> Gaza began the war with a more powerful army than many European countries
This is such an insane statement that you instantly disqualify everything else you say.
This is such an insane statement that you instantly disqualify everything else you say.
As I mentioned above, Hamas's army was comparable to countries like Denmark (20k active soldiers), Finland, the Czech republic (27k active) and maybe even the Netherlands (40k active). Estimates of the size of Hamas's army pre October 7 range from 20k to 40k active combatants, with US intelligence estimates converging on 30k. This is looking just at fighters and excludes Hamas's political wing. They also had tens of thousands of rockets.
A handful of Delta Force in Mogadishu shot hundreds (at least) of armed assailants, for example.
Hamas certainly doesn’t have the Leopard 2 tanks and F-35s Denmark has. Which is pretty important for the “more powerful” assessment.
It's obviously not an insane statement, given that we can debate things like the accuracy of their munitions and the lack of air power. the other commenter probably simply didn't know how many active soldiers Hamas had and how few some developed European countries have.
Comparing them to any European military is crazy. We're talking about a rag-tag militia here.
Hamas was no rag-tag militia. It was also a government organization which spent billions building a military tunnel system that was longer, better and more effective than any European power has today. They had tens of thousands of soldiers. They could reach into the deep pockets of Iran and Qatar, and diverted billions in international aid. They had tens of thousands of rockets, most inaccurate, but all with real explosives and predictable trajectories. They also developed a unique warring strategy where they put their own population at risk by firing rockets from schools, storing weapons in children's bedrooms, and so on. Hamas was a formidable army in 2023. Where we perhaps can agree is that now, after two years at the wrong end of the IDF's military capabilities, they've become a rag-tag militia.
Hamas' strategy was in no way unique. They are a militia fighting an urban guerilla war. What was nearly unique in the modern world was the absolute brutality with which Israel fought an urban guerilla war. They decided to level everything. Imagine if the British had leveled all of Catholic Belfast in response to the IRA. It's a level of contempt for the local population and cynical justification of mass murder that is rarely seen from "civilized" countries.
The Israelis think they can solve their "Palestinian problem" with pure violence. A terrible irony.