Expert Ronen Bergman discusses the impact of Mohammed Deif's likely death on Hamas and Israel's conflict. Deif's role in Hamas's transformation, Israel's failed assassination attempts, and the challenges of confirming his death. Bergman's insight on Hamas without Deif, ceasefire negotiations, and the strategic implications of Deif's demise.
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insights INSIGHT
Precision Strike On A High-Value Target
Israel executed a precision strike on a Hamas senior-leader compound using multiple bunker-busters to ensure the target was killed.
Ronen Bergman says intelligence signs increasingly point to Mohammed Deif being killed in that strike.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Lesson From The Yassin Assassination Attempt
Bergman recounts a 2003 failed attempt on Ahmed Yassin where a smaller munition allowed the target to survive.
He uses that story to explain why Israel now uses much larger bombs to ensure elimination of senior targets.
insights INSIGHT
Deif As The Shadow Architect
Mohammed Deif was a long-serving, clandestine military mastermind who rarely appeared publicly and cultivated a mythic status.
Bergman emphasizes Deif's central role in building Hamas's military capacity and planning major attacks including October 7.
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Who is Mohammed Deif?
Why does he matter (or why did he matter?)
Is he dead?
We have often said on this podcast that Hamas long ago transformed from a ragtag militia to the equivalent of a light infantry army of a sovereign state. The architect of that transformation was Mohammed Deif. If Hamas was a terror army, its commanding general or army chief of staff was Mohammed Deif. The second intifada? Deif was central to its planning and execution. Its tunnel system and rocket arsenal? All that, too, was Deif. And October 7th? Mohammed Deif.
Israel had been on the hunt for Deif long before October 7th. In fact, he had escaped at least seven assasination attempts going back to 2001.
Today he is most likely dead, based on an extraordinary intelligence and military operation that took place on Saturday morning.
To help us understand what Hamas is, today, without Mohammed Deif, and what it means for Israel’s war against Hamas – and for the hostage and ceasefire negotiations – we are joined by Ronen Bergman, who is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine and Senior Correspondent for Military and Intelligence Affairs for Yedioth Ahronoth, an Israeli daily. Ronen recently won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on this war and the pre-war intelligence failures.
He has published numerous books —including “Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations,” and also “The Secret War with Iran."
Ronen is also a member of the Israeli bar (he clerked in the Attorney General’s Office), and has a master’s degree in international relations and a Ph.D. in history from Cambridge University.
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