Israeli forces killed a pair of Palestinian men in the occupied West Bank after they appeared to surrender to troops, drawing Palestinian accusations that the men were executed “in cold blood.”
They’ve proven themselves a capable actual army in the past against numerically far superior opponents, displaying both organizational and individual competence alongside their evil. Now they don’t even have that. It’s just a very well funded gang.
Yeah that’s fair, though I do have to note that other than Yom Kippur in none of Israel’s past conflicts was it seriously outnumbered. That’s the image they like to sell, and intuitively it feels like it should be true, but it’s really not. Israel has always been good at raising massive armies relative to their population, and for instance way surprisingly outnumbered their enemies in 1948. Again not contesting your point; I agree that they were much more competent in the past.
Not disagreeing, but “at this point” implies they were ever anything else.
They’ve proven themselves a capable actual army in the past against numerically far superior opponents, displaying both organizational and individual competence alongside their evil. Now they don’t even have that. It’s just a very well funded gang.
Yeah that’s fair, though I do have to note that other than Yom Kippur in none of Israel’s past conflicts was it seriously outnumbered. That’s the image they like to sell, and intuitively it feels like it should be true, but it’s really not. Israel has always been good at raising massive armies relative to their population, and for instance way surprisingly outnumbered their enemies in 1948. Again not contesting your point; I agree that they were much more competent in the past.