Lt. Col. Conricus to TML: In Gaza, ‘Hardly a House That Doesn’t Have an Entrance to a Tunnel, Shaft, or Weapons’
In an in-depth interview, the ex-IDF spokesman reveals the challenges Israel faces in Gaza, including the search for bodies of hostages killed in captivity, emphasizing the entanglement of civilian infrastructure with Hamas' operations
Just back from reserve duty, Lt. Col. (res.) Jonathan Conricus, the international spokesperson for the Israel Defense and Security Forum and former international spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), gave a candid interview to The Media Line on the sidelines of the Israel Defense Conference 2024.
Conricus outlined the challenges faced by Israel. Despite substantial casualties, he affirmed the IDF’s on-the-ground efficiency and its progress in countering threats. He underscored the difficulties posed by Hamas’ use of civilian structures in Gaza for military purposes, complicating Israeli military efforts.
Among the challenges he described was the “not visually pleasing, and quite unsettling” job of searching cemeteries in the Gaza Strip for the bodies of Israeli hostages.
Conricus also addressed the weakened operational capacity of Hamas, emphasizing the crucial role of international media narratives in the conflict. Some in the media, he charged, were attempting to drive a wedge between Israel and the United States. He highlighted the necessity of a decisive and clear response to terrorism, concluding his remarks by emphasizing the resilience and spirit of the Israeli people in challenging times.
TML: Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, you’ve become an international phenomenon since the war began. Now, more than 100 days into the war, many would say that Israel is not faring that well, with so many soldiers wounded. What do you say?
Lt. Col. Conricus: I say these are two different things. There’s the reality on the ground, then there’s virtual reality and, essentially, the battle of the narrative and anything that’s out in the public domain. I would say that on the ground, despite the very heavy casualties that you mentioned, and of course every lost or wounded soldier is a tremendous tragedy for the people of Israel and for our nation, we are in mourning for that. But despite that, I think the IDF is doing a very good job on the ground, making advances and defeating the enemy, step by step in Gaza, and readying itself for the next stages that may or may not come up north.
TML: Can you paint a picture of the largesse of weapons, the cache of weapons, that have been found since October 7 began? Because many of those weapons also came in then.
Lt. Col. Conricus: You know, when you look at the Gaza Strip, a civilian who never went there, if you see a picture of it or a video of it, you see houses, but now there’s a lot of destruction there. What you cannot see is the underground facilities under the houses. But you also cannot see the amount of weapons and explosives that were hidden in ordinary houses. The Israeli troops, who are now on more search and destroy kind of missions, are going through areas where there is already very little enemy activity, are going through and making sure to dismantle all of the infrastructure, the weapons, and the rocket launchers, etc. There’s hardly a house that our troops go to that doesn’t have either an entrance to a tunnel, a shaft, or weapons that are stocked inside, or explosives, or where they are manufacturing weapons, or it’s a hideout for terrorist activity, or any of the above combined. And it’s pervasive all across the Gaza Strip. We see the same thing in schools, in hospitals, in mosques, in other sensitive humanitarian locations, and I think it’s really amazing and unprecedented in the history of warfare to have such a closely enmeshed enemy that is totally embedded within the civilian infrastructure. Nothing in Gaza is detached from Hamas. Almost every building in Gaza is connected or used in some way or another by Hamas for its elicit military activities.
TML: And yet Hamas is still operating and rockets are still flying. And Hamas is still confiscating what many are saying is the humanitarian aid. What do you attribute that strength to?
Lt. Col. Conricus: You can divide that into two parts. We are now 3.5 almost four days since the last rocket was fired into southern Israel. There haven’t been any alarms. There have been alarms up north, but in the south, Hamas has not been able to fire rockets. That of course is a temporary situation, but I think it is indicative of Hamas to be able to conduct operations. There are still terrorists in Gaza. They still conduct skirmishes and low-level attacks against Israeli troops, sadly, that have caused significant casualties as well. But at the end of the day, as a fighting organization, with commander control, logistics, and an ability to run operations, Hamas has been greatly diminished, specifically in the northern part of the Gaza Strip and is being diminished as we are speaking in the south. And I say that they are still a potent enemy but that everywhere that there is an encounter between Israeli soldiers and Hamas terrorists, it ends with dead terrorists, sometimes with Israeli casualties as well, but it ends with defeated Hamas terrorists. It’s a matter of time, resolve and resources in order to get the job done.
Speaking with Israeli officers on the ground and speaking with Israeli civilians, I hear a very good message of stamina, of resolve, and yes, we need to get the job done, we mustn’t stop, we mustn’t get our focus blurred, and we have to stay the course and making sure that Israeli civilians can go back to their homes that they were forced out of on October 7, to go back and live there safely, rebuild those communities. I personally want to hear the beautiful sound of Israeli kids playing in their backyards in Kibbutz Be’eri, Nahal Oz and Sderot. That’s what I want to hear, and when I’ll hear it, I’ll know that we are one step closer to victory.
TML: So much has happened since October 7, and if you look at how the outside world looks at today at what’s happening, they’re also looking at Israel as not as united as that first interview you and I did at the beginning of the war. Does politics drive the decision of the army or is it the other way around?
Lt. Col. Conricus: It’s always a discourse between the political level and the military level. The military is tasked by the elected government to perform a task, and then the military gives feedback on different courses of action, and what the different effects may be. I don’t think the IDF is doing anything that it shouldn’t be doing. There’s a very good discourse between the political and military level. And so far, it looks as if the government and the cabinet have the staying power and the stamina to allow the IDF and to facilitate it for the IDF the diplomatic conditions and international support to allow the IDF to continue with the mission of making sure that Hamas is dismantled and totally defeated. The job of the IDF is to fight on the ground together with the ISA and the Shabak to defeat the enemy, and the job of the enemy and the cabinet is to make sure that those conditions are available and that the IDF has the spare parts, the munitions, and the international support and the diplomatic legitimacy to continue to do that. And so far, I think that all systems are operating, not flawlessly but all systems are operating, and the IDF continues to defeat Hamas.
TML: Lt. Col. Conricus, you are not in the reserves at this moment, so I can ask that question a little differently, what if it doesn’t continue. What can be the outcome?
Lt. Col. Conricus: We’re at the conference today, which focuses exactly on that. On staying the course, and messaging to elected officials in Israel that the Israeli public or very large parts of the Israeli public, we cannot expect to represent everyone here, but there is a very strong and united and proud voice that says that this is what the people in Israel understand needs to be done, and that the government should hear that and stay the course and do it. If not, I think that the consequences could be very very dire. Because all of the terrorist organizations around us are watching and assessing our every step.
If Hizbullah in Lebanon and if Iranian proxies in Syria and other terrorist organizations in the Middle East see that Hamas did the most violent attack against Israeli civilians and took 240 Israelis hostage and murdered and pillaged and butchered and raped and executed and then got away with it to live and see another day, I think that would be a terrible message for the state of Israel to send to such a violent environment. The message needs to be: if you have the audacity and the cruelty to do this to Israeli civilians, your fate will be violent and it will be short and you will be by the end of that process, you will be dead. That is the message that Israel needs to send, not because we are a warmongering nation; we are a peace-loving nation. We want to live in peace, in security, behind our internationally recognized borders, but we understand that the way for our enemies to respect us is by showing that if you wrong us in such a horrible way like Hamas did on October 7, you will face the most severe of consequences.
TML: There have been reports and videos that have been out through international media showing that Israel has gone into cemeteries and that they are plowing through graves and turning over graves and bodies and there is deep footage on this. What do you say to that?
Lt. Col. Conricus: So I agree that the footage, the visuals, aren’t good. One reason why, to my understanding, the IDF is using heavy equipment is because of the fear of things being booby trapped. Hamas took 240 Israelis hostage. Since then, 110 days, Israel has been searching for live hostages and then the bodies of, unfortunately, dead hostages. We saw that in Shifa, when Israeli troops went into Shifa, went through the morgue and the storage facilities where they were keeping bodies in cool conditions, and Israeli forensic people went through and verified that the corpses that were there were not Israeli hostages. And what is happening in other parts of Gaza is, how should we say it, not visually pleasing, and quite unsettling images, and I’m sure that the soldiers are not happy that they need to do it, but what Israel is doing is looking for our hostages. Looking for bodies of hostages.
TML: Dead bodies, you mean.
Lt. Col. Conricus: Indeed. Looking for bodies of hostages that were killed and then disposed of, hidden and buried in places where you bury people, and that is mostly graveyards. And then trying to identify them. The purpose here is to bring closure to Israeli families. To bring bodies of hostages back to Israel so that their families can bury them and at least get some kind of minimal comfort in knowing where their loved ones are, sadly, even if they are dead. You know, it’s sad, but instead of talking about this part of the story, which is really the story, so much of the focus is on one part of the activity, a bulldozer going through a graveyard. I agree it doesn’t look good. But I don’t know how else it could be done, knowing that Hamas booby traps bodies. Knowing that Hamas knows that Israel is going to be looking for bodies. So, it’s a double-known situation here. So, therefore, the IDF has to be careful when it approaches those areas. And instead of telling the story of Israeli soldiers being forced to do a lot of heavy lifting in order to find bodies of hostages to bring them home for burial, the story is Israel is desecrating graveyards, which I think is very unfortunate and a very shallow way of looking at it. And at the end of the day, sadly, this is the reality that Hamas forced upon us, upon Israeli families. There are 136 families that are still waiting for their loved ones more than 110 days after. And there are many who know that their loved ones are unfortunately dead. And that is part of the mission of the IDF, to bring back people alive, and if they fail to bring back people alive, to bring back the bodies for a proper burial.
TML: The gamebook of war and the international criminal courts may not see eye to eye with the way you and other Israeli echelon might see it, then how do you juggle knowing that these are major problems that can face Israel as the war continues and even as the war ends?
Lt. Col. Conricus: We have to be clear about what we’re doing. We have to say and explain just as I did now what are the actions that we’re taking, why we’re taking them, and I think the only thing that we need to be doing a little bit better is to preempt, to announce while this is happening, while the bulldozers are there, while our soldiers are looking for bodies, just to come out and say it. Because if you come out and say it and explain to the world what’s going on, then it gives our adversaries and haters around the world when they control the airwaves to when they get an opportunity to frame an event and frame it negatively towards Israel. And I think that what we should be doing is – what Israel should be doing – is to be a little bit faster and to preempt the possibly negative press that will come out of different activities. War is horrible and ugly in any sense. War is never beautiful. It’s the worst human endeavor ever. So it always looks bad. But if you come out and explain what you’re doing, then you have a better chance of at least denying your enemy the ability to manipulate it and use it for their purposes, and I hope that the state of Israel will improve slightly on that.
TML: The political arena is not the same today as it was at the beginning of the war. You see that a lot of the Democratic senators signed on to an Amendment, 49 to 51 that they would want to see a two-state solution through negotiations. It isn’t necessarily parallel to how Israelis are seeing the picture the day after. Knowing that Israel needs America, and needs the support militarily, and of course through the purchase of weapons, how do you see this playing out?
Lt. Col. Conricus: I see a lot of support in Congress. I see tremendous material support from the US approved by Congress and the Senate being sent to Israel, and I see very clear messages not in the media but more so in direct channels with US officials and Israeli officials. ‘Get the job done, we’ve got your back. Finish Hamas. Try not to kill non-combatants, but get the job done.’ That’s the essence of the message I’m getting behind closed doors.
In the media, I think there are many journalists and editors who have a certain agenda that they’re promoting. And they keep on asking these questions, about the two-state solution and about political issues and trying to drive a wedge between Israel and the US. And in some cases, it has an effect, because if a secretary is asked a question 10 times, maybe on the tenth time, a part of an answer will slip and then that part of the answer will be amplified, saying, ‘well, this is the official answer of the US.’ I don’t think that’s the case. I think there’s tremendous support – institutional support – and that there’s tremendous popular support this is supported by polling, recent polls in the US as well. Tremendous institutional and popular support as well for Israel’s plight, for Israel’s need to defeat Hamas in order to secure security for itself, and I’m not overly concerned, but of course, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Prime Minister’s Office, they still need to work very hard in order to communicate that above board and below board and to get the messaging and the information out there, and explain what Israel’s perspective is.
I personally don’t think that talking about the two-state solution now is really relevant. I would love for there to be a situation where my children and grandchildren won’t grow up with an active Palestinian and Israeli conflict. Today, with Hamas being such a dominant part of the Palestinian political landscape, and dominating the general vector of how they want to solve the conflict, their solution is no existence of Israel. That’s how Hamas thinks about solving the issue. I don’t think that we’re there and I don’t think that it’s relevant. I think it’s a bit tone deaf to be repeating two-state solution today when we are so far from it, and especially when the Palestinian side is, I’d say, not even close to talking about acknowledging the right of Israel to exist, for us to live here, in our sovereign homeland, and the homeland of the Jewish people. I just don’t see it happening, and therefore I think it’s a bit tone deaf.
TML: Brigadier General Avivi really feels like there could be an all-out war with Hizbullah. What does that look like? You have soldiers that are exhausted. Soldiers being sent home that could be brought back in. It’s going to be a far larger, more dangerous war more than one can even imagine. So, what do you think will be the outcome of a war of that largesse?
Lt. Col. Conricus: Much larger than a war with Hamas. But the fighting spirit of the IDF is high. Reservists who are going home and units that are going out for R&R are basically saying one thing to their commanders: let me get back in and let’s finish the job. And I think that is indicative of where their level of stamina and commitment is. Hizbullah is a different enemy. A much more powerful enemy and a much better equipped enemy that has a direct state sponsor, Iran, and that operates in a terrain that is very challenging and larger, much larger than the Gaza Strip. But Hizbullah also has a lot of weaknesses. They are accountable for what they do. They are accountable to the Lebanese public for the destruction that they will bring to Lebanon if they launch a war against Israel. And they know that. And on one hand, the damage and destruction in Israel would be far more significant than it is today fighting Hamas, but at the end of the day, Israel will overcome it. There will be damage and probably lots of casualties, but Israel will overcome it. I’m not sure that Lebanon will. And I think that Hizbullah is aware of this. Hassan Nasrallah is aware of it, and it’s part of their calculations. So far, Hamas has done everything but throw the kitchen sink at Hizbullah, pleading with them ‘please join in the battle,’ and Hizbullah for their decisions has decided not to at the real escalatory level. They’ve been firing and doing things but they have decided not yet to. And I think part of that is because they also understand the consequences.
Israel isn’t happy to open a war against Hizbullah but if Israel won’t have a choice then I think that is what Israel will have to do.
TML: World shipping has been impacted. People sitting in Utah and other parts of the United States didn’t know what Yemen was and here we are when ships are targeted but mainly because they’re trying to target Israeli ships but not exclusively. And here you have Iran’s proxy again working against the state of Israel.
Lt. Col. Conricus: You have masks coming off. That’s what’s happening. You have Houthis. Some in the media still calling them Houthi rebels, rebels against what exactly? Houthi terrorists who are operating at the behest of the Islamic Republic of Iran, executing their foreign policy, and trying to choke and apply diplomatic and financial pressure on Israel, but I think that they are doing themselves a tremendous disservice because they are exposing to the world, even to people who don’t want to believe it, or who are reluctant to understand reality, and the link between the Houthis and the Iranians is apparent and clear for everyone in the world to see. And the fact that the Houthis are willing to at the behest of Iran to impede global traffic and the flow of goods, I think it’s a tremendous thing, and I think they are showing exactly why they are there and what their real priorities are. This isn’t about Israel. You know the Houthi flag starts with “Allahu Akhbar” and then the second line is “Death to America.” Then it’s “Death to Israel,” “Curse be the Jews” and then “Victory to Islam.” But it’s first “Death to America.” And that needs to be remembered. That is their focus and they are serving Iranian purposes, and what is happening now is that masks are coming off and people around the world can see the types of organizations and enemies that Israel is facing.
TML: International spokesman for the state of Israel and its army, what is the one message that you feel that wasn’t getting out that if you had to look at all the interviews you’ve done throughout the war, what is the message?
Lt. Col. Conricus: The beauty of the people of Israel. Because speaking on behalf of the military, you hardly get the chance to show people. It’s always this olive-green mass of either vehicles, tanks, or its planes in the air or its equipment. But there’s never the bandwidth of the ability to look at people. And I think that what I fought for and am really proud to represent is the people of Israel who despite everything that we’re facing, despite the tremendous attacks on October 7, and the failure and the humiliation, and the hardship that they’re going through, people are strong, people are resolute, people are coming together, showing beautiful signs of unity, and most importantly, stamina, steadfastness and an ability to withstand significant challenges and keep their mind on the job and continue to fight until the fighting is over. And I think that would be great if that was more part of the coverage.
I understand that international news focuses on the news. And that so many times, the other side is given a human face, is given a human story. And for viewers around the world, it’s difficult to relate to a military, a big guy in uniform or a tank driving by. It’s easier to relate to a person, to a woman, to a child, to a grieving father. And I think that the Israeli story isn’t getting enough human bandwidth, and that would be great if that was different.
TML: So as a family man going into Gaza, what was the one thing that struck you that you can’t sleep at night thinking about?
Lt. Col. Conricus: Hostages. That is what kept me preoccupied and I don’t know how the families are able to continue to function and live. It must be overwhelmingly difficult and I can’t even imagine what they’re going through. But going into Gaza and speaking with soldiers there, they were from Special Forces, and one of their assignments was to find either clues or traces of or actually to go and rescue hostages. They were going into Shifa hospital and there was intel that hostages may be held under Shifa and we had intel that they were taken to Shifa before and were given medical treatment inside Shifa by the terrorists, and many of the soldiers were saying very excitedly that ‘maybe, god willing, I’ll have a chance at saving a hostage.’ They understand what a tremendous thing that would be to bring back a hostage. Sadly, that has not yet happened. And we have not yet – Israel has not yet succeeded in bringing home our people.
TML: Why? Why?
Lt. Col. Conricus: I think that the level of effort that Hamas has taken in order to make it almost impossible to tactically kinetically speaking, creating a very difficult situation, but that hasn’t caused the IDF not to try. The IDF is trying as we speak to collect intelligence but also to find where they are and get them out. And I’m still hopeful that they will be able to.
TML: Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, thank you for joining me at The Media Line.
Lt. Col. Conricus: Thank you.
