What the People Who Study War Actually See in Israel’s Wars

Much of the public discussion surrounding Israel’s wars since October 7 has been reduced to a simple story.

Israel has overwhelming military power. Gaza is destroyed. Civilians have suffered enormously. Therefore the war itself must have been crude, indiscriminate and strategically senseless.

That conclusion is much harder to sustain when the conflict is examined by people who actually study war.

Urban warfare scholars, military historians, intelligence researchers, former senior officers turned academics, airpower specialists and missile experts describe something very different.

They describe Hamas building a deeply prepared urban and subterranean defense system. They describe Hezbollah as a sophisticated military organization with communications, command networks, missile forces and fortified positions. They describe Iran as a state adversary with ballistic missiles, air defenses and strategic depth.

They also describe an Israeli military that failed catastrophically before October 7, then adapted quickly and demonstrated unusually sophisticated capabilities in urban combat, intelligence, electronic warfare, airpower and missile defense.

The serious criticism is there too.

But it is usually not the criticism found in the most simplistic portrayals of the war.

Gaza Was a Prepared Battlefield, Not an Empty Civilian Space

One of the most useful analyses comes from Professor Omar Ashour, a scholar of security and military studies whose prewar work focused on how insurgent and jihadist organizations actually fight.

Ashour does not describe Hamas as a loose collection of gunmen.

He describes a hybrid defensive system.

That system combined tunnels, light infantry, anti armor teams, improvised explosive devices, snipers, decentralized cells, fortified urban terrain and rapid movement between conventional and guerrilla tactics.

His conclusion is revealing.

Hamas did not defeat Israel militarily.

It “downgraded defeat.”

In Ashour’s formulation, Hamas turned overwhelming Israeli superiority into a “protracted, manpower-intensive siege.”

That matters because it changes how the battlefield must be understood.

Hamas was not winning tank battles or controlling the skies.

Its strategy was to make every Israeli advance slower, more dangerous and more expensive.

Its tunnel network allowed fighters to disappear beneath neighborhoods, move between sectors, conceal weapons, hold hostages and reappear behind advancing forces.

That is not background scenery.

It is the battlefield itself.

Urban Warfare Is Destructive Because Cities Are Hard to Take

Professor Anthony King of the University of Exeter has spent years studying modern urban combat.

His description of contemporary city warfare is blunt.

It often becomes a “grinding war of position.”

Cities are not simply crossed.

They have to be isolated, searched, cleared and held.

Routes must be secured.

Buildings must be entered.

Prepared positions must be neutralized.

Tunnels make surface control incomplete.

And all of that requires manpower.

King’s work is important because it challenges one of the easiest assumptions made about Gaza: that if Israeli troops had to return to an area they had already entered, the original operation must have been pointless.

Not necessarily.

A modern army does not possess unlimited infantry.

Israel was fighting in Gaza while maintaining forces for Lebanon, the West Bank, home defense and the possibility of direct conflict with Iran.

The military problem was therefore not simply whether Israel could enter an area.

It was whether Israel could permanently occupy every cleared neighborhood at sufficient density while fighting on several fronts.

That is a very different question.

Hamas Survived. That Does Not Mean Its Military Was Not Broken

Professor Eitan Shamir, who studies Israeli doctrine, ground warfare and insurgency, offers a useful distinction.

“Hamas as a significant military system no longer poses a threat to Israel,” he argued.

That does not mean Hamas disappeared.

It means that much of the military organization Hamas had built before October 7 was destroyed or severely degraded.

Battalions were broken.

Senior commanders were killed.

Rocket capabilities were reduced.

The organization’s ability to conduct another large coordinated invasion was diminished.

Meanwhile, small cells survived.

IED attacks continued.

Recruitment continued.

Guerrilla warfare continued.

Ashour and Shamir therefore appear to disagree, but they are often measuring different things.

Ashour asks whether Hamas remained capable of prolonging resistance.

Shamir asks whether Hamas remained the same strategic military threat it had been before the war.

Both can be true.

A military organization can be defeated in one form and survive in another.

That is a much more useful framework than simply asking whether Hamas still exists.

The IDF Did Not Simply Rely on Brute Force

John Spencer, a former US Army officer and one of the most prominent contemporary specialists in urban warfare, has been among the strongest defenders of Israeli ground operations.

His analysis focuses on what Israeli troops were actually required to do.

Armor, infantry, combat engineers, drones, intelligence and air support were integrated.

Tactics changed as the tunnel threat became better understood.

Engineers developed methods for dealing with underground infrastructure.

Forces increasingly shifted from simply clearing neighborhoods toward holding key areas for longer periods.

Spencer has gone further than many other scholars, arguing that Israel implemented “more precautions to prevent civilian harm than any military in history.”

That claim is controversial.

But it is impossible to understand the argument without examining the precautions themselves.

Some Israeli Strikes Were Aborted Because Civilians Appeared

The public record contains concrete examples.

Major Keren Hajioff, an IDF reserve officer and spokesperson, said Israeli warnings effectively meant announcing operational areas in advance.

She described that as “almost unheard of in military warfare.”

She also said Israeli forces would “hold fire if necessary” to allow Gazans to move through humanitarian corridors.

Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said:

“We abort attacks when we see unexpected civilian presence.”

He also said the IDF selected munitions according to the target in order to avoid unnecessary damage.

In another documented case, an Israeli Air Force officer identified as Lieutenant Omer described an intended strike on an underground rocket launch site.

Then civilians approached.

“We saw that innocent civilians were approaching the area of the underground launch site,” he said.

“We immediately contacted the forces and instructed them to abort the strike.”

In IDF footage from another incident, targeting personnel noticed a father and children near what the military described as an intelligence based target.

The response was immediate:

“Don’t shoot, don’t shoot.”

In September 2026, the IDF said it redirected a munition already in flight after civilians appeared near an intended Hamas target.

These examples do not prove that every Israeli strike was cautious.

They do prove something narrower and important.

Civilian presence sometimes changed Israeli targeting decisions.

That fact belongs in any serious discussion of how the war was fought.

Warnings Protect Civilians. They Also Warn the Enemy

Military historian Danny Orbach, alongside Jonathan Boxman, Yagil Henkin and Jonathan Braverman, has written about this tradeoff directly.

They describe Israel’s detailed warning practices as occurring “frequently at the expense of operational surprise.”

That is not complicated military theory.

If civilians know an area is about to become active, Hamas can know too.

Warnings can give civilians time to leave.

They can also give fighters time to move weapons, prepare explosives, abandon positions or disappear into tunnels.

Reducing firepower can reduce civilian risk.

It can also increase risk to the soldiers who eventually have to enter the area.

This is why claims that the IDF could simply have fought with much less force require military analysis, not slogans.

Andy Milburn Says Israel Should Have Accepted More Risk

Retired US Marine Colonel Andy Milburn strongly disagrees with the more favorable assessments.

Milburn fought in Fallujah and commanded forces in Iraq.

His criticism is direct:

“In Gaza, risk was routinely transferred from Israeli forces onto civilians.”

He argues that Israel relied too heavily on firepower and permissive targeting and should have accepted more risk to its own troops through controlled civilian zones, screening operations and intelligence led raids.

That is a serious argument.

It is also not uncontested.

Orbach, Henkin and their coauthors argue that this criticism underestimates Gaza’s tunnel network, the lack of a local partner army, Hamas fighters operating without uniforms, booby trapped terrain and the risks of clearing such an environment with substantially less supporting fire.

This is the debate worth having.

Not whether Gaza was simply bombed for no military reason.

The real debate is how much risk an attacking army should transfer to its own soldiers when fighting through an enemy defense system embedded in dense urban terrain.

October 7 Was a Catastrophic Israeli Failure

None of this erases October 7.

Professor Uri Bar Joseph has spent decades studying Israeli intelligence failures and strategic surprise.

Michael Milshtein, a former senior Israeli intelligence officer who later became an academic specialist on Hamas, describes October 7 as a failure of understanding.

Israel had information.

It misread the enemy.

Hamas had increasingly been viewed as a government interested in economic relief and survival.

Periods of calm were interpreted as evidence of deterrence.

That assumption collapsed on October 7.

But even this story is incomplete.

More recent intelligence analysis emphasizes that Hamas also actively deceived Israel.

It compartmentalized planning, concealed intentions and reinforced the very assumptions Israeli intelligence wanted to believe.

October 7 was therefore both an Israeli failure and a Hamas intelligence success.

Then Israeli Intelligence Did Something Remarkable

After October 7, the same wider Israeli intelligence system demonstrated extraordinary tactical penetration.

Hamas commanders were located.

Hezbollah communications were compromised.

Iranian missile and air defense networks were mapped.

Senior leaders were tracked.

Targets deep inside Iran were identified and struck.

Clive Jones and Robert Geist Pinfold argue that this apparent contradiction makes sense once tactical intelligence is separated from strategic understanding.

Knowing where a commander is standing is not the same as understanding what an organization intends to do.

Israel became exceptionally good at the first while having failed disastrously at the second.

That distinction may be one of the most important lessons of the entire war.

Hezbollah Was Attacked as a Military System

The campaign against Hezbollah is especially difficult to describe as random destruction.

Israel did not simply kill Hassan Nasrallah.

It attacked command, communications, missile infrastructure, logistics, border positions and leadership in combination.

Security scholar Andreas Krieg described the penetration required for the pager and communications operations as extraordinary.

Raphael Marcus, whose academic work examines how Hezbollah learns and adapts, provides another important insight.

Hezbollah’s military effectiveness depended partly on communication between local units and senior leadership.

That allowed the organization to identify successful tactics and spread them across the force.

Disrupting communications while simultaneously killing senior leaders and striking weapons infrastructure therefore did more than remove individuals.

It disrupted the system through which the organization learned and responded.

That is military targeting at an organizational level.

Hezbollah Was Forced to Change Its Behavior

Assaf Orion, a former senior IDF strategic planner who later became a researcher, points to another important result.

Hezbollah initially linked its attacks on Israel to the Gaza war.

Eventually, it accepted a separate ceasefire.

That is a coercive outcome.

Military success is not measured only by how many missiles or commanders are destroyed.

It is also measured by whether an opponent changes behavior.

At the same time, Orion warns against declaring the problem permanently solved.

Hezbollah survived.

It began rebuilding.

And evidence from 2026 suggests it was adapting toward cheaper drones, smaller cells and more distributed systems.

Again, survival does not erase military defeat.

It shows that defeated organizations can learn.

Iran Shows What Israeli High End Warfare Looks Like

If Gaza demonstrates the difficulty of fighting underground in cities, Iran demonstrates Israel’s high end military capabilities.

Justin Bronk, a leading airpower specialist at RUSI, described Israel’s rapid establishment of sufficient air superiority over Iran as “impressive.”

Iran is not an enclave.

It is a large sovereign state with strategic depth, air defenses, ballistic missiles, military bases and nuclear infrastructure.

Israel nevertheless established enough freedom of action to repeatedly send crewed aircraft deep into Iranian airspace.

The campaign integrated F 35 stealth aircraft, F 15s, F 16s, electronic warfare, intelligence and precision weapons.

Air defenses were suppressed.

Commanders were killed.

Missile infrastructure was attacked.

Launchers were hunted.

Nuclear related facilities were struck.

Whatever one thinks about the political wisdom of those operations, they were not unsophisticated military actions.

Even Here, Scholars Disagree About What Victory Means

Professor Robert Pape of the University of Chicago argues that bombing cannot permanently eliminate a nuclear program.

Facilities can be destroyed.

Knowledge cannot.

Material can be dispersed.

States can rebuild.

Former US Air Force Lieutenant General David Deptula rejects the idea that anything short of permanent eradication should be treated as failure.

He argues that repeated strikes can delay a program, destroy expensive infrastructure and force an enemy to rebuild under constant threat.

Pape and Deptula therefore disagree less about what Israel can destroy than about what destruction actually achieves.

That distinction matters.

Iran’s Missiles Were Not Defeated by Interceptors Alone

Fabian Hinz of the International Institute for Strategic Studies specializes in Iranian missiles and drones.

His work emphasizes that missile stockpile numbers can be misleading.

Missiles need launchers.

Launchers need crews.

Crews need communications.

Prepared sites matter.

If those systems are being hunted, a state can own many missiles and still struggle to fire them in sufficiently dense salvos.

That means Israel’s air campaign was itself part of Israel’s missile defense.

Arrow and THAAD intercepted missiles after launch.

Israeli aircraft tried to prevent some from being launched in the first place.

Thomas Karako of CSIS warns that even successful defense has limits.

“We can’t keep this up indefinitely,” he said.

Interceptors are expensive.

Stocks are finite.

Radar systems can be targeted.

Sidharth Kaushal of RUSI makes the complementary point that no missile shield is perfect.

A 90 percent interception rate can be extraordinary and still allow dangerous missiles through.

Again, serious military analysis is more complicated than simply declaring a missile defense either successful or failed.

The Strongest Criticism of Israel Is Actually Somewhere Else

Sir Lawrence Freedman, one of the most respected scholars of strategy, identified the central problem early.

Israel was developing a military strategy while lacking a political strategy.

That criticism has aged well.

Israel can destroy Hamas battalions.

Who governs Gaza afterward?

Israel can kill Hezbollah leaders.

Who disarms Hezbollah permanently?

Israel can destroy Iranian nuclear facilities.

Who prevents rebuilding?

Israel can suppress armed cells in Jenin.

Who maintains control after Israeli troops leave?

Ofer Fridman of King’s College London summarized the Gaza problem simply:

“To eliminate Hamas, you need to create an alternative as a governing body in Gaza.”

That may be the single most important criticism running through the serious literature.

Not that Israel lacks military capability.

Not that it has no military targets.

Not that its enemies are imaginary.

The problem is that destroying an enemy military system is easier than creating the political order that replaces it.

What the War Scholars Actually Show

The serious scholarship does not describe a flawless Israeli campaign.

October 7 was an intelligence catastrophe.

Civilian harm in Gaza has been enormous.

Israel’s political planning has often lagged behind its military operations.

Hostage recovery repeatedly conflicted with other military objectives.

Hamas survived in guerrilla form.

Hezbollah adapted.

Iran retained nuclear knowledge and missile capability.

Those are real criticisms.

But the same scholarship also describes realities that disappear from more simplistic narratives.

Hamas built a sophisticated urban and subterranean defense system.

Its strategy was designed to make Israeli military superiority slow and costly.

Israel adapted its tactics repeatedly.

Civilian warnings sometimes reduced operational surprise.

Strikes were sometimes aborted when civilians appeared.

Hezbollah was attacked through command, communications, logistics and missile infrastructure rather than through random violence alone.

Iranian air defenses were systematically suppressed.

Iranian missile launchers were hunted as part of Israel’s defensive strategy.

Military scholars disagree sharply about whether Israel used too much firepower, too little restraint, or accepted enough risk to its own troops.

That debate is legitimate.

But it is a debate about how a real war against real military organizations should have been fought.

It is not a description of a battlefield without enemies, military objectives, strategy or operational logic.

The strongest criticism of Israel found in the scholarship is ultimately more sophisticated than that.

Israel has repeatedly demonstrated that it can destroy extremely difficult military targets.

Its harder problem is turning those victories into something that lasts.

That is not evidence that there was no military logic to the war.

It is one of the oldest problems in war itself.