> Simply put, yes, killing two civilians for every one combatant is overwhelmingly civilian, although I don't believe that 2:1 ratio for a moment. And I'm struggling to see how anyone who's not ideologically possessed could believe such numbers.

Well, Gaza's MOH put out the 17k number, without breaking it down into militants vs civilians. How many militants do you think have actually been killed? If you are assuming that the IDF is targeting civilians, I guess it makes sense, but if you start from the assumption that they are trying to kill militants, then several thousand militants killed is reasonable.

> I don't consider the IDF a "good source" at all, like all government organizations they lie constantly although I suspect they lie more than most :P

So this is an ideological point, but worth going into. I don't think anyone should implicitly trust any source. But the IDF is part of a democracy - they have checks and balances in the form of government oversight, more importantly Israel has a free press that can check up on claims. Not to mention, hundreds of thousands of Israelis serve in the army and, Israel being a democracy, can speak up and report any abuses that happen or lies that get told.

Given that context, the IDF for sure can still lie, but most likely they will eventually be found out.

I want to contrast this with other sources of numbers - e.g. Hamas can lie with impunity, because no one is checking up on them and they can (and do) execute people for saying the wrong thing. We know they've lied about numbers, e.g. the hospital bombing that they claimed was an Israeli attack that killed 500 people, only everyone now agrees that it wasn't Israel, and didn't kill so many people.

(Though also worth stressing that the total figures given by Gaza MOH are more or less in line with what the IDF is saying, except for not breaking it down by civilian vs. militant.)

> This is why I don't see how Israel will actually succeed in destroying Hamas

Maybe. You could definitely be right. Though there are outcomes here that don't depend on total destruction of Hamas. E.g. Hamas surrendering.

I feel like people forget what winning a war actually looks like. Most wars in history were actually won, when one side did so much damage to the other side that they realized it wasn't worth continuing to fight, and surrendered.

Most of the wars that e.g. the US has engaged in were just not that important to US's security, in the long run - so they had no real need to win. So most wars didn't really end, they "fizzled out".

This war is different. Israel looks at it as a matter of survival. That's a very different dynamic.

> Their means are limited. They could maybe get creative and fly some drones over the border and drop some grenades or something, but I don't see the potential for a mass casualty event like happened in October 7, if Israel is actually watching its border properly and not ignoring obvious warnings of impending attack as has been frequently reported regarding Oct 7.

Do you think the army can be on high alert for five years? Ten? Defend against possible other creative paths that we have no idea about? If I were Hamas I could think of dozens of other things to try at this point.

Also, it's not like Israel was purposefully ignoring obvious threats, this is an "in hindsight" perspective. There's a cost to addressing each potential threat, both monetarily, but also in lives lost. And Israel (rightly) doesn't have any confidence that 4 years from now, whatever actions it takes will be considered legitimate, even if there is evidence it's a new Hamas plot.

> This is just not a concern. The money US gives Israel every year vastly eclipses the amount they would need to spend on actually defending themselves properly.

I don't think that's true. The US's aid is about 10% of the IDF's budget, a figure I'm not sure takes into account the current war btw. But the economic cost of e.g. having 50k more people serving in the army is also the opportunity cost of them not working in industry in this time, etc.