Haviv Rettig Gur
You still here? Other than calling everything a "conspiracy theory," you're not making an argument. They do not occasionally say that Gazan deaths are "worth it" - they discussed explicitly how this was their great lever on Israel and how these sacrifices will deliver the victory. And then they built 500 kilometers of tunnels solely for Hamas fighters and hostages. The sheer scale of the project reveals the amount of time they expected the fighting to go on and the devastation they expected it to entail - while civilians weren't allowed into the tunnels. October 7 was meticulously engineered to ensure an Israeli invasion; the tunnels were meticulously engineered to ensure a long and bitter war. My view of them comes from two decades of actually listening to them, listening to how they deploy the Algeria example every time someone on Al Jazeera or Al Arabiya challenges them on the Gazan death toll, something they've been doing at least since 2014. This point is, in fact, what some of the marching Gazans are now yelling. Put your Arabic to good use and listen to them. This is the heart of their strategy, and it's entirely sensible and totally monstrous. It isn't about making Israel "look bad." The expectation was mass mobilization of the Muslim world - Sinwar was bitterly disappointed with Hezbollah's hesitation and the revelation of Iran's relative weakness. They also hoped the West would come crashing down on Israel's head and put in place propaganda bodies to try to achieve that outcome, a great deal of it coordinated with Al Jazeera. So calling this point a "conspiracy theory" is willful blindness. Or just propaganda. Every data point we have confirms that this was their strategy; they literally had no other war-fighting theory or strategy. But please, tell me more about how Hamas cares deeply about Gazan civilians.