20-30%? Wait the f-ck a minute. Are you telling me that Israel has destroyed an entire City of 2 million people (half of which are children), destroyed the lives of every one of those innocent inhabitants, turned world public opinion squarely against the Jews and Hamas is largely intact?
Of course, the folks who engineered the Oct 7th attack, paid for Hamas's weapons, and tunnels, Iran has been left completely alone, while they fund the Houthi Rebels to disrupt global shipping. And Iran has 5-6 other terrorist groups they fund ready to jump in and take over for Hamas at the drop of a hat.
This sound good to you? Of course, Israel's right-wing supporters say, "we had no choice...we'd do it again". Really? How about not f-cking up next time? You had lots of choices that wouldn't result in war crimes and alienation of your new Sunni Arab allies (like Saudi Arabia). Your fight is to join hands with every other Arab state against Iran...is that too complicated for you?
You don't need military aid from Joe Biden, you need the US to provide guarantees to China that we'll provide them fossil fuel, so they stop buying Iranian Oil and funding terrorism in the region.
Then again Bibi and his right-wing coalition have sh-t for brains and are desperate to stay in power. They care only for themselves. Pond scum.
Hamas Toll Thus Far Falls Short of Israel’s War Aims, U.S. Says
First known U.S. estimate of Hamas’s death toll shows the group’s resilience after months of war
By Nancy A. Youssef in Washington, Jared Malsin in Istanbul and Carrie Keller-Lynn in Tel Aviv, WSJ
Updated Jan. 21, 2024
Israeli forces have killed 20% to 30% of Hamas’s fighters, U.S. intelligence agencies estimate, a toll that falls short so far of Israel’s goal of destroying the group and shows its resilience after months of war that have laid swaths of the Gaza Strip to ruin.
The U.S. estimate of the group’s casualties also found that Hamas still has enough munitions to continue striking Israel and Israeli forces in Gaza for months, and that the group is attempting to reconstitute its police force in parts of Gaza City, according to U.S. officials who confirmed a classified report.
Israeli officials have conceded that, despite an aggressive air and ground campaign inside Gaza that has killed thousands of civilians, they haven’t achieved their goal of destroying Hamas, which has run Gaza since ousting the Palestinian Authority in 2007. The group’s fighters have adjusted their tactics, operating in smaller groups and hiding between ambushes on Israeli troops, while individual fighters are likely taking on more tasks to pick up the slack from their dead comrades, military analysts said.
Israel has withdrawn thousands of troops from Gaza following pressure from the U.S. to transition to a more surgical phase of its war against Hamas, but military officials say the war could continue for many more months. Hamas’s survival has raised questions within Israel, the Palestinian territories and abroad about whether Israel can achieve its war aims.
Israel’s missile-defense system intercepts rockets launched from the Gaza Strip, as seen last month from Ashkelon, Israel.
Meanwhile, Biden administration officials have begun to scale down their expectations for the war, to Hamas’s degradation as a security threat from its utter destruction. And the U.S. has urged Israel to shift the war toward more targeted operations aimed at Hamas’s leadership.
Though Hamas has suffered thousands of casualties, according to U.S. and Israeli assessments, it aims simply to survive this conflict, current and former Israeli military officials said.
“You don’t have to win, you just have to not lose,” a senior Israeli military official said of Hamas’s goal.
‘Two or three jobs’ for surviving fighters
Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel killed more than 1,200 people, mainly civilians, and took more than 200 others hostage. It prompted Israel to attempt for the first time to uproot the group entirely and eliminate it as a threat. Before that, most Israeli and American officials and analysts regarded the group as posing a manageable threat to Israel.
The war has killed more than 24,000 Palestinians, of whom about one-third are men, according to Palestinian health officials. Some 1.9 million Gazans, about 85% of the population of Gaza, have fled their homes, according to the United Nations’ humanitarian affairs office.
The Palestinian health ministry’s figures don’t distinguish between combatants and civilians. Hamas has denied that its forces have suffered heavy losses, without giving specific numbers of how many of its fighters have been killed.
The U.S. estimated that the group, an American-designated terrorist organization, had between 25,000 and 30,000 fighters before the war in addition to thousands of police and other forces. Israel also estimated the group had 30,000 or more militants.
The U.S. estimate, included in a classified report earlier this month, was drawn from intercepted communications, analysis of the ruins in Gaza, drone surveillance of the territory, and intelligence provided by the Israelis.
The Israeli military has a slightly higher estimate: It has estimated that it has killed about 9,000 Hamas fighters in Gaza since the war began along with more than 1,000 during the Oct. 7 attack, amounting to about 30% of the group’s total fighting force. And Israel’s assessment of the number of wounded Hamas fighters taken permanently out of the fight is much higher than the U.S.’s.
How long do you think Hamas can continue to fight? Join the conversation below.
Israeli officials estimate that as many as 16,000 Hamas fighters have been wounded and that about half of those won’t return to the battlefield, according to a senior Israeli military official. The U.S. estimates between 10,500 and 11,700 militants have been wounded, said a U.S. official familiar with the assessment, and that many of those could eventually return to the battlefield.
About 190 Israeli soldiers have died in Gaza since the start of Israel’s ground campaign, with around 1,200 wounded, according to the Israel Defense Forces.
In U.S. military doctrine, a conventional force that loses 25%-30% of its fighters would be considered combat-ineffective. But Hamas is an irregular force fighting a defensive war in a dense urban environment and has access to hundreds of miles of tunnels under Gaza. It has shown that it can still fight, but the losses “continue to put more pressure on Hamas’s network,” said retired Army Gen. Joseph Votel, who commanded U.S. military operations in the Middle East.
“One person might now have to do two or three jobs,” he said.
A spokeswoman for the U.S.’s Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment. The Israeli military restated its own estimated death toll for Hamas and declined to elaborate. Hamas didn’t respond to a request for comment.
In another sign of the group’s resilience, in the north, where much of Gaza City and other areas have been destroyed by Israeli airstrikes and fighting, Hamas is attempting to reassert its authority by putting small groups of police and emergency services to patrol the streets, according to Israeli officials and Palestinian residents. Residents in Gaza City said the police presence was minimal and that the city is still largely devoid of civil order.
Earlier this week, Hamas fired a barrage of rockets into Israel from an area of central Gaza where Israeli forces had been operating a day earlier, highlighting concerns by some in Israel that Hamas will simply reassert itself in any areas not controlled by Israeli forces.
Hamas authorities tied to Gaza’s Interior Ministry have returned to Gaza City, said an Israeli military officer, including to areas previously held by the Israeli military, which completed a significant force drawdown earlier this month.
“It’s only a matter of time if Israel will not be boots on the ground in these places and that they will also bring back the military wing,” said Michael Milshtein, a former head of Palestinian affairs for Israeli military intelligence.
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