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Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
Can anyone explain to me Israel's military strategy?
If their goal is to kill Hamas fighters, they are very very bad at it. High estimates from Israeli sources are running to 400 dead, and both Israeli and US sources are now saying the 10,000 estimated dead from the Gazan health folks is likely significantly low. That's a stunningly bad ratio (for example, in the battle of Mosul, the battle with the highest civilian death count during the war on terror, we killed 10,000 combatants and about 10,000 civilians died - and in that case, there were a lot of civilians killed by IS, not us).
They are now explicitly targeting both journalists and hospitals with bombs - these aren't even vaguely defensible, and is a great way to isolate themselves internationally.
They seem to have no traction on either recapturing or negotiating for the release of hostages, and have almost certainly put hostages at risk with indiscriminate bombing.
There are only two explanations I see - one is that their military just isn't very good, the other is that their strategy is something other than freeing the hostages and killing Hamas combatants.
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As to hostages, they pretty clearly have written them off as likely dead. I would say if they didn't do that they'd see more hostages? And as hostages who are citizens of other countries turn up dead Hamas will be tarnished (their hope, I do not know that will go that way).
When my daughter was in Israel during one of the flare ups there was a pre-visit group call. The people organizing her Birth Right trip were strong that Hamas or Hezbollah or whoever it was that time would not harm Americans as the fall out would be too great. This time they crossed that line, way crossed it. And the fallout has mainly been Jewish kids getting beaten on college campuses.
