Was the raid "pointless"?
Christ if they couldn't even maintain their offensive for one day and are already retreating they are beyond fucked.
This was fucking pointless.
I hate Hamas too, but let's not engage in cope.
This was their biggest victory yet:
- They successfully killed 250+ Jews.
- They successfully terrified millions of Jews.
- They successfully humiliated the IDF and Israeli intelligence agencies.
- They successfully took hostages.
Holding territory was obviously never the goal, and it didn't need to be.
So it makes no sense to declare the raid pointless for not doing that.
The tactical value of the hostages
The value of the hostages, in particular, is IMO wildly underestimated by kiwis ITT.
Member'
Gilad Shalit? The young IDF recruit who was kidnapped by Hamas in a border raid in 2006?
For
years Israel was trying to get him back, to the extent that it dominated and hamstrung Israel's policy towards Gaza.
Eventually, Israel agreed to release a
fuckton of captured unrepentant terrorists to get Gilad back in history's most lopsided prisoner swap.
And this time Hamas doesn't have
one measly recruit; they apparently kidnapped higher-ranking officers as well as a whole bunch of civilians.
Israel is, like all Western countries, a Libtard Democracy, where politicians have to dance to the media's tune.
And crying family members of kidnapping victims going on TV to beg their government to bring the victims home safely, make it
very, very hard for said government to do what needs doing in a war.
Sure, the Israeli government is talking tough now, and promising to eradicate Hamas once and for all.
But in the coming days/weeks I think we might see them cucking over the hostages.
I think in the end, the current "war" will just end up being another round of pro-forma striking military targets in Gaza, that hurt Hamas but fail to remove Hamas from power - like all the past Israeli military operations into Gaza.