John Spencer of West Point is one of the world’s leading experts on urban and subterranean warfare and a veteran of the U.S. war in Iraq. Since October he has visited Israel, observed the fighting, and surveyed some of the terrain where key events have taken place. In this conversation with Sam Harris, Spencer addresses various aspects of the war, including the nature of the brutal attacks with which it began, the IDF’s efforts to protect Palestinian civilians, the way almost all reporting in the West grossly misunderstands and misinterprets what is happening, and the prospects for an Israeli victory. (Audio, 99 minutes.)

If there is to be peace, Palestinians will have to unlearn the hatred of Israel they have imbibed during nearly two decades of Hamas rule. This will be a difficult task, but Cole Aronson argues, drawing on the experiences of World War II, that Israel has already gotten off to a strong start:

The population’s compliance can . . . be won by a new regime that satisfies its immediate material needs, even if that new regime is sponsored by a government until recently at war with the population’s former regime. Axis civilians were made needy through bombing. Peaceful compliance with the Allies became a good alternative to supporting violent resistance to the Allies.

Israel’s current campaign makes a moderate Gaza more likely, not less. Destroying Hamas not only deprives Islamists of the ability to rule—it proves the futility of armed resistance to Israel, a condition for peace. The destruction of buildings not only deprives Hamas of its hideouts. It also gives ordinary Palestinians strong reasons to shun groups planning to replicate Hamas’s behavior.