Who Is Winning the Gaza War?

If you rely on the corporate media you will not have a very good idea about how the Israeli war against Hamas is going. The media has offered a barrage of images and statistics regarding Palestinian civilian casualties, without context. Dare we mention, yet again, that Hamas provides these numbers, and, considering what Hamas is capable of doing, why would any sentient adult trust their statistics?

If you care to know what Hamas wants, you can read Thomas Friedman in the New York Times. I have reported his musings extensively. Now you can also read about it in the Doranimated post on Twitter.  These comments address the whereabouts of Hamas leader Yahha Sinwar:

Israel is closing in on Yahya Sinwar. Amit Segl revealed on Israel’s Channel 12 news that IDF soldiers captured a "guidance document" in a tunnel that Yahya Sinwar had been in. It calls, among other things: 1) To increase psychological pressure on Israel by distributing photos and videos of the abductees; 2) To do everything to increase the psychological pressure on Defense Minister Yoav Galant; 3) To push the line that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is responsible for the events of the massacre on October 7; and 4) To damage the argument of those Israelis who claim that only the continuation of the ground operation will return the abductees to Israel.

As for the propaganda regarding civilian deaths in Gaza, they have been falling. Alan Dershowitz reports in his Substack:

According to The New York Times, "The daily death toll in Gaza has more than halved in the past month," and has fallen almost two-thirds since late October. Moreover, the percentage of civilian to combatant casualties has gone down considerably as well.

In a massive understatement, The New York Times also reported that these considerable reductions in civilian deaths have been "somewhat overlooked" by the media and critics. "Somewhat"! 

They have been totally buried and ignored. The New York Times also opined that Israel's "harshest critics are wrong to accuse it of wanting to maximize civilian deaths."

It is no accident that this reduced civilian death toll has been "somewhat overlooked" by the media and by Israel's critics, including previously by The New York Times itself. Israel is subject to a discernible double standard when it comes to covering its military actions.

The Hamas figures for total deaths do not purport to distinguish combatants from what they consider civilian deaths. They never give the ages of the "children" they claim have been killed, although they regard anyone under the age of 19 as a child, even if they are active combatants. Hamas has recruited fighters as young as 13 to 19. The Hamas figures also do not count the Gazans who were killed by errant rockets launched by terrorists, or Gazans who were killed by Hamas for refusing its orders not to move to safer locations.

And Daniel Greenfield adds this:

In reality, every significant war and civil war in the region has had a much higher death toll than the Israel-Hamas war, including the Iraq-Iran War with an estimated 500,000 to 2 million deaths. And in nearby Africa, the Congo War has been blamed for 6 million deaths since 1996.

And then there is the larger picture. We see it in a Wall Street Journal editorial. The Journal reports that Israel is winning the war, the war against Hamas and the war against “media defeatism:”

You may have missed it amid the media defeatism, but Israel is winning its war in Gaza. Hamas’s losses are mounting, and support for the Israeli war effort has endured around the world longer than Hamas expected.

The war is far from over, but Hamas’s southern stronghold of Khan Younis is falling. Civilians have streamed out and Hamas’s remaining forces in the city’s west are encircled. They face an Israeli advance on all sides, and Israel is now fighting below ground in force.

To provide some context the Journal compares the current Israeli operation to the battle of Mosul, where we needed nine months to subdue ISIS:

Biden Administration restrictions and Israeli caution have slowed the war, but consider that the 2016-17 battle of Mosul against ISIS took nine months. “Mosul,” writes John Spencer, chief of urban warfare studies at West Point’s Modern War Institute, “was one battle, in one city against 3 to 5k militants with limited defenses. Israel is fighting multiple battles in 7 cities against 30k militants with military grade underground cities built under civilian areas.”

As of now, Israel has neutralized much of Hamas:

Israel says it has killed, incapacitated or arrested some 20,000 of Hamas’s 30,000 men and dismantled 17 of Hamas’s 24 Gaza combat battalions. The losses have prevented Hamas from mounting military maneuvers and quieted its rocket fire, down more than 95% from the war’s early days.

The Biden administration is apparently most concerned that its support for Israel is costing it votes. Thus, it has exaggerated the casualties in order to force Israel into a premature declaration of defeat:

Israel has freed 110 hostages, but its leaders are under pressure at home while 132 are still captive. The Biden Administration is using that domestic pressure as diplomatic leverage to promote a hostage deal and long pause in the war that it hopes will become a cease-fire. Never mind that leaving Hamas in control of territory is the definition of Israeli defeat. No matter the length of the pause, Israel would likely have to resume fighting afterward.

Finally,

Once Hamas’s last brigades are defeated, it will take time to sweep Gaza for terrorist cells and infrastructure. Israel is clearing urban terrain and tunnels at a “historic pace,” Mr. Spencer writes, but the tunnels are vast and soldiers find munitions in home after home.

So much for innocent civilians. In any case, some accurate information always sheds light in the darkness.