Israel - Hamas war XIII

[Ran]

9 minutes ago, Hmmm said:

But military organizations usually collapse long before casualties approach 100 percent.

Been a lot of footage of surrendering men, some just civilians no doubt, but others are coming out carrying arms so are doubtless militants. On top of that, word is that the political leadership have been invited to leave Doha, that Qatar will no longer guarantee their safety, and there's suggestions that there's serious rifts now between the political leadership and the Gazan leadership under Sinwar. This could lead to intra-factional conflict on top of everything else.

As to stockpiles, they keep finding them, admittedly. The IDF published a video of what seemed like scores of explosives and guns with ammo just today, IIRC.

Re: Reuters journalist,

Very likely a fuck up by the tank crew, with some bad decision-making on the part of the journalists who seemed to think they were not in an active combat zone when the IDF was concerned that Hezbollah had infiltrated through the border. I think it's worth asking the IDF about the results of their investigation, it's been plenty long enough.

Edited December 14, 2023 by Ran

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

12 minutes ago, Hmmm said:

Early this week Israeli military officials claimed that Hamas and its allied militants groups had suffered about 20 000 casualties since the war began. 6000-7000 of which are killed.

That's in line with what I saw NBC report, around a third of the deaths have been from active Hamas combatants. The problem is a lot of them are also under 18, so Idk how you evaluate that. 
 

[mormont]

I would treat any IDF estimate of Hamas deaths with extreme caution, and that's the polite way to say it.

Of course, Hamas won't give any sort of reliable figure either. So the blunt truth is that we will never actually know how many Hamas combatants were killed in this operation.

[Hmmm]

58 minutes ago, Ran said:

Been a lot of footage of surrendering men, some just civilians no doubt, but others are coming out carrying arms so are doubtless militants. On top of that, word is that the political leadership have been invited to leave Doha, that Qatar will no longer guarantee their safety, and there's suggestions that there's serious rifts now between the political leadership and the Gazan leadership under Sinwar. This could lead to intra-factional conflict on top of everything else.

As to stockpiles, they keep finding them, admittedly. The IDF published a video of what seemed like scores of explosives and guns with ammo just today, IIRC.

Re: Reuters journalist,

Very likely a fuck up by the tank crew, with some bad decision-making on the part of the journalists who seemed to think they were not in an active combat zone when the IDF was concerned that Hezbollah had infiltrated through the border. I think it's worth asking the IDF about the results of their investigation, it's been plenty long enough.

Yeah, it does seem like the rate of militants who are surrendering has picked up recently. 

Another important factor, that admittedly is very hard to judge while being an outsider like this, is to which extent Hamas and its allies are able to rotate their troops. If they can do so at all. 

The IDF definitely can, considering that they have hundreds of thousands of troops mobilized and probably only some tens of thousands inside the Gaza Strip at any given point in time. But Hamas? I think the odds are pretty high that most of their combat units, particularly the ones that are any good, have to be kept in the fire pretty much the entire time just to keep everything from collapsing. 

The problem with that is that there is only so long that troops can go with like 3 hours of sleep per night, (if they get any at all) and the physical and mental stress of combat, before their combat value collapses. I think most Western militaries want to be able to rotate a unit after 2-3 weeks of combat. Maybe it was not a coincidence that the first humanitarian ceasefire came about 3 weeks after the IDF's ground invasion started?

 

30 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

That's in line with what I saw NBC report, around a third of the deaths have been from active Hamas combatants. The problem is a lot of them are also under 18, so Idk how you evaluate that. 
 

Indeed. It is tragic. 

Edited December 14, 2023 by Hmmm

[Kalbear]

39 minutes ago, Hmmm said:

Early this week Israeli military officials claimed that Hamas and its allied militants groups had suffered about 20 000 casualties since the war began. 6000-7000 of which are killed. If those numbers are anywhere near accurate the intensity of this war should start winding down pretty soon. I have seen estimates that Hamas and allies might have had around 50 000 militants in total at the onset of the conflict. But military organizations usually collapse long before casualties approach 100 percent.

There is also the increasingly relevant question of how much ammunition Hamas has left. Their own production and what they can smuggle in from Egypt is probably miniscule at this point. And conventional warfare consumes enormous quantities of all types of ammunition. For example, an infantry battalion in high intensity combat (and that does not conserve ammunition) can burn through hundreds of thousands of small arms rounds in a single day. How large were Hamas' stockpiles before the conflict began? And how many of those stockpiles have already been destroyed by aerial bombardment or been seized by advancing Israeli troops? 

There's a whole lot of assumption here, but the big one you're making is that Hamas is a traditional military organization. It is a force designed to have significant autonomy, flexibility, and need much fewer logistical and command requirements. This was also the assumption made about forces in Afghanistan and Vietnam and it was very much incorrect. Military units collapse when they cannot function as a cohesive unit and are effectively destroyed, but you don't have that kind of unit cohesion with Hamas forces. Similarly true, units fail when their primary logistical requirements are wiped out; an artillery batallion doesn't work when it can't shoot its artillery. But again that isn't an issue here. 

This is especially true when you believe that you will be tortured and killed if you do surrender, if you believe you are fighting for the survival of your tribe, or if you believe that dying in battle is worth something extra valuable in general. It's certainly possible that Hamas will collapse before suffering near total casualties. ISIS did have people surrender as an example, but a large chunk of that was people who were not actually fighting for their own homes. But I wouldn't bet on it. 

Finally, Israel's numbers of combatants are presumably colored heavily by their selection of targets and their criteria for selection of targets. If you get that wrong - like we've already seen with them abducting several hundred people and taking off their clothes for hours when none of them were combatants - then those numbers are going to be off quite a bit. 

[Hmmm]

10 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

There's a whole lot of assumption here, but the big one you're making is that Hamas is a traditional military organization. It is a force designed to have significant autonomy, flexibility, and need much fewer logistical and command requirements. This was also the assumption made about forces in Afghanistan and Vietnam and it was very much incorrect. Military units collapse when they cannot function as a cohesive unit and are effectively destroyed, but you don't have that kind of unit cohesion with Hamas forces. Similarly true, units fail when their primary logistical requirements are wiped out; an artillery batallion doesn't work when it can't shoot its artillery. But again that isn't an issue here. 

This is especially true when you believe that you will be tortured and killed if you do surrender, if you believe you are fighting for the survival of your tribe, or if you believe that dying in battle is worth something extra valuable in general. It's certainly possible that Hamas will collapse before suffering near total casualties. ISIS did have people surrender as an example, but a large chunk of that was people who were not actually fighting for their own homes. But I wouldn't bet on it. 

Finally, Israel's numbers of combatants are presumably colored heavily by their selection of targets and their criteria for selection of targets. If you get that wrong - like we've already seen with them abducting several hundred people and taking off their clothes for hours when none of them were combatants - then those numbers are going to be off quite a bit. 

Yeah, the visibility is low here. But there are no better numbers to go on. It also makes sense that Hamas has suffered pretty large losses at this point, given how much Israel has been bombing and that their ground forces have seized a big chunk of the Gaza Strip. As for their willingness to fight on, I imagine that it varies a lot from unit to unit. Some are probably radicalised and well motivated. Others are barely trained gangs or militias. 

Edited December 14, 2023 by Hmmm

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

20 minutes ago, mormont said:

I would treat any IDF estimate of Hamas deaths with extreme caution, and that's the polite way to say it.

Of course, Hamas won't give any sort of reliable figure either. So the blunt truth is that we will never actually know how many Hamas combatants were killed in this operation.

We'll probably have a good idea once a sustained ceasefire happens. I tend to think we'll find out both that Hamas/Gaza health officials both overstated the numbers at the time based on the data they had and will also have dramatically undercounted the actual total. The total that's likely to be agreed on, Hamas fighters and citizens, is going to be horrifying. 

[Kalbear]

7 minutes ago, Hmmm said:

Yeah, the visibility is low here. But there are no better numbers to go on. It also makes sense that Hamas has suffered pretty large losses at this point, given how much Israel has been bombing and that their ground forces have seized a big chunk of the Gaza Strip.

Not sure that the amount of bombing is a good indicator of success, or the amount of ground - especially since the evacuations happened before the encirclements. 

7 minutes ago, Hmmm said:

As for their willingness to fight on, I imagine that it varies a lot from unit to unit. Some are probably radicalised and well motivated. Others are barely trained gangs or militias. 

It is not really radicalization at this point. What does a hamas soldier have to look forward to if they surrender? What's the best case - that they don't spend years in an actual prison and instead spend decades in a ruined refugee camp while under constant watch from Israeli security as they get to watch any family and friends they care about suffer? Russians when they surrendered to Ukrainians got to look forward to westernization and support; I doubt Israel is making that kind of a deal.

[Kalbear]

4 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

We'll probably have a good idea once a sustained ceasefire happens. I tend to think we'll find out both that Hamas/Gaza health officials both overstated the numbers at the time based on the data they had and will also have dramatically undercounted the actual total. The total that's likely to be agreed on, Hamas fighters and citizens, is going to be horrifying. 

I don't see how the numbers would be overstatements. They're literally reporting bodies. These aren't estimates.

[Ran]

They claimed nearly 500 dead at Al-SAhli when it was patently false. They never corrected the record on that one.

Their description of all of them being civilians is an obvious falsehood.

[Kalbear]

11 minutes ago, Ran said:

They claimed nearly 500 dead at Al-SAhli when it was patently false. They never corrected the record on that one.

Their description of all of them being civilians is an obvious falsehood.

They have not said they were or are all civilians and specifically say that they make no distinction.

Also, they didn't claim that number - media reporting on one person saying something and likely mistranslating casualties as dead was that. From that Reuters link previously you can see there was not a daily jump of 500 in their daily report stats.

Edited December 14, 2023 by Kalbear

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

19 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

I don't see how the numbers would be overstatements. They're literally reporting bodies. These aren't estimates.

They're including Hamas fighters and those killed by Hamas and third party groups. Also, it's a bit iffy if they're actually counting people or if they're guessing. 

Edited December 14, 2023 by Tywin et al.

[Hmmm]

28 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Not sure that the amount of bombing is a good indicator of success, or the amount of ground - especially since the evacuations happened before the encirclements. 

It is not really radicalization at this point. What does a hamas soldier have to look forward to if they surrender? What's the best case - that they don't spend years in an actual prison and instead spend decades in a ruined refugee camp while under constant watch from Israeli security as they get to watch any family and friends they care about suffer? Russians when they surrendered to Ukrainians got to look forward to westernization and support; I doubt Israel is making that kind of a deal.

We can't be sure, no. But it is an indication. Particularly given that much of the territory that Israel has seized is inside Gaza City. Which was the most fortified and tunneled through part of the Gaza Strip.

Your second point is valid. Still, there are many examples throughout history of large numbers of troops surrendering when faced with worse likely treatment than the Hamas terrorists can expect. The eastern front during WW2 for example. Or probably most wars before the 19th century or so, really. 

Edited December 14, 2023 by Hmmm

[GrimTuesday]

Lets be honest, Israel probably considers any military aged males to be potential combatants, the US does the same thing to obfuscate the scale of civilian casualties in military actions.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 minute ago, GrimTuesday said:

Lets be honest, Israel probably considers any military aged males to be potential combatants, the US does the same thing to obfuscate the scale of civilian casualties in military actions.

Hamas considers most woman of military age soldiers, and we can guess one of the reasons they won't release them is because they'll talk about the gang rapes which we know happened. 

[Zorral]

Soldiers surrender when they are starving, in hope of a crust of bread.

 

[Kalbear]

I also don't know when Israel says they're done. They have the means and plausible deniability to continue bombing and attacking for almost as long as they choose. At the rate they are clearing they are certain to miss people as they move on. What is their actual material and quantitative objective? 

I have two thoughts, one optimistic and one pessimistic. The optimistic one is that they "clear" the major cities of the southern area of Gaza, flood the tunnels and then declare major combat operations over. They will not be rebuilding but they'll allow aid in and the bombing will only happen against specific targets that are launching attacks. This could probably be done in a month or so.

The pessimistic side has Israel not stopping for months. No extra aid, just continuing reducing safe places and treating anyone who doesn't evacuate to a small corner of Gaza that has no supplies or support as a combatant. 

[Zorral]

1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

just continuing reducing safe places and treating anyone who doesn't evacuate to a small corner of Gaza that has no supplies or support as a combatant. 

That's what They are doing presently and have been for quite some time.

[Kalbear]

6 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Hamas considers most woman of military age soldiers, and we can guess one of the reasons they won't release them is because they'll talk about the gang rapes which we know happened. 

Seems deliberately inflammatory, and ignores that Israel itself considers women 18-45 as eligible for being called up and all women of that age have served in the military.

[GrimTuesday]

5 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Hamas considers most woman of military age soldiers, and we can guess one of the reasons they won't release them is because they'll talk about the gang rapes which we know happened. 

Jesus fucking Christ, you're repeating was little more than speculation from a state department official who was talking out his ass. Even Israel said that was too far in terms of speculation.