John Spencer has become one of the most prominent international voices explaining Israel’s war against Hamas through the lens of urban warfare.
A 25-year U.S. Army veteran, author, researcher and Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, Spencer has spent years studying what happens when armies are forced to fight inside cities.
Since October 7, 2023, that expertise has placed him at the center of the global debate over Gaza.
Spencer has repeatedly traveled to Israel and entered Gaza with Israeli forces, studied Hamas’s enormous tunnel network, interviewed commanders and soldiers, and examined the measures the IDF uses to reduce civilian harm.
His conclusions have reached far beyond military circles. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has cited Spencer’s research while defending Israel’s conduct of the war, including before the United States Congress.
But Spencer’s story began decades before Gaza.
From a 17-Year-Old Army Recruit to an Urban Warfare Scholar
Spencer joined the U.S. Army at just 17 years old, beginning as an enlisted soldier before eventually becoming an officer.
He would spend approximately 25 years in military service.
His career included two combat deployments to Iraq.
During the 2003 invasion, Spencer served as a young platoon leader. He later returned to Iraq during the surge and commanded a company during the 2008 Battle of Sadr City, one of the significant urban engagements of the Iraq War.
Those experiences gave Spencer something that would later become central to his academic career: firsthand experience of the extraordinary complexity of fighting inside a city.
After his combat deployments, his career increasingly moved toward strategy, research and education.
Spencer earned a master’s degree from Georgetown University and was selected for the Chief of Staff of the Army Strategic Studies Group, where he worked on a question with enormous implications for future wars: was the U.S. military prepared to fight in the world’s rapidly growing megacities?
The work helped turn urban warfare from something Spencer had experienced into the subject he would spend years studying.
He later moved to West Point, where he taught military strategy and co-founded the Modern War Institute.
Since 2018, Spencer has served as Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the institute. He is also Executive Director and co-founder of the separate Urban Warfare Institute.
He Doesn’t Just Study Battles From Behind a Desk
One of the defining characteristics of Spencer’s work is his emphasis on going to the places he studies.
His research combines military history and comparative battlefield case studies with field visits, interviews with people involved in conflicts and what the military traditionally calls staff rides: physically walking terrain to understand how a battle unfolded.
His research has taken him well beyond Israel.
Ukraine provides one of the clearest examples of how Spencer has tried to turn his research into something practical.
In February 2022, as Russian forces launched their full-scale invasion of Ukraine and advanced toward the country’s cities, Spencer wrote The Mini-Manual for the Urban Defender, a guide intended to help Ukrainians defend urban areas using lessons drawn from his years of research into urban warfare.
The manual was translated into Ukrainian and rapidly disseminated across the country.
Spencer told Israel News Pulse that the manual has since been published in 16 languages, with additional translations in progress.
It is a part of his career of which he remains particularly proud: taking lessons developed through years of studying urban combat and putting them into a practical form for people confronting an invasion in real time.
His involvement with Ukraine did not end there.
Following Russia’s invasion, Spencer made multiple research trips to Ukraine and studied the Battle of Kyiv with retired U.S. Army Col. Liam Collins.
The two examined how Ukrainian forces defended the capital against a much larger Russian invasion force, including through interviews with people directly involved in the battle and visits to the terrain where it occurred.
Their work eventually contributed to a detailed Modern War Institute case study of the Battle of Kyiv.
Spencer has also conducted research connected to conflicts and urban battles in places including Nagorno-Karabakh and India.
It is this combination of soldier, battlefield researcher, teacher and writer that has made him a sought-after commentator when wars move into cities.
John Spencer the Author
Writing has become another major part of Spencer’s career.
In 2022, he published Connected Soldiers: Life, Leadership, and Social Connections in Modern War, a book drawing on military experience to explore how relationships, leadership and human connections affect soldiers during war.
The book received the Military Writers Society of America’s Gold Medal for Biography/Memoir in 2023.
That same year, Spencer and Liam Collins published Understanding Urban Warfare, an extensive examination of how militaries fight in cities and the unique tactical and strategic problems urban environments create.
His bibliography also includes The Mini-Manual for the Urban Defender, the guide he wrote for Ukrainians following Russia’s full-scale invasion. Originally translated into Ukrainian and distributed inside the country, Spencer says the manual has now appeared in 16 languages, with more translations underway.
Spencer has also produced numerous articles, battlefield studies, essays and Urban Warfare Project case studies examining conflicts ranging from Fallujah and Mosul to Kyiv and Gaza.
More recently, Spencer has added another book to that body of work: Twenty Times I Almost Died: Life Lessons from the Edge of Survival
The new publication adds to a body of work Spencer has spent years building around modern combat, cities and the changing character of warfare.
Spencer Was Studying Israel Long Before October 7
Spencer’s association with Israel did not begin with the current war.
He says he had traveled to Israel numerous times before October 7, studying the country’s experience with urban and subterranean warfare.
His research has included the battles of Jenin and Nablus during the Second Intifada, previous wars in Gaza, the 1973 Battle of Suez City and the development of underground warfare by Hamas and Hezbollah.
In 2018, Spencer co-hosted a conference at Reichman University focused on subterranean warfare, he told Israel News Pulse.
That meant that when Hamas attacked southern Israel on October 7, 2023, Spencer already had years of experience studying precisely the military challenges Israel would soon confront.
What followed, however, gave him a much closer view.
Seven Research Trips Into Gaza
Spencer has now made seven research trips into Gaza since October 7, he told Israel News Pulse.
His visits have taken him to Gaza City, Rafah, Khan Younis, the Netzarim Corridor, Al-Shati camp, Shuja’iyya and other locations.
Some of those trips are documented in considerable detail.
In December 2023, Spencer visited a major Hamas tunnel near the Erez area. He described encountering an underground structure of extraordinary scale and sophistication.
In February 2024, he entered Khan Younis with the IDF’s 98th Division.
Later that year, he traveled into the Netzarim Corridor and observed Israeli operations there.
In December 2025, Spencer entered Gaza City and Al-Shati camp, he told Israel News Pulse.
His most recent trip came in June 2026, when he entered Shuja’iyya, according to Spencer.
Those additional visits bring his total to seven research trips into Gaza.
Spencer has said that his work since October 7 has involved hundreds of interviews, ranging from Israeli soldiers and platoon commanders to senior officers and members of the IDF’s civilian-harm mitigation and legal apparatus.
He has also described interviewing some of Israel’s most senior political and military figures, including the prime minister, defense minister and IDF chiefs of staff.
Taken together, the visits have given Spencer an unusual body of firsthand research into how the IDF has conducted the Gaza campaign.
The Underground War
One subject in particular dominates Spencer’s analysis of Gaza: tunnels.
Hamas spent years constructing an enormous subterranean military network beneath the territory.
The tunnels allow fighters to move without exposing themselves above ground, store weapons, establish command infrastructure and emerge unexpectedly near Israeli forces.
Some extend deep underground.
For Spencer, the tunnel network fundamentally changes how the Gaza war must be understood.
An army operating above ground is not simply fighting the enemy it can see in streets and buildings. It is simultaneously fighting an underground war against forces capable of disappearing beneath the battlefield.
Spencer has described being struck by both the scale and sophistication of the network during his visits.
His experiences underground have also given him a particularly visceral understanding of subterranean warfare.
He has compared entering such environments to going underwater: visibility disappears, orientation becomes difficult, normal senses become less reliable and even the perception of time can change.
For soldiers, those conditions create a battlefield unlike conventional surface combat.
Spencer’s Argument About Israel and Civilian Harm
Perhaps no part of Spencer’s work has received more international attention than his analysis of Israel’s attempts to protect civilians.
Spencer argues that the IDF has implemented an extraordinary range of civilian-harm mitigation measures during the Gaza war.
Those measures have included leaflets, evacuation warnings, telephone calls, text messages, digital evacuation maps, drone-mounted loudspeakers and technologies designed to understand civilian population movements.
Some techniques have long histories in warfare.
Others represent much newer applications of technology.
Spencer has highlighted, in particular, the use of detailed grid-reference maps provided to civilians, warning systems delivered through multiple communications channels and technological methods for monitoring where civilian populations are concentrated.
His conclusion has been emphatic.
Spencer has repeatedly argued that Israel has implemented more civilian-harm mitigation measures than any military he has studied.
That argument has made him one of the most frequently cited military experts pushing back against accusations that Israel has deliberately or indiscriminately targeted Gaza’s civilian population.
Why Spencer Rejects the Genocide Accusation
Spencer has also been unequivocal about accusations that Israel is committing genocide.
In July 2025, he summarized his position plainly: “There Is No Genocide in Gaza.”
His reasoning draws heavily on what he says he has observed about Israeli military behavior.
For Spencer, the extensive systems designed to warn civilians, move populations away from combat areas, evaluate targets and mitigate civilian harm are fundamentally inconsistent with the argument that the IDF is pursuing a military campaign intended to destroy Palestinians as a people.
He distinguishes the terrible consequences of urban warfare from the specific intent required to establish genocide.
The legal proceedings surrounding that allegation remain unresolved.
South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice is still pending, and the court has not issued a final judgment finding that Israel committed genocide.
Under the current schedule, proceedings are expected to continue for years.
His Research Reached Israel’s Prime Minister
Perhaps the clearest indication of Spencer’s growing influence came in Washington.
On July 24, 2024, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress.
During his defense of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, Netanyahu invoked Spencer’s analysis while arguing that the IDF had taken extraordinary measures to minimize civilian casualties.
It was an unusual moment.
Research that began with an American soldier studying how armies fight inside cities had reached one of the world’s most prominent political stages.
And it wasn’t the last time Netanyahu publicly acknowledged Spencer.
In June 2026, after Spencer posted about Israeli civilian-harm mitigation measures, Netanyahu publicly thanked him for his efforts to “correct the record.”
For Spencer, it demonstrated just how far his work had traveled.
His research was no longer circulating only among soldiers, military scholars and students at West Point. It had become part of the international debate over Israel itself.
A Very Public Military Scholar
Spencer’s influence has also grown through media and social platforms.
He has appeared as a military analyst across major international networks and publications and has built an audience of hundreds of thousands on X.
His style is unusually direct for an academic researcher.
When Spencer believes conventional coverage misunderstands a military question, he tends to say so plainly.
That has been particularly apparent during the Gaza war.
He frequently uses historical urban battles to provide context for Israeli operations and challenges comparisons that he believes ignore Gaza’s distinctive characteristics.
His appearances on Israeli and Jewish media have also made him increasingly familiar to audiences following the war closely.
Spencer describes this work as an effort to combat misinformation about warfare rather than political advocacy.
His focus remains overwhelmingly military: tunnels, targeting, civilian-harm mitigation, battlefield geometry, force structure and the realities soldiers encounter once they enter dense urban terrain.
Why John Spencer’s Voice Has Become So Influential
The importance of Spencer’s work ultimately comes down to perspective.
Much of the world’s discussion of Gaza begins with images of destruction.
Spencer begins with the battlefield.
He asks what happens when a military is ordered to defeat an entrenched armed organization operating across dense cities, surrounded by civilians, connected through a vast underground network and holding hostages beneath the battlefield.
Those questions do not make civilian suffering disappear.
They attempt to explain why urban warfare produces circumstances that can be extremely difficult to understand from outside the battlefield.
Spencer has spent much of his adult life studying those circumstances.
First he experienced urban combat as a soldier.
Then he studied it as a strategist.
Then he taught it.
He translated those lessons into a manual intended to help Ukrainians defend their cities against a Russian invasion.
And he began traveling to battlefields around the world to understand how warfare inside cities was changing.
Gaza brought many of those strands together.
It placed tunnels, dense urban terrain, civilian populations, modern surveillance, precision weapons, information warfare and an entrenched non-state enemy into the same conflict.
For an urban-warfare researcher, few modern battlefields could be more consequential.
And for Israel, Spencer has become something equally unusual: an American military scholar with decades of experience studying war who has now made seven research trips into Gaza, examined the battlefield himself and emerged willing to publicly challenge many of the assumptions dominating the international conversation.
That is why John Spencer’s name now carries weight far beyond West Point.
And it is why his work is likely to remain part of the debate over Gaza, Israel and the future of urban warfare for years to come.
