Netanyahu is the GW Bush of Israel

Operation Linebacker II makes an interesting base-line for interpreting Israeli Operation Mighty Cliff or whatever they're calling it in English.
The purpose of Linebacker II was to get the South Vietnam government to have faith in the Paris Peace Accords. I know, ironic right? But Nixon had to show that the US would protect them. And how better to do that than to bomb Hanoi into practical oblivion.
The purpose of Operation Protective Edge? Nobody has any idea what the goal is. Nobody. It has something to do with a few kids who were killed a week earlier. Or maybe something else. Or rockets coming in from Gaza. Or maybe some tunnels which the IDF knew about, forgot about, then suddenly remembered when Hamas started using them (again.)
The impact? Shockingly about the same number of Israelis died in Protective Edge (around 60) as Americans in Linebacker II. About the same numbers of civilians (about 1600) in both operations.
Linebacker II destroyed Hanoi's military manufacturing base. It, of course, didn't even touch the Ho Chi Ming trail. Protective Edge blew up a bunch of buildings, killed a lot of people, but left nigh on 3000 rockets in the hands of Hamas and presumably destroyed some tunnels.*

So after all that, will fewer Israelis magically not get killed? Well probably not. Hamas is extraordinarily efficient at creating terror at a very low cost to human lives so they weren't killing a whole lot of Israelis in the first place. They were scaring them, sure, just not actually killing them. Unguided rocket attacks make people very upset. They could land anywhere. Even without the rocket-interdiction technology "Iron Dome", they almost never kill anybody. As an instrument of terror rockets are 1. expensive 2. low non-psychological casualty and 3 terrifying.

If you want to look for an organization which really kills a lot of Israelis you have to look to the IDF. Now that's a machine designed to kill a bunch of young Israeli boys. They can kill more Israelis in two weeks than Hamas did in 10 years with rockets.

I think the biggest problem isn't the structure of the IDF but rather the fact that Netanyahu is essentially the G.W. Bush of Israeli politics. He's unable to conceive of blowback from any of his policies. Every political position is an "are you with us or are you against us" argument. He ignores intelligence. And he's very quick with a fight without knowing who he's fighting or why.

So back to leaving the bulk of the rockets Hamas has: uh, wait what? Do you want to make sure Hamas still has some rockets to throw at you so you can have some reason to retaliate later? And how on earth, with the Israeli blockade on Gaza, do they even get rockets in the first place? Do the IDF interdiction teams look at incoming shipments and go "Mmm... blankets, medical supplies, baby formula, nope. This stuff has to go. What's over there? Iranian rocket parts? Sure, let that in."


*Yeah, somebody tells me "all the tunnels are destroyed" and I say "sure, I've heard that before."