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Israel-Gaza Megathread #1

This is a megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.

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A plurality of Gazans believe that there are less than one million Jews in Israel, with the largest amount believing there are less than 500k (real population is about 7.5 million)

Given Gazans are generally underestimating the size of their opponents population by at least a factor of 7 does Gazan support of Hamas make more sense given presumably they believe they’re being opposed by a tiny minority and not by a population almost twice their size?

https://x.com/zachg932/status/1712680584210710912

I suppose it’s less useful without their estimates of their own population. But the tweet replies do suggest the studies found those who more accurately estimated the Jewish population seemed less hostile.

Hamas’ messaging really presents the war as very imminently winnable, and not just by divine intervention. So people ask stuff like “did these guys know it was a suicide mission?” and certainly some senior people did, but there might have been a lot of young men who didn’t.

It wasn't really a suicide mission for everyone, as they took so much hostages.