Will Israel destroy Hamas

[Dissonance]

@Sam_Stone

You can ease up on the snark. Yes, one planeload is not ‘meaningful’. But this conflict is just starting. Yes, Israel makes its own 155mm shells, but it can run out just like everyone else.

Come back to me when Israel is asking the US and NATO to supply it with millions of 155mm shells. Notably none of those shells were on that single plane. Again, firing 1,000,000 155mm shells into a target as small as the Gaza Strip will have an effect comparable to dropping a tactical nuclear weapon on it. It will be completely flattened. I’ll eat my hat if Israel has to ask for 155mm shells, much less fires 1,000,000 of them on Gaza, or 100,000. Israel maintains ammunition reserves to fight full scale conventional conflicts with its neighbors with large, standing militaries such as Egypt if worse comes to worst. Fighting a paramilitary terrorist group like Hamas is orders of magnitude different than fighting the armed forces of Russia.

@Sam_Stone

Your argument was based on Israel’s aelf-sufficiency in weapnry. And yet they have already requested that the U.S. help them replenish. Doesn’t seem to match your claim. Israel still depends heavily on foreign military contractors. Iron Dome is a Rafael/Raytheon project, and Patriot is American.

Which, as @Riemann noted, is actually if anything good for the US economy, as Raytheon stock is up with the increased demand for Iron Dome which isn’t being used in Ukraine because it is an Israeli system and Netanyahu refused Ukrainian requests to have it supplied. Oddly, it seems you were already aware that Iron Dome is an Israeli system, not an American one: A question about Israel’s Iron Dome - Factual Questions - Straight Dope Message Board. How odd.

@Sam_Stone

And if Israel starts asking for billions in financial aid, there will be some in Congress who will demand that the money be diverted from Ukraine. Mostly the idiot MAGA types that just brought down the speaker of the House, but Ukraine war fatigue will undoubtedly spread over time.

And if my grandmother had wheels, she’d have been a bicycle. Israel asking the US for billions in financial aid to deal with this crisis is so laughable its offensive to any credibility of Israel to take care of itself, which it has been doing since its creation as a modern state. Israel didn’t ask the US for billions in aid during the Intifadas while it was occupying the Gaza Strip. It didn’t ask for billions in US aid when it invaded Lebanon to drive out the PLO or Hezbollah, and just to remind you one of those times it had to fight a full-scale conventional conflict with the Syrian Army. It doesn’t need billions in US aid in order to be able to deal with Hamas.

@Sam_Stone

Let’s hope none of this happens and the conflict ends soon. But in warfare, only idiots assume that the best scenarios will come true. The smart ones prepare for the worst.

No, only idiots assume the wildly implausible is actually in the realms of reality and start fear mongering. The smart ones know better than to bring up issues that don’t actually exist or use the past tense when talking about things like Turkey supplying drones to Ukraine when they are not only still supplying them, but are constructing facilities to build them domestically inside Ukraine.