Two Useful Idiots

Kisin and Co: Israeli Shills

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Foreword

I just noticed the Triggernometry logo - shown as Trigger No Metry, which seems rather apt. Metry is the science of measuring. So the podcast is really not meant to make us reflect or consider or measure the arguments in the scale of truth. Trigger No Metry. Very apt.

This is by far the largest post I have written. I had to cut it down to size because my text-to-voice could not cope with the amount I have written. This episode is by far the worst Triggernometry session I have hear. That is saying something!

Summary:

Spencer calls the 20,000 children killed in Gaza “a lie” – what is his evidence?

He lays down a challenge to show that Israel targets civilians – challenge accepted.

He lies brazenly about preventing harm to civilians.

He says Hamas kills its own. Has he heard of the Hannibal Directive?

Spencer is trolling Kisin, so egregious are his lies.

Two Useful Idiots.

Instead of an expert debunking lies, we got an Israeli propagandist and confirmation that Kisin is a shill for Israel.

The Netanyahu interview was arranged by this Israel propagandist, who reported back to Tel Aviv of two useful idiots who’d do Israel’s hasbara in return for an exclusive. A win-win as long as truth doesn’t matter.

Spencer calls himself a military expert, but it’s hard to take him seriously; he says some very un-expert things. Even if he is an expert, it doesn’t follow he is impartial. He’s not, the way he speaks about a world demanding impossibly high standards of Israel.

The discussion starts with the ethics of war. The fact that Spencer mentions Natasha Hausdorff should have alarm bells ringing. Hausdorff is an Israeli apologist; her UK Lawyers for Israel work for a foreign state inside the UK.

Spencer does raise a valid and interesting point; there are combatants and non-combatants in a conflict. He cites 400 miles of tunnels under Gaza as fact; no evidence provided, no explanations. These estimates come from Israel which reported it to the media, who repeat without analysis.

Spencer says that Hamas wants civilians killed to win the PR war, thus dehumanising Palestinians as brutal savages. More of that later. He mentions combatants and non-combatants in the context of Palestinians. A non-combatant can become a combatant simply by assisting the war effort, merely by reporting intelligence or carrying ammunition.

But in Israel everyone is required to perform military service, so, according to Spencer, all Israelis are combatants, and hence there are no civilian hostages – they are, or were, all combatants.

Of course, that’s not the point Spencer is trying to make. He’s clearing the way to explain away the large number of “civilian” deaths. Civilians? “Do you mean combatants?”, he’s suggesting.

Israel is held to impossibly high standards we are told. Spencer really does talk like an Israeli. All of the statistics are cooked; made to make the problem look worse than it really is, and thus, he casts doubt on the civilian casualty figures.

What methods do Hamas use to report them; how do they count civilians; who is a child? Spencer plants seeds of doubt. He reminds us there has never been a war in history where an army was asked about its civilian/combatant ratio. It’s Israel which keeps telling the world what great ratios they have in that regard. One to one or worst case, two to three, combatant to civilian, the Israelis tell us. Netanyahu mentioned two to three.

If Hamas is not to blame for the civilian deaths, then Egypt is, for closing the Rafah border. And if not Egypt, then the world leaders for not telling Egypt to take the civilians in.

Why should Egypt take the Gazans? Why not America? There are 2 million civilians to fly out. At $500 per seat, that’s only a billion dollars. America has given Israel 20 billion since October 7.

That way the Palestinians know that they will be returning to Gaza – the Americans won’t want to have them permanently, so it will be a choice of keeping the 2 million or sending them back to Gaza.

That’s the sort of guarantee the Palestinians might accept.

So, how about it Spencer? Will you ask your government to bring the Palestinians to Texas? Israel doesn’t have to assure Gazans they can return. No need for a UN Resolution to guarantee the return – since when has Israel ever worried about UN Resolutions?

Spencer tells us not to worry about the body count. “This is a war. We can worry about the toll after the event”, he seems to be saying. He is making a case for a genocide or ethnic cleansing. He doesn’t seem to mind which. Why would he?

Spencer throws down a gauntlet that I will now pick up. “Israel has done more to protect civilians than any army”, Spencer asks us to challenge him on this.

Challenge accepted.

When IDF snipers bring their scope to rest upon a child’s head, and then pull the trigger, I would like to hear Spencer’s explanation for how that is “protecting civilians”. Does Spencer agree with the Israeli grand-mother who had no qualms about killing Palestinian children because “they grow up to be terrorists”?

When the IDF killed the 15 first responders, they justified it because the ambulances approached without lights. That was a lie as a video on a mobile proved. The paramedics had their hands tied behind their backs, and had been buried in shallow graves. There is evidence that one of them was alive when he was buried.

Can Spencer explain how that is “protecting civilians”?

When Hind Rajab, a 5-year old girl was surrounded, and a tank emptied 350 bullets into the car she was in. After killing Hind, they killed the first-responders who came to rescue Hind.

Let Spencer listen to 15-year old Leanne, Hind’s cousin, scream as she is killed and tell us that Israel is “protecting civilians”.

When an IDF sniper boasts that he had shot 42 knees in a single day, was he “protecting civilians” in Spencer’s opinion?

These are not the only examples, and these are not exceptional examples. Israel has a long history of killing civilians.

Spencer then tells us not to worry about civilian deaths; “no one in the history of war has been asked ‘what’s your civilian to combatant ratio’”.

This is just false. The United Nations OHCHR monitors this ratio in Ukraine as well as Gaza and Syria. The International Red Cross checks if belligerents distinguish between combatants and civilians. The Uppsala Conflict Data Program publishes data about civilian/combatant ratios from many conflicts.

Spencer suggests that Israel has a commendable record on the civilian/combatant ratio. And this also is false, as Israeli military’s own data shows the ratio of civilian to combatant is 4:1, one of the highest in modern conflicts, exceeded only by Rwanda, Srebrenica and the Russian siege of Mariupol.

And no one is asking Israel about the civilian to combatant ratio – it is Israel that continues to brag that it has the best ratio of any conflict; 2 to 3 is what Netanyahu mentioned.

Spencer does not trust the Gaza Health Authority casualty numbers, but historically they have proven to be correct. We are not told why the numbers are not to be trusted this time round. We know that Israel itself uses the Gaza Health Authority numbers. But Spencer does not trust them without telling us why.

He calls the estimated 20,000 children killed in Gaza “a lie”. Again, without explaining why. Spencer claims that the Ministry of Health numbers are “methodologically, statistically and data-centrically” wrong. Perhaps he bases that on the Henry Jackson Society’s report: Questionable Counting – Hamas. But he HJS is hardly an unbiased party.

Independent analyses by reputable institutions such as the John Hopkins University and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine have corroborated that the methodology is sound and the numbers accurate.

But we should accept Spencer’s analysis because he is an “expert” who has written three books, right?

Here is a dataset with a list of those killed in Gaza, as of 31 July 2025. The list provides the names and date of birth, from which I selected all those aged 16 and under. There are 17,193 in that group.

This list does NOT include those buried under rubble or missing; those who could not be identified; those buried by family without being sent to the hospital. Consequently, the count will be higher than the 17,193.

It is estimated that 10,000 are under the rubble. The total count in the list above is 60,000, and hence those under the rubble are 17% of that total. Assuming that the demographics of those under the rubble are the same as the list above, that would take the under-16 count up to 20,116.

Would Spencer care to explain where the statistics are “lying”? Can he identify the duplicates and the double counting? The dataset link is here.

And “what about the babies John?”.

Meh! That’s war, he tells us. Israel has done everything reasonable to prevent the death of civilians and babies.

Everything?

The IDF forced staff to evacuate al-Nasr hospital in November 2023. Doctors told the IDF that there were babies who could not be removed from their incubators and they were instructed to leave the babies – taking the children would have been a death sentence anyway. These babies were found putrefying a few weeks later in the incubators, even though the IDF was aware of their predicament.

Everything Spencer?

When IDF snipers shoot children in the head or genitals, are they doing “everything” in their power to prevent harm to civilians?

The IDF is made up of Israelis. Let’s see what Israelis think about Palestinians and how much they care about Palestinian civilians.

Here are two good Jewish boys telling us what they, and their friends, would do to Palestinians if they were given the opportunity

Here is an Israeli grand-mother, that symbol of maternal instincts, telling us what she thinks about Palestinian children being killed.

Here we have Israelis in general telling us what they think about Palestinians.

Double-tap killings. What do you have to say about that Spencer?

The President of Israel has said there are no innocents in Gaza; the Prime Minister has described them as Amalek; the Ministers in the Israeli government have openly talked about ethnically cleansing Gaza.

So, Spencer, given what we know about Israelis, what makes you so confident about the IDF doing “all they can” to prevent harm coming to Palestinian civilians?

According to Spencer, we must deny what we see and what we hear. All of that is wrong and antisemitic propaganda. We must believe Spencer. He is a military expert.

He has written three books.

Spencer tries very hard to reduce the civilian casualties, coming up with imaginative ways to absolve the IDF. “It’s a war. Whaddaya expect?”, to “Hamas kills its own civilians. 20% of its rockets misfire”.

Well, whaddaya know, Spencer, Israel kills its own also. Heard of the Hannibal Directive?

We hear about the 1200 killed on October 7. How many of those were killed by Israel itself?

Spencer poses an interesting question. Is the army “following the laws of war in distinction, necessity, proportionality?” and concludes the answer is overwhelmingly, “yes”.

“There has not been a single case that Israel has targeted civilians”.

Not a single case! Hind Rajab? Refat Areer?

One might be forgiven for thinking that John Spencer is trolling Kisin and his sidekick, so egregious are his lies.

Spencer tells us that Gaza is not the worst conflict he has studied; in Korea, he tells us, 50,000 people were being killed every month as though that justifies the casualties in Gaza, and he is offended, as a military historian, that people are shocked by the killing in Gaza. It’s almost as though he were saying “Shucks! There’s been a whole lot worse done than that”, and social media is preventing armies from doing their worst. Is that a bad thing?

Kisin and sidekick, also, seem to be more concerned about the bad PR than the massacre itself.

When Spencer described how 50,000 a month were killed in the Korean war, he seemed shockingly unmoved by those numbers, as were Kisin and Co. When America lost 3,000 on 9/11 they went on a killing spree in Iraq and Afghanistan that continues to this day, one way or another; the Americans had to kill millions to assuage their shock over 9/11 – but the killing of 50,000 Koreans every month seemed not to faze Spencer – nor Kisin, nor Foster.

It’s no bad thing to have war live-streamed on social media – perhaps Korea and Vietnam might not have suffered as much had the American public been aware of the brutality of the assault on civilians in those countries. And perhaps Kissinger would have been behind bars rather than given a Nobel Prize for Peace.

It was a revelation to see Spencer deny that aid had been paused for 3 months. No, it was 11 weeks, Spencer objects. When someone quibbles about one week in a war crime, you know they are on the side of the criminal.

It’s not clear where the figure of 25,000 aid trucks in 11-weeks comes from; Spencer seems to conjure it out of thin air. For someone so hung-up about facts he is not very transparent when it comes to sharing his sources for the “facts” he quotes. He most likely took the figure quoted in the New York Times of around 4,200 trucks per week, giving 600 trucks per day and multiplied that by 42 days, giving 25,200. So, we now understand where the 25,000 comes from.

But the rate of 600 trucks per day was not maintained. The UN reported that between 19 January and 1 March about 10,000 trucks entered Gaza – compared to the 25,000 quoted by Spencer.

Spencer loves the long-form podcasts because he can talk about the issues. “Let’s talk about it”, he enthuses. “Not only did 25,000 trucks of aid get through…”.

But they didn’t. You say they did. You tell us they did. But an assertion without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

Spencer proves himself to be a shill for Israel here. He accuses Hamas of taking the aid and profiteering from it.

John McCain was a “stalwart friend of the pro-Israel community”, AIPAC announced to the world. Cindy McCain, widow of John, and Director of the World Food Program completely dismissed Israel’s claims that Hamas was stealing the aid. So much for our military expert.

Jake Wood resigned as Executive Director of the Gaza Humanitarian Program because he considered the initiative to be anything but humanitarian. The GHF has been criticised by the UN and many other aid groups for violating humanitarian principles. But our author of “three books”, John Spencer knows better and enthuses about the GHF.

Spencer praises Israel’s plan to get the aid to the people. And Hamas did warn Gazans not to cooperate with the GHF, describing the Foundation as a security risk to Gazans.

That plan has resulted in more than 1,000 people being killed by the IDF and the GHF contractors in a matter of weeks.

So much for our expert. And Hamas were not wrong about the security risks.

Spencer says that Hamas caused the chaos that led to the deaths. The reality is that Israel set complex rules about receiving the aid – with a tiny window in which to collect the aid; restrictions about where the Gazans were allowed to move, often having to go through no-go zones to get to the four aid centres provided. It was not Hamas but Israel’s rules that caused the chaos.

When four-hundred distribution centres are reduced to just four, there will be chaos.

So much for our military expert who cannot see the effects of going down from 400 to just 4 distribution sites.

Spencer states that not only did Israel provide food, but it also provided medical supplies, field hospitals, water pipes. Can he then explain why Israel prevented the entry of baby formula into Gaza?

Apparently, Gaza is being “flooded” with food now. This is not unlike Netanyahu’s claim that Israel has delivered 20 million tonnes of food to the Gazans, which would translate to 2kg of food for every Gazan since October 7, every day! This is double what an average person needs.

Israel lies and lies and lies. As does our military expert and author of “three books”.

Spencer says, “I don't attack people. I attack veracity of statements”.

Well, I do attack people when they act in bad faith. To boot, the veracity of his statements is dubious at best. Spencer has not backed his statements with any evidence. Claims made without evidence deserve to be dismissed without evidence.

Spencer claims that the goals have not changed: Number one - return the hostages. This is demonstrable bunk!

Israel has returned 200 hostages? Israel has?

Israel broke the ceasefire that was returning the hostages. That was by having a ceasefire.

Israel has killed more of its own hostages than it has rescued.

Spencer seems to be quite proud of that record.

Netanyahu does not want the hostages. It’s his strategy of surviving the war.

Israel is losing the war. There are growing numbers of refuseniks in Israel. IDF personnel are burnt out; suicide amongst IDF soldiers is increasing; mental illness increasing. The IDF is begging Netanyahu to accept a new hostage deal. Netanyahu is not interested.

Israel does not care for hostages – it would prefer them dead. That is the Hannibal Directive which the defence minister confirmed was ordered on October 7.

Goal number two is to dismantle Hamas.

“Israel has to remove Hamas from power”, says our expert. How do you remove an idea?

America went after the Taliban after 9/11. Two decades and a TRILLION dollars later, America left Afghanistan with the Taliban still in power.

This military expert thinks Israel will remove Hamas? He is either a propagandist for Israel or an idiot – possibly both.

This military expert makes the facts fit his prejudices. Israel was successful in defeating Hezbollah because Lebanon is a pluralistic society and Israel was able to infiltrate the group easily. Gaza is different; more uniform, making it harder to penetrate.

Bunk! Who is cooperating with the GHF right now, if not criminals from Gaza? Israel seems to have found collaborators very easily in Gaza. Israel even managed to recruit the son of a Hamas co-founder.

From defeating Hezbollah, the expert downgrades Israel’s success to merely defang-ing.

Spencer needs to brush up on his history of the Middle East. He thinks that in 1967 three Arab armies attacked Israel. Menachim Begin knew otherwise: “The Egyptian army concentration did not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.”

What sort of a historian is this expert? At one point he asks, “What nation has come to Israel’s aid?”

This is risible.

Without America Israel would be finished. It would have been finished long ago.

America has provided all of the munitions. Had America not kept up the supply, Israel would have run out of ammunition by November 2023. But it’s not just America.

Jordan, France and America helped defend Israel from the missile and drone attacks when Iran responded to the Israeli attack on its consulate in Damascus.

Germany has been providing arms.

Britain has been flying reconnaissance flights over Gaza, more than 600 so far, to provide Israel with intelligence.

Diplomatically, settler-colonialist countries like Canada, America, Germany, Britain, Australia, France, Holland have all been providing cover for Israel.

In the entire discussion, the elephant in the room, the occupation, is never addressed. The regular “mowing of the lawn”; the brutal check-points; the daily raids on homes in the middle of the night; the murders by settlers; the stealing of land; the stealing of homes; the apartheid; the “administrative detentions”.

October 7 happened for a reason. It will continue to happen until the brutality of the Israelis is addressed by the International Community – especially America.

America’s Ambassador to Israel belongs to a cult; Hagee doesn’t even believe in a Palestine.

John Spencer is an Israeli propagandist. Triggernometry may as well have spoken to Eylon Levy.

Finally, to conclude with John Spencer’s words: “In god I trust – everyone else, bring data”.

If only he followed his own advice, and brought us facts that stood up to scrutiny.