When Hamas attacked Israel eight months ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel’s war goals were threefold: one, destroy Hamas; two, free all of the hostages; and three, ensure that Gaza can never threaten Israel again.
More than 250 days later, some 120 hostages remain in Hamas captivity, both dead and alive. Two Hamas battalions remain, consisting of somewhere between 9,000 and 12,000 fighters. More than 300 Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza and thousands wounded, 135,000 Israeli civilians are still displaced, and the war seems to have no end in sight.
Why? Israel is supposed to be the greatest military force in the Middle East. So why haven’t they achieved their war goals? Are their war goals even viable? And, can Israel win this war?
Here to help answer these questions today are Seth Frantzman and John Spencer.
Seth Frantzman is the senior Middle East correspondent and analyst at The Jerusalem Post. He has reported on the war against ISIS, several Gaza wars, and the conflict in Ukraine. And, he is an Adjunct Fellow at The Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He thinks Israel can and should win this war, but he thinks the past eight months have been dismal and that Israel is at risk of losing and losing disastrously.
John Spencer is a military expert who has served in the army for 25 years, including two combat tours in Iraq. He is now chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point and host of the Urban Warfare Project podcast. He was recently asked if the war was winnable for the IDF, and he said: one hundred percent. But he thinks it is contingent on a total defeat of Hamas.
Today, we discuss what has actually been accomplished by the IDF in the last eight months, why they haven’t achieved “total victory” yet and if that’s even possible, the fate of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, how the U.S. has restrained Israel and if that restraint has been good or bad for Israel, what hope there is for the remaining hostages, whether the idea of Hamas can be defeated, what a “day after” plan could look like, the war with Hezbollah heating up in the north, and, most importantly: why October 7 did not wake up the West.
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Very interesting and informative discussion. I listened twice. But I think, though, that your questions along with your guests' answers missed the central mark again and again essentially by identifying the war's agency of state actors rather than a much broader on the one side Western Liberal multi-pluralist civilisation and on the other 'intrastate' Islamic religious zealotry. A couple times you asked your guests to zoom out to encompass a broader picture but you hadn't zoomed out quite far enough.
By focussing on Israel's war with Iran's proxies in Hamas or Hezbollah or discussing Iran and its allied states, instead you've all three assumed wrongly that the Westphalian principles of statehood are, in fact, applicable in this expansive conflict. I suggest these are not, in that Islamic state entities such as Iran are merely continually being used by religious fundamentalist leaders to gain ground to fulfil a holy, not militarily strategic, mission. You can only win a war in which you know who you are fighting.
Your guests were correct in identifying the West and in particular the U.S. as the greater targets -- but today, not in some distant future. Instruments of Western Liberal multi-pluralist states such as the press and governments have been, in fact, deeply confounded by this Islamic fundamentalist strategy: the West (let's state explicitly: including the vast majority of Islam along with believers of all faiths and creeds) must endeavour to resist our institutions being co-opted by illiberal forces and thereby giving credence to voices of presumed 'resistance' and 'reason'. Fundamentalism of any kind cannot be reasoned with by definition.
There is no diplomatic compromise to be sought in this war of zealotry. From The River to the Sea is really only shorthand for From The River Around The World and Back to The River. This is the stated mission we in the West have to upset if our principles are to prevail. That the press and Western governments continue to insist publicly that Israel's war is its own full stop suggests that the fundamentalists have got us right where they want us.
Nonetheless, I remain optimistic, because I suspect 'right where they want us' isn't any checkmate. But we may lose our Queen and much more before this round of war-game is ended.
Another great podcast, Bari, and I thought your comments were most salient and need to shouted from the rooftops, i.e., this conflict, in all its theaters, is about defending “the West.” Israel, U.S., et al., with all their faults/flaws are the West. The savages are waging war to destroy us. The “argument” starts and stops there.