As Israel’s ground offensive in Gaza City intensifies, the UN Human Rights Council has once again leveled accusations of genocide against the Jewish state. Their newly released 72-page report, produced by a commission riddled with members already on record as anti-Israel, ignores Hamas’s crimes and skews casualty data to present a distorted narrative. Behind the headlines, the reality on the ground tells a very different story.

In this episode of Basic Law, we cut through the noise clouding global discourse on Israel’s war of survival. Host Aylana Meisel is joined by John Spencer, Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Madison Policy Forum and Director of the Urban Warfare Institute. Together, they dissect the myths, the misused legal terminology and the unprecedented challenges Israel faces as it moves into one of the most complex urban battlefields in modern history.

Spencer explains why terms like genocide, proportionality, and ethnic cleansing are being recklessly misapplied by international bodies and activists and why this undermines both critical thinking and the very laws of war. He also outlines the IDF’s extraordinary efforts to protect civilians, from mass evacuation warnings to daily humanitarian pauses and why Hamas’s strategy is less “human shielding” than deliberate “human sacrifice.”

Learn how the truth of urban warfare, international law and Israel’s moral dilemmas differs from the headlines and why it matters for the future of democratic nations everywhere.