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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   4111 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 5, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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since 2005 Israel does not have any capacity to count populations in Gaza.

It remains wild to me how Israel has built strong belief in their intelligence capacity while not actually seeming to know much of anything about the place that you think they'd be pretty invested in knowing things about. Mossad seems much better at fucking with governments thousands of miles away than figuring out what's going on with the enemy next door.

while not actually seeming to know much of anything about the place

I think you are seeing it in too black and white. Israel knows a lot about the place. But counting million-sized populations which have a hostile government with a little interest in the welfare of the citizens, and people living in semi-legal arrangements best described as "middle ages with iphones" does not really make the task easy. It's not an on-off switch - either you know all, or you know nothing. It's you may know a lot, but there's even more of it that you don't know. If anything, the amount of knowledge served Israel intelligence very badly - they knew so much they severely overestimated just how much they know, and thought they know exactly how the enemy thinks. That led to a chain of decisions - in the hindsight proven to be spectacularly bad - that enabled the current catastrophe. It wasn't the problem of knowing nothing, it was a problem of becoming arrogant and complacent.

I was under the impression that Mossad didn't deal with Gaza and that that falls under the jurisdiction of Shin Bet or some other organisation.

Off-the-grid preppers have got nothing on desperate third-worlders living ten to a hovel. At least foreign governments try to make things legible for you.

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