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, all highly impressive from a military analytical perspective that will also be written about into the future.
- [36:33]
John Spencer
Of course, my last question about the Middle east is, do you remember where you were on October 7th and were you surprised at the success, the initial success of Hamas?
- [36:47]
Rabbi Ami Hirsch
So yeah, I was sitting at home and watching it on, on, on tv, seeing it explode on social media, finding it difficult to understand what was happening. Like everybody else, somebody who studied massive attacks from like the Mumbai 2008 terrorist attack still was hard to understand it and yes, very surprised at what the Hamas and Gazan civilians that crossed the border with Hamas were able to do. I still couldn't understand it until I actually got to Israel in December and looked at the scale and the scope and the planning as a military analyst, the planning that Hamas went into the overall attack, how it executed it.
- [37:36]
John Spencer
How do you explain that this military that you just described decimated and dismantled a terrorist army, that those were the people that everybody was afraid of in Israel? Not so much Hamas, it was Hezbollah, this major power that could wreak havoc on Israel. Thousands of people would die. They had tunnels going into the northern settlements. That's what people were worried about. And this military that had. That did something that no other military could have done, even conceived of doing with pager attacks and so on, that completely dismantled this terrorist army weeks. How do you explain the utter collapse on October 7th?
- [38:19]
Rabbi Ami Hirsch
So there are two stories that have yet to been told that really aren't my stories to tell, but they had to be told. One is what happened on October 7th. I know more personally about, from four research trips into Israel and into Gaza than most people know to include those in Israel, about what happened at every individual site from the Soro police station to the battle at the Black Arrow to all the kibbutzium. Truly understanding what happened on that day is really important. And then the other story is, well, how did it happen? What are all the contributing factors that allowed, from the national strategic level to the, you know, putting Hamas in a box, thinking that they were contained, that all the active defense of the Iron Dome and other technologies was enough to contain them, that they weren't pursuing their war goals, that, you know, of the hierarchy of threats to Israel's security, the top of it was Iran, then Hezbollah, and then maybe Hamas. But there, you know, from the Jericho plan that they had 18 months out to the, you know, the, the intelligence reports happening right before it. The hubris of shrinking militaries, believing in technologies is the better investment. There are lots of contributing factors to how Hamas was able to pull off this attack and have the successes, although they. They had greater goals. They had maps to Jerusalem, they had maps to Tel Aviv and other sites. And the only reason that they didn't succeed was because of Israelis standing in the door rushing to stop it. But that story of how did October 7 happen? It has to be told because there's no preventing it ever again. October 7th should have changed everything. Just like 911 changed everything with the US national security. From the way we look at intelligence, collect intelligence, decide on intelligence, to our military capabilities, all of that, if you don't tell the story of why October 7th happened, it's really hard to ensure it can never happen again.
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John Spencer
So I suppose that means it's really important to establish these commissions of investigation both on the political level and as well as the military level.
- [40:55]
Rabbi Ami Hirsch
Absolutely. And the more independent those commissions are, the better.
- [41:00]
John Spencer
With that, Major Colonel Professor John Spencer, I want to thank you very much for taking this time and also on behalf of the American Jewish community and the Jewish people around the world. Thank you very much for standing up.
- [41:14]
Host/Interviewer
For the truth and for right and.
- [41:16]
John Spencer
For doing it in a courageous way.
- [41:19]
Rabbi Ami Hirsch
Thanks for having me.
- [41:25]
Host/Interviewer
John Spencer speaks such common sense that it's baffling and frankly depressing that so many around the world take exception to the basic realities he conveys. October 7th changed everything for Israel and the Jewish people. What was will never again be. The massacres of that day revealed to Israelis, Jews and all fair minded people that genocidal forces seeking the destruction of Israel and the extermination of Jews are arrayed a mile away from Jewish villages. The only reason that 1200 Israelis were slaughtered on that day and not 12,000 or 120,000, was not because of intent, but capacity. As John mentioned, Hamas had maps to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. They were going to continue to murder, rape and kidnap for as long as they could. It was the IDF and heroic civilians that brought the killing to an end. Otherwise Hamas would have continued the rampage, killing every last Israeli they could find. It's not speculation, just listen to what they themselves say. Judaism despises war. We have always maintained that there will come a day of peace when nations will know war no more, when the lion shall lie down with the lamb and all will be tranquil. Overwhelmingly, in Judaism, our heroes were scholars, teachers, philosophers and poets, not military figures. Who is a hero? Asked the sages. One who turns an enemy into a friend. But we are not pacifists. Turning the other cheek might sound good if it is someone else's cheek, but Judaism never embraced that philosophy. There are occasions, and Judaism discusses these at great length, when the refusal to use force is not only unwise, but immoral. While each life is precious in the sight of God, my life is no less valuable than the one who seeks to destroy me. And therefore Judaism teaches that if a neighbor arises to kill you, you must arise earlier to thwart him. That was the monumental collapse of October 7th. The IDF did not preemptively thwart the attack. Unfounded and arrogant military and political assumptions blinded Israel to what would unfold at 6:29am on October 7, if only there were helicopters in the sky and tanks arrayed on the border. One of the central lessons of Jewish existence is that powerlessness leads to catastrophe. It was among the key catalysts of the modern Zionist movement. Powerlessness leads to more abuse, not less. It leads the strong to savage the weak. That was Putin's assumption when he attacked Ukraine. He thought it would all be over quickly. He invaded because he thought he could do so easily. The sad reality of the human condition, and such as our world is now, is that wicked villains like Hamas must be countered with force. For Israelis, the only way to stay alive in the Middle east is to be stronger than those seeking to destroy Israel. I wish it were not the case. As a rabbi, I am devoted to Judaism's central message of peace. I wish that Israel's neighbors were Western peace loving folks. Perhaps one day they will be, but alas, it is not. Today it is important to reiterate the basic truth that John Spencer conveyed. Civilian casualties is the Hamas strategy. This is a unique and diabolical evil. Nothing like this has ever happened before in the history of warfare. No doubt countries have taken risks with their own civilians and were callous about their well being. But never has a nation faced a foe like Hamas whose entire war strategy is to cause the death and suffering of their own people. Hamas itself says so. We need the death of our men, women and children to achieve our greater political goal. Militaries have used human shields before, but never like this. As John mentioned, all 2 million Gazans could have sheltered in those Hamas tunnels that were more extensive than the London Underground. Not even one civilian was allowed in. They are for us, Hamas clarified. You, the population. You are the UN's problem. They shot their own people who tried to flee. They hoarded food and other supplies for themselves. Millions of refugees fled Middle east wars in the past decade. Why didn't Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, all those brothers who shed crocodile tears for Palestinians? Why didn't they open their gates? Why weren't Gazans allowed to flee, as is the norm in military conflict? And what does it say about us, the west, that so many support Hamas? It is a kind of moral bankruptcy that threatens our very future. I believe in the west and Western values. I hope with all my heart that we are not in an irreversible decline as so many contend. Either way, history will record the collapse of morality in our era and will point to the inability of so many in the west to to distinguish between good and evil, freedom fighting and terrorism, savagery and self defense. This is why October 7th is not only Israel's war, it is a war for the future of Western decency and morality. I reflected on this moral collapse while viewing the return of the bodies of 4 year old Ariel and 9 month old Kfir Bibas. Last month, Israeli forensic scientists determined that they were murdered in cold blood. In a ghoulish and unimaginably cruel spectacle, Hamas transferred their remains from Gaza in the presence of cheering, exuberant crowds. This is not freedom fighting. It is sheer evil, homicidal, demonic and difficult to conceive how such cruelty is even possible. It infects much of Palestinian society. Of course there are many good and moral people in the Palestinian community. But the sad and unavoidable truth is that Hamas represents Palestinians and Palestinianism. They are by far the most popular group in Palestinian society. Until that culture is de radicalized, there is no hope for peace and no hope for Palestinian society itself. That should be the task of the west and the United nations moving forward. Stop encouraging and funding Palestinian extremism. October 7th was devastating for Israel, but also revealed the moral rot in Western civilization. As John said, academic institutions are creating the dumbest people on the planet, at least on a moral basis. We have allowed radical, illiberal, immoral ideologies into our most cherished institutions and they are infecting the minds of young Americans, including astonishingly and distressingly, some young American Jews. I still believe the truth matters. John told me, so do I and so should you. To all right minded truth loving people, stay the course and continue the struggle. It is the only way to preserve our way of life. The result of centuries of good people striving towards the light. Until next time. This is in these times.