'Hamas is the genocidal entity': Warfare experts on what the world is getting wrong on Gaza
Former soldiers Richard Kemp and John Spencer are among the world’s leading experts on urban warfare. Kemp, a retired colonel who commanded a British infantry battalion, and Spencer, a retired U.S. major who serves as the chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute, spoke to Postmedia’s Brian Lilley for the Full Comment podcast ahead of the second anniversary of the October 7 attacks.
They discuss the groundbreaking lengths the Israel Defence Forces go to mitigate harm in Gaza, and wholeheartedly reject claims against Israel by Prime Minister Mark Carney and his confederates in the United Kingdom, France and Australia who last month recognized a Palestinian state. The West, Kemp and Spencer say, has “blood on its hands.”
Below are some edited highlights of their conversation:
Brian Lilley: Well, gentlemen, let me start with the simple question (on) the issue of genocide. This claim is being used over and over again to vilify Israel. You’ve both been there. What are your thoughts on genocide?
Richard Kemp: I’ll let John speak more about the accusations of genocide against Israel. What I would say is that the accusations of genocide should be levelled against Hamas. Hamas is the genocidal entity in this particular conflict. They have, by the definition of their charter, which requires them to kill not just the Jews in Israel but Jews everywhere. By that definition, they are genocidal terrorists.
By their actions on the 7th of October, which itself was an act of genocide, by their words since the 7th of October, in which they promised to repeat the 7th of October again and again and again, those are genocidal words. Now, they’re not going to succeed in their genocide, but they certainly will have the best possible try they can. And the accusation against Israel is simply an obscenity. I’ll let John speak perhaps more about that.
John Spencer: I don’t mind as much the useful idiots, the sheer ignorance of the man or woman on the street wearing a Hamas headband and advocating for Hamas. But I do mind when governments join the bandwagon. Even if you don’t go to Gaza like Richard and I have multiple times, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to say, OK, what’s the accusation? Because there is no evidence (or) information that you’re using to wage this libel against Israel, like genocidal specific intent.
And then the evidence if they can’t prove intent is the numbers, whether it’s the starvation claim, which is false, and they want to rule out everything Israel has done to feed the enemy’s population, to vaccinate everybody in Gaza. All of the information is an assault on critical thinking.
Lilley: Both of you are veterans of war. Have you ever fought in a war where you had to feed your enemy, provide them clean drinking water and electricity? Because I don’t think a lot of people know that, that Israel has been providing the power and the water and then the food and then told, well, you’re not giving them enough food. You’re committing genocide. I don’t know how you commit genocide against a people that you were feeding and watering.
Kemp: I think the Israelis have been facilitating, sometimes by direct assistance, significantly more humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip than is required by the population of the Gaza Strip, significantly more. In my knowledge and my experience, this is the first time in history that any army has facilitated the delivery of aid to the enemy population at the same time as they’re fighting that enemy.
Lilley: Normally, you lay siege to a place. You cut off the access to food and water as a way to try and get them to surrender. Here, they’re actively delivering more aid than the UN will pick up at times.
Kemp: Absolutely and we’ve seen stockpiles of aid waiting inside Gaza that have been permitted in by the IDF, have been checked, searched, allowed in. And then it’s waiting there because the UN has a completely inefficient distribution system. And the UN itself has admitted that the vast majority of the aid that it has brought into Gaza has been hijacked and taken over by Hamas and used for Hamas’s purposes.
Hamas aren’t interested in the population being fed. In fact, they’d rather the population weren’t fed so they can perpetrate their own lies about starvation. What Hamas want (is) to control the population through distribution of aid, which is often sold — free aid given by U.S. taxpayers’ dollars. Free aid. They want to sell that. They’ve been selling that at vastly inflated prices to those that can afford it.
And this is one of the main reasons why they have opposed so strongly the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has been the most effective organization, a U.S. initiative supported by Israel as well, mainly made up of former American soldiers, distributing aid directly to the Gazans, bypassing Hamas. So Hamas don’t get control of it and don’t use it to raise funds or control the population.
Lilley: What should listeners make of the claims that Israel has used the aid being distributed by the Gaza Humanitarian Fund as a lure to get people to show up so they can shoot and kill them?
Spencer: I mean, it’s as false as all the other claims. It doesn’t stand up against evidence. And it rules out any information from anybody but Hamas. And people won’t even listen to what Israel says. OK, fine. You think that Israel is lying, but they won’t (listen to) the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, not Israelis, mostly American, who are on the ground.
Lilley: Has Hamas effectively weaponized food in this war as another front? I would say while Hamas is not winning the war militarily, they appear to be winning on the PR side. They get a lot of great PR. To me, it feels like they really weaponize this food issue to turn hearts and minds even as they’re losing in the battlefield.
Kemp: That’s exactly what they’ve done. Some of the most outstanding examples in the media of famine, starvation, etc. have been proven to be people who are not starving. They’ve been proven in some cases to be unfortunate children who are suffering from pre-existing diseases which give them a skeletal type appearance, which is that —
Lilley: I think you’re talking about the New York Times front page.
Kemp: Right, the New York Times front page and many many other front pages on the internet and in print of the media including the BBC, which is one of the worst offenders I might say. Now if they need to do that, if they need to falsify it to that extent, that tells you something I think that’s quite important which is, why aren’t they just using the real evidence of it if there is real evidence? Well the reality is there isn’t real evidence.
I’m not saying there isn’t hunger in Gaza. I’m sure there is hunger in Gaza, largely brought about by Hamas. But I’ve spoken directly to at least 100 Gazans, civilians. Not one of them that I saw showed any sign of starvation. The people I saw were active, were moving around, were happy to be receiving for the first ever time free aid since the war began, and that came from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. These are just some of the examples of the way that Hamas have been manipulating, weaponizing food and starvation against Israel. And it’s been swallowed up by a gullible media and obviously people who don’t know any better who watch that media.
Spencer: To say that Hamas has weaponized the food that’s gone into Gaza since October 7th is almost putting it lightly. For some reason in this war, Hamas gets a pass on any atrocity they commit or any violation of the law of armed conflict (by) using the hospitals, using the humanitarian zones. Where was (Hamas strategist) Mohammed Deif killed? Right next to the Al-Mawasi humanitarian zone.
Lilley: Israel’s offensive into Gaza City is getting a lot of attention now, gentlemen. And I’d like to get your thoughts. You know, I had a colleague say, why are they just going into Gaza now? Are they just trying to clear out remnants of Hamas?
Kemp: Gaza City may not be the final stronghold of Hamas, but it’s certainly now, I think, the largest concentration of Hamas terrorists inside Gaza, although I’m sure many of have left or tried to leave. And of course, without taking Gaza City, without destroying Hamas inside Gaza City, then you don’t destroy Hamas at all. So very clearly, they’ve got to deal with Gaza City.
And that is a tough problem. It wouldn’t be so tough if it wasn’t for the civilian presence there. The IDF, I think, are estimating now that maybe even up to 900,000 Gazans have left Gaza City and the IDF have been warning them by leaflet drops and by other means, numerous other means, to get out to safety and telling them where they can go to safety, to the south along designated routes. And a large number have been doing that. But of course, meanwhile, Hamas have been doing their best to prevent them from getting out of Gaza City because they want them there as human shields.
Another complexity, of course, is the presence there of at least some of the hostages inside Gaza City. On top of all that you then have the massive complexity of the massive tunnel system underneath Gaza City, the booby traps of very many of the buildings. Obviously a large number of the buildings have been taken over by Hamas to be used as military positions to command operations to attack the IDF. That of course includes hospitals, mosques, apartment buildings, schools and all the rest of the stuff we’ve seen in Gaza City.
Lilley: We’re constantly hearing what the death toll is. When you’ve looked at civilian deaths, in this war as compared to others, what have you found?
Kemp: Yeah, I mean, the first thing I’d say is, I don’t think anybody knows how many civilians have died inside Gaza. I certainly don’t. You hear these 65,000 figure or 100,000, wherever it might be. These figures all come from Hamas, the Gaza Health Ministry or whatever. Some people quote the UN’s figures but the UN’s figures come from Hamas everyone’s figures come from Hamas, so we don’t know the reality.
You have to deduct from those figures the number of fighters that have been killed, because obviously, IDF are going to have killed a lot of fighters. They’ve been targeting the fighters, not the civilians, and many fighters will have died.
Spencer: Hamas has killed thousands of civilians. Twenty per cent of the 14,000-15,000 rockets that Hamas has launched have landed inside of Gaza killing Gazan civilians who go on the list. Everybody just blames Israel for this number. It’s not true. The number is not true. It could be more. It could be less.
I can tell you that I don’t mourn the death of Hamas combatants. I don’t. Israel views every civilian casualty as a tragedy. It’s awful. Hamas views it as their strategy and they state they want the death. They want the death of every child, elderly person, everything so they can achieve their goal in the afterlife.
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