John Spencer
Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Madison Policy Forum
John Spencer is an award-winning scholar, professor, author, combat veteran, national security and military analyst, and internationally recognised expert and advisor on urban warfare, military strategy, tactics, and other related topics. Considered one of the world’s leading experts on urban warfare, he served as an advisor to the top four-star general and other senior leaders in the U.S. Army as part of strategic research groups for the Pentagon.
His research focuses on military operations in dense urban areas, megacities, urban and subterranean warfare and includes cutting-edge field research into ongoing or recently concluded wars and battles from Nagorno-Karabakh, Ukraine, Israel, to Gaza.
Tomorrow he will be joining us remotely to discuss the ground war in Gaza, urban warfare more generally and why he thinks that the IDF would be wrong to withdraw from the region now.
Comment your questions for Francis and Konstantin to ask John at the end of the interview.
France attempted to prevent Israeli companies from exhibiting at two major arms exhibitions in Paris while other countries with real human rights violations continue to receive global acceptance : have you been surprised by the depth of antisemitism that has resulted in Israel not only being penalised for trying to defend itself against their surrounding enemies who’ve publicly declared that they intend to destroy Israel & to kill all jews? But how globally, people now feel that it’s open season to attack Jews & Israelis because they want to believe the propaganda?
Despite Israel's best efforts to avoid civilian casualties it is still being accused widely of genocide. What impact do you believe this war will have on the public's view of future wars and what impact will it have on the strategy employed by the militarily weaker side? In other words, should we expect other groups in the future to adopt Hamas' strategy of using their citizens as human shields? Alternatively, is this a situation where only Israel/Jews will be held to such impossible standards of warfare?