[jfengel]

the 7 Oct 2023 Hamas massacre turned out to be the most catastrophic miscalculation in modern military history.

I'm genuinely unclear on what the calculation was supposed to reveal. What did they think the outcome was going to be?

I'm put in mind of the 9/11 attacks on the US -- arguably, an even bigger miscalculation. At the time, everybody expected there to be follow-ups, and there were none.

The US certainly managed to tie itself up in knots of security theater, but al Qaeda painted a massive target on its own back. I cannot imagine what they thought was going to happen.

As for Gaza, as best I can judge, it was Iran's idea to sacrifice plenty of Gazans in the hopes that Israel would overreact and isolate itself even further from the world. Which is what they got, but that's really a lot of cost for not much benefit. Israel was already quite isolated; it just made the news for a while.