“John Spencer is a professor of urban warfare at West Point who has closely studied the war in Gaza ever since it began, as well as other campaigns fought by the IDF, and has concluded that “Israel has done more to prevent civilian casualties in war than any military in history — above & beyond what international law requires.”
Now he has written a piece on the absolute necessity for Hamas to be completely defeated, both militarily and politically, in Gaza.”
Hugh Fitzgerald, Jihad Watch, June 3, 2025
No one should want a ceasefire in Gaza until a clear defeat of Hamas
The goal for Hamas has never been a two-state solution or co-existence. Its charter,still unchanged,calls for the annihilation of Israel.
June 1, 2025
By JOHN SPENCER
Reprinted from The Jerusalem Post
Imagine what would have happened if Japan hadn’t agreed to surrender in 1945. Or if Germany had remained undefeated after World War II. Even after their regimes had dragged their countries into catastrophic wars—wars they started—what if the world had simply stopped fighting and walked away?
That is exactly the scenario we are confronting with Hamas today.
After October 7,the single deadliest attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust, Hamas is not suing for peace. It is not seeking a ceasefire in good faith. It is actively planning the next October 7. In fact, its leaders have said as much, publicly and proudly.
The goal for Hamas has never been a two-state solution or co-existence. Its charter, still unchanged, calls for the annihilation of Israel. This war, which began with Hamas’s genocidal rampage into Israeli communities, was never about land or borders. It was about survival—Hamas’s survival as a terrorist regime and political force. The moment Hamas executed on October 7, it accepted a war it could not militarily win. Yet now, it is fighting not to win militarily but to survive politically. For Hamas, mere survival is victory.
And if the guns fall silent now, if the war ends before Hamas is clearly and decisively defeated—or unless Hamas unilaterally surrenders, returns all the hostages, and agrees to fully disarm, then it will be a Hamas victory.
Calls for a ceasefire may sound moral. They are not. A ceasefire without victory rewards war crimes such as mass hostage-taking, torture, mutilation, rape, the deliberate use of human shields, and the slaughter of civilians. These are not tactics of desperation; they are strategies of coercion. If such methods are seen to succeed, they will become a template for every terror group, militia, or hostile regime in the world.
Ceasefire could mark dangerous change in evolution of modern warfare
It would also validate and entrench a dangerous evolution in modern warfare: the systematic abuse of the laws of war as a weapon. Hamas has built its entire doctrine around this, deliberately violating every principle of international humanitarian law while relying on those same laws to constrain its adversary.
