By Carl Zebrowski
Editor

The rules that the rest of the world operates by don’t always apply to Israel. 

Israel was attacked by Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023, and they took hostages back to Gaza, yet after Israel responded, international focus turned quickly from Hamas’s atrocities to pressuring Israel to halt its military operations. “Only Israel is not allowed to win wars,” retired U.S. Army Major John Spencer told the audience for his “Focus on Israel” discussion in the JCC on January 12.

By this time, Israel was in the process of winning its war with Gaza, despite a plethora of challenges. So many of Israel’s challenges start right there—with not being permitted to win—the world’s leading expert on urban warfare told those attending the Jewish Federation of the Lehigh Valley event. Israel gets attacked, as it regularly has throughout its history, and when it responds, there’s global pushback. No other country in history has faced the sort of constraints Israel has, Spencer said. “It basically got to the point where anybody could shoot anything at Israel and nobody would do anything about it.”

Nobody but Israel, that is. Given little choice under the circumstances, Israel ventured headlong into the military and political quagmire that is the Gaza Strip. An extremely difficult urban battlefield, Gaza features 24 densely populated cities and a complex network of underground tunnels winding in every direction to hide and protect terrorists, their movements, and their weaponry. “There are more tunnels than roads,” Spencer said. “There’s nothing that compares to Gaza.” 

And Hamas terrorists were ready and waiting for trouble—the trouble they provoked on October 7. “Gaza has been preparing for war for years,” Spencer said. “There’s never been a military that’s faced what the Isreal Defense Forces faced in Gaza, 40,000 prepared fighters.”

International pressure heaped right on top of that, compounded by lies and misinformation that spread like wildfire through the internet and social media and traditional news outlets alike. “This will probably go down as the greatest war in the history of lies,” Spencer said.

All that false information, whatever its source and the intent behind it, creates a cloud of confusion that all but ensures that large swaths of the global population won’t really grasp what’s been happening. Ignorance of the history of Israel’s land and its people and the prevalence of antisemitism only make matters worse.

The Gaza casualty numbers, for one, have continued to cast a negative light on Israel’s military operations. “Why is the world running a ticker of how many people have died?” Spencer wondered, pointing out that the continuous updating is unparalleled in history. 

That would be bad enough if those counts were real. But no. “It’s a lie,” Spencer said, questioning the stats and the source, the Gaza Health Ministry—aka Hamas. “There is no number.”

He said no country has ever gone to such great lengths to protect civilians. “There’s never been a military that stops the war during a battle and evacuates people and feeds the people,” he explained. In 2024, as health officials were fearing a polio outbreak, “Israel stopped the war and vaccinated the entire population.”

Israel’s operations in Gaza have now reached a transitional phase with work to make the whole strip safe to inhabit as the evacuated population returns to its homes and a functional governing body gets established. The first step is to fully disarm the Hamas terrorists. “As long as Hamas has the guns, Hamas rules,” Spencer said. 

The tunnel network also has to go—and tunnels are almost everywhere, needing to be found first and then destroyed. “How do you know there’s a tunnel underneath you?” Spencer asked. “The only way to know is to drill a hole all the way down to the water table and put a camera down there.”

Next, the heavy equipment comes in to clear the land. Spencer said that one thing he learned from the IDF is “the primacy of the bulldozer.” “They’ve learned to lead with a bulldozer.” Tunnels are crushed and filled in. “Put in a parking lot,” Spencer said. “It’s my strong position that you need to destroy every tunnel in Gaza or it will never work.”

Though much remains to be done, much has been accomplished. “Of all the threats that were very large,” he continued, “Israel has dismantled them.” 

The next step will be to establish the governing body and start stamping out the destructive influence that Hamas propaganda has had on the people of Gaza. Israel needs to focus on reeducating the younger generation that hasn’t yet been thoroughly indoctrinated by Hamas. “It’s really important starting with the schooling, elementary and all that,” Spencer said. “Get all new books.”

Israel’s mission in Gaza is one for the long haul. “The world is fascinated with short wars,” he said, “but, really, in history, there’s no such thing.” Complicated problems take a long time to resolve. Entrenched beliefs take a long time to change.

For the best hope of long-term success, the United States will need to remain close to Israel, as it always has. Israel’s defense depends on its number one ally providing weaponry and various other types of support. 

The discussion then came around to Iran, attacked by both the United States and Israel in recent months. With the IDF having largely destroyed Hamas as well as the leadership of the Hezbollah terrorist organization in neighboring Lebanon, the spotlight settles to Iran, the money behind both of those proxy militias. Its own future remains very much up in the air. “Iran may fall any day now,” Spencer told the audience. 

He also assured those in attendance that the long-range outlook for Israel looked good. “Israel has fought through the fire and now will come out of it like a phoenix,” he said.