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“Not This” Isn’t Strategy—It’s Surrender to Hamas’s Propaganda War
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“Not this” has become the lazy refrain of those too uninformed—or too afraid—to confront the actual nature of modern war. It’s the moral shrug of commentators unwilling to grapple with facts, history, or the operational realities of Gaza. “Not this” doesn’t reflect legal analysis, strategic insight, or lived combat experience. It’s a performance. A rejection of responsibility dressed up as moral clarity.
Piers Morgan is just the latest public figure to offer this empty diagnosis. He recently declared that “Israel’s current strategy is failing.” But what does that mean? Failing by what metric? Based on whose objectives?
Wars are not judged by feelings. They are judged by facts—by the political and military objectives of each side and the extent to which they are achieved. On those terms, it is Hamas—not Israel—that is failing catastrophically.
Hamas began this war with three supporting objectives:
- Survive the war and be celebrated as the terror group that conducted the October 7 massacre and endured Israel’s response.
- Maintain military capability to continue its stated mission: destroy Israel and kill Jews worldwide.
- Retain governing power over Gaza, subjugating Palestinians while siphoning billions in international aid to support objective #2.
Hamas is failing on all three counts. It has lost the ability to fight as an organized military force. Its five brigades, 24 battalions, and 30,000–40,000 trained fighters—armed with over 20,000 rockets and extensive control of terrain—have been decimated. Fewer than three original commanders from Hamas’s military or political leadership in Gaza remain. From top leaders like Yahya Sinwar, Mohammad Deif, and Marwan Issa, to nearly every brigade and battalion commander, the senior command structure has been eliminated. That level of leadership, experience, and ideological fanaticism cannot be replaced. What remains is a fragmented guerrilla force made up mostly of radicalized youths, with little training, no real command structure, and declining access to weapons. The average Hamas replacement fighter is now in their teens.
Hamas has also lost political ground. Gazans are increasingly protesting and speaking out against them. Their control over food distribution—once a key lever of power—has been eroded by U.S.-Israeli humanitarian mechanisms, including the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which bypass Hamas entirely. Their senior military and political leaders are being systematically eliminated. The group’s grip on the population is slipping.
By contrast, Israel’s goals are clear:
- Return the hostages.
- Destroy Hamas as a military force and governing body.
- Ensure that no force in Gaza can ever again threaten Israeli citizens.
Israel has already returned 198 of 251 hostages. It has dismantled Hamas’s ability to wage coordinated military operations. It has reclaimed strategic terrain and pushed Hamas underground—literally. No force in Gaza currently has the capability to project meaningful attacks into Israeli territory.
Israel has also defanged and deterred Hezbollah in Lebanon, secured its northern border, contributed to the effective overthrow of Assad’s regime and destroyed the conventional military capabilities in Syria, destroyed critical Iranian-linked weapons systems, defended Israeli Druze communities, and demonstrated both military superiority and restraint across seven simultaneous fronts.
This is what strategic success looks like in modern war: steady progress under impossible conditions, constrained by international scrutiny and unprecedented operational complexity.
But progress is not victory. While Israel’s strategy in Gaza has made undeniable headway—despite operating under immense political and operational constraints—much work remains.
For two years, Israel’s ability to prepare for or respond to the Hamas threat was systematically hindered by international actors. The previous U.S. administration blocked key weapons transfers, urged Israel not to enter Rafah, and imposed constraints on the size of its combat force, the pace of operations, and even the types of weapons it could employ. It also forced operational pauses tied to humanitarian initiatives based on flawed or manipulated data—like the now-failed humanitarian pier, which proved a costly and ineffective effort. The United Nations refused to provide meaningful assistance. And many governments applied constant diplomatic pressure while offering no viable alternative to defeating Hamas. Despite these constraints, Israel has adapted, recalibrated, and steadily advanced its mission.
But military success alone is not enough. For Hamas to be fully defeated and Gaza to be stabilized, several critical objectives must still be achieved.
First, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation—a U.S.-Israeli initiative that bypasses Hamas and delivers aid directly to civilians—must be expanded. It is one of the few working models that weakens Hamas’s control over the population while upholding humanitarian obligations.
Second, Hamas fighters must be either killed or captured. No reconciliation or rebuilding can begin while armed militants remain embedded among civilians. This requires not just raids or airstrikes, but methodical terrain clearance—followed by physical occupation and holding of that ground to prevent Hamas from reconstituting.
Third, a credible alternative to Hamas must take root. A new power must assume administrative, security, and political control of cleared areas. Without that, Hamas—or something worse—will fill the vacuum.
Only then can the longer-term work begin: deradicalization programs, reconciliation efforts, weapons buyback initiatives, and continued destruction of military infrastructure. All of this must drive toward one goal—the complete demilitarization of the Gaza Strip.
Victory in this war will not be marked solely by battlefield success, but by who governs Gaza afterward, how the people are treated, and whether another October 7 is made impossible.
And yet, critics like Piers Morgan keep hand-waving it away with the refrain: “Not this.”
It’s an empty phrase designed to appease feelings rather than address facts. It makes no effort to understand what Israel is up against—an entrenched enemy that uses human shields as doctrine, hides in hospitals and schools, and builds tunnels under refugee camps.
The most dangerous part of “Not this” isn’t just its ignorance. It’s how easily it aligns with Hamas’s propaganda strategy.
Hamas knows it cannot win militarily. So it fights through information warfare. Its primary weapon isn’t rockets—it’s casualty statistics. It floods the world with numbers, knowing that most people will never question their origin or reliability.
This is why the so-called Gaza Health Ministry—a Hamas-controlled body—releases death tolls without distinguishing between combatants and civilians, between Israeli fire and Hamas misfires, between war deaths and unrelated fatalities. They count indiscriminately and present the figure as evidence of Israeli wrongdoing.
But as analysts and independent investigations have repeatedly shown, these numbers are riddled with errors. They do not account for:
• Civilians killed by misfired Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad rockets. • Civilians who died of illness, accidents, or natural causes. • Combatants, including child soldiers and women engaged in hostilities.
It is absurd to claim—especially in the chaos of war—that every name on a casualty list can be neatly categorized as civilian or combatant. It is even more absurd to assume that everyone under 18 is a “child” in the legal or moral sense. Hamas actively recruits fighters as young as 14. Women are used in combat roles, weapons transport, surveillance, and even hostage holding.
And here's a critical point: even if we were to take Hamas’s numbers at face value—which we should not—Israel would still have one of the lowest civilian-to-combatant casualty ratios in any comparable war or urban battle in modern history.
But that’s not the point.
The laws of war do not determine legality by body counts. They judge based on intent, military necessity, the value of the target, and whether all feasible precautions were taken to avoid civilian harm. The principle of proportionality requires that the expected harm to civilians must not be excessive in relation to the
concrete and direct military advantage anticipated. It is a forward-looking judgment—not a backward assessment based on outcomes.
And in war, not all military advantages are equal. In a war of survival—where a nation is defending its population, its territory, and its right to exist—the value of military objectives is correspondingly higher. That is fundamentally different from the counterinsurgency and counterterrorism campaigns the West has fought for the past two decades in distant lands, far from its own cities and civilians. Israel is fighting an enemy just kilometers from its borders, one that has already carried out the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. That existential context matters. It shapes the military calculus, and it must shape how the world applies the laws of war.
To judge wars solely by casualty ratios is to hand a blueprint to every terrorist organization on earth: embed within civilians, provoke a response, inflate the death toll, and let the world do the rest. It would make lawful self-defense functionally impossible—especially for democracies.
Hamas knows this. It’s why they built Gaza for war. It’s why they operate from hospitals, mosques, and UN schools. It’s why they don't distinguish their fighters in death. Civilian deaths aren’t a tragic byproduct for Hamas—they are a strategic asset.
The belief that Hamas could be destroyed without bloodshed is not just naïve—it’s dangerous. It sets a standard no military on earth can meet, especially when facing an enemy that does everything possible to ensure civilian deaths.
If October 7 had happened in the U.S., the UK, or any NATO country, the response would have been swift, overwhelming, and just. The only difference is that Israel has
fewer tools and
more constraints—yet continues to comply with the laws of armed conflict while taking unprecedented steps to protect civilians.
“Not this” is not a strategy. It’s not analysis. And it’s not serious.
It is the language of those too comfortable to confront the real cost of defending a free people from genocidal enemies.
And every time it’s repeated, it plays directly into Hamas’s hands.
John Spencer is executive director of the
Urban Warfare Institute
. He is the coauthor of
Understanding Urban Warfare"
I pasted it since not everyone likes X.
He's correct. War is brutal and just because we didn't see the drip of X, Insta and tic toc in previous wars doesn't mean they weren't.
Perhaps nowadays war is thought in PR and the unformed masses with their opinions rather than military strategies. Hamas is winning a PR war if the soundbites that I read on here are anything to go by. Someone on X says something and thousands and more repeat or retreat it as if factual.