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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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There's lots of parallels, from confinement to reservations, to raids on civilians and mutilation of their corpses, to more moderate forces being slowly eliminated by both sides, to the inherent tactics of guerilla and small independent parties leading coordinated raids using low tech means of insertion and communication. Even the ideological component and propaganda is somewhat similar.

The raids on civilians, mutilation of corpses, guerilla tactics and small independent parties leading coordinated raids are just regular plains Indian tactics that date back to tactics used by the original steppe people over 5000 years ago. These aren't unique to their conflicts with settled peoples. They used these same tactics against each other. The only thing unique is that the settled people had the power to force them onto reservations instead of just scattering them or forcing them into a tributary relationship, like the Chinese, Persians and Romans regularly did in Eurasia.

Of course none of this is new or specific to that particular. This is just irregular warfare against a threat with an immense technology and ressource advantage.

Come to think of it, do we have examples of conflicts of that nature where the weaker belligerent actually won?

Come to think of it, do we have examples of conflicts of that nature where the weaker belligerent actually won?

Afghanistan, Vietnam... can't say for sure, but my impression is that most successful secessions resulted from a more advantaged power going "eh, it's not worth it", rather than the seceding one being able to withstand the full force of the who they're separating from.