‘Considerable and unexplained gap’ between admitted casualties and hospital records of severely wounded soldiers at least double acknowledged number
A former Israeli prime ministerial adviser has said that Israel is losing its war against Hamas – and hospital records suggest the Israeli government and military are hiding at least half of the number of Israeli soldiers killed and injured in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
In an article for US site The Nation, Daniel Levy – who advised then-Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak – compares the situation in Gaza to the unwinnable US war in Vietnam, where unacceptable casualty levels among US soldiers meant the Viet Cong only had to survive to win, and writes:
It may sound daft to suggest that a group of armed irregulars, numbering in the low tens of thousands, besieged and with little access to advanced weaponry, is a match for one of the world’s most powerful militaries, backed and armed by the United States. And yet, an increasing number of establishment strategic analysts warn that Israel could lose this war on Palestinians despite the cataclysmic violence it unleashed
Levy also notes that the ‘delusion’ that Israel’s conduct did not contribute to the 7 October attack is being exposed and having serious consequences for Israel and its US backers:
the delusion that Israel was just another Western nation peacefully going about its business before it suffered an unprovoked attack on October 7—it’s a comforting fantasy to those who prefer to avoid recognizing a reality they’ve been complicit in creating.
And at the same time, US news site Breaking Point has highlighted studies by Israeli media of Israeli hospital data – and sudden reductions in the official casualty numbers posted on the IDF’s website – to conclude that the real casualty rate inflicted on IDF forces by Hamas’s guerilla tactics are at least twice as high as the Netanyahu government is admitted and that among the wounded there are high rates of severe injuries consistent with videos released by Hamas of grenade and rocket-propelled grenade ambushes on Israeli tanks and infantry:
Breaking Point considers that this high rate of attrition, and a lack of appetite among the Israeli public for casualties in the military, may be driving Israeli efforts to get the US to commit troops as a ‘peacekeeping’ force.
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