Now let me say that I am not discussing the Morality of the Israel and Palestine. That's not what this post is about. I'm just discussing the Armchair Military aspect of this conflict, the PR Nightmare it is and why Hamas doesn't ever seem to go away.

Insurgencies live and die by their public support. As long as you have a resentful and angry populace then you will have insurgents. The thing about wars like Afghanistan and Iraq is that counterinsurgency was a nightmare because for every civilian you kill you produce 10 insurgents from their friends and family and attempts at Infrastructure in Afghanistan were fucked due to bad terrain. You cannot win a Guerilla war without winning over hearts and minds.

Not to start moralizing but I think any attempts at hearts and minds now are pretty fucked because of the constant airstrikes. This effectively means that Hamas will keep existing until things get better and Palestine citizens no longer feel motivated to go to war which I do not see happening in the near future.

I also want to talk about what an Absolute PR Clusterfuck this entire war has been. I have never seen a country bungle golden PR like Israel has. You have the perfect PR dream of Extremists attempting an antisemitic terrorist attack and killing babies then it somehow devolved into posting fucking AI images of Voldemort and comparing him to Hamas. It's so fucking surreal.