Yovel Rom

• Yovel Rom 12 Oct 2023 15:40 UTC

  1 point

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  in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: I’m a Former Is­raeli Officer. AMA

  We are in agreement, then

• Yovel Rom 12 Oct 2023 13:34 UTC

  1 point

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  in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: I’m a Former Is­raeli Officer. AMA

  Oh, I see. I find it very unlikely. Such actions would border on casus beli, and it just doesn’t seem important enough to risk an actual war with Israel. The US sent ~$80B over the years, which is a bit less than $2B a year, which is 2% of Egypt’s government budget.

  The peace with Israel is mainly based on mutual deterrence since the 1973 war, military aid from Israel and more. The US is not a major actor within it.

  I would expect very public, very ulikely to escalate actions in order to increase US aid. Not something like this.

• Yovel Rom 12 Oct 2023 13:07 UTC

  0 points

  −1

  in reply to: Benaya Koren’s comment on: I’m a Former Is­raeli Officer. AMA

  I agree it will also affect Gaza. Disagree about the effect on Israeli casualties.

• Yovel Rom 12 Oct 2023 13:06 UTC

  4 points

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  in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: I’m a Former Is­raeli Officer. AMA

  I agree. However I know that it’s widely accepted Hamas is enjoying popular support. I don’t have good public sources to support that statement, it follows from many little anecdotes over the years. A good example is that unlike widely unliked authoritarian regimes such as Belarus, they enjoyed very little protests over the years, and have managed to repeatedly rally people to their needs.

  While it’s a defensible position from a “briefely googled this” point of view, I really don’t think people who have been following closely hold this position.

• Yovel Rom 12 Oct 2023 12:56 UTC

  2 points

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  in reply to: Benaya Koren’s comment on: I’m a Former Is­raeli Officer. AMA

  I really doubt that. The Hamas generally enjoys popular support, AFAIK (no good public source).

• Yovel Rom 12 Oct 2023 12:52 UTC

  1 point

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  in reply to: Benaya Koren’s comment on: I’m a Former Is­raeli Officer. AMA

  I really doubt that. The Hamas generally enjoys popular support, AFAIK (no good public source).

• Yovel Rom 11 Oct 2023 20:35 UTC

  −1 points

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  in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: I’m a Former Is­raeli Officer. AMA

  The government was democratically elected in 2006, so it’s not a bad indication.

• Yovel Rom 11 Oct 2023 20:33 UTC

  −2 points

  −3

  in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: I’m a Former Is­raeli Officer. AMA

  The Russian are now close Iranian allies, so it might have been some form of payment.

  Could you point me to the exact deal? I’m not sure what you’re talking about. Also, Egypt had three different regimes since 2010, which all had different interests. We have reasonably good relations with the current one.

  Sure. Qatar is one other obvious candidate, and there are probably other possibilities.

• Yovel Rom 11 Oct 2023 18:24 UTC

  4 points

  1

  in reply to: metawrong’s comment on: I’m a Former Is­raeli Officer. AMA

  I was actually born in Netzarim in the Gaza strip, but my parents left when I was one month old for job reasons. I’ve not been there until 2005, when The Separation happened, all jews were transferred from the strip and jewish entrance was prohibited, after which I couldn’t visit anymore.

  There are 150,000 Palestinians from the West Bank who work in in Israel, and around 15,000 from the Gaza strip who used to do the same until last saturday. Israelis and Israeli Arabs mix all the time (for instance, I have some Israeli Arab friends), Palestinians less so. Access from and to the Gaza strip is very restricted, and in the West Bank settlements are separate. I live for a few years in the West Bank, and I talked to Palestinians when I met them during hiking and stuff. My dad and I actually saved a Palestinian goat that fell to a water canal during one of our hikes. It’s unrelated to your question, just a funny anecdote I remembered while writing this.

  We shouldn’t have payed so much, but I don’t know if it had a long term strategic impact. We definitely gave a lot of talent back to Hamas, who used it well.

  Basically zero. My theory would rely on classified information, so I won’t give it, sorry. I imagine there will be some kind of public commission of inquiry after the war. I’ll try and remember to post a link to its conclusion for you when that happens.

• Yovel Rom 11 Oct 2023 17:24 UTC

  2 points

  1

  in reply to: Ansel’s comment on: I’m a Former Is­raeli Officer. AMA

  Part 1: I agree, it seems they don’t use the Roofknock Protocol for now, and that will be the main source of civilian casualties. It’s a tragedy, but not actually a problem by law of war (see Jay Donde’s post).

  Part 2: I generally agree. I don’t think actual food shortage will be a problem (5%), electricity might (10-33%, very uncertain) but I don’t think will cause many casualties by itself. We live in a warm country, and hospitals (and Hamas operatives) have emergency reserves.

  Part 3: I agree, and think it depends a lot on Egyptian refugee policy.

  Additional possibility is a second front in Lebanon, which adds orders of magnitude more missiles, which are also stronger and more accurate. Israeli civilian casualties will quickly rise, not to mention the possibility of them trying similar tactics to those Hamas tried last Saturday (even though that will probably be less effective, since Israel is on high alert).

  Of course such scenario will also deeply impact Lebanon and its citizens.

  As for your later point, I think Israel is trying to topple Hamas’s regime, one way or another. The region around Gaza is populated by 70,000 people, who will not stay there if there’s a risk for attacks like the last one. I am not sure whether it will be done by completely occupying the strip, a siege, or something completely different, but I don’t think we’ll return to status quo unless Israel tries and fails to do that.

• Yovel Rom 11 Oct 2023 16:46 UTC

  0 points

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  in reply to: Davidmanheim’s comment on: I’m a Former Is­raeli Officer. AMA

  I’m not so sure about that. Hamas don’t actually talk that much about the deal, and as long as Israel doesn’t do anything too terrible in the coming war I don’t think it’ll be affected that much. I also don’t think a deal with the Saudis will do nearly as much damage to the Hamas as will the current attack, which represents a clear existential threat to its regime.

  This could be an Iranian plan for the same reasons, since they have less to lose and more to gain from sabotaging the deal, but then I would expect a similar attack from Hezbollah at the same time for maximum effect, which they did not do. I genrally don’t think they were coordinated until after the attack, and might still not be. So far they haven’t joined the war, and might not do so at all.

  I think there’s a strong possibility Hamas tried to lead a smaller scale teerror attack, with <100 dead and some hostages, to use as a bargaining chip for prisoners, then succeeded way more than expected and brought war upon themselves.

  I think this is a clear blunder by Hamas, so there’s some miscalculation behind it. I don’t know if we’ll ever know that.

• Yovel Rom 11 Oct 2023 16:29 UTC

  3 points

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  in reply to: Gesild Muka’s comment on: I’m a Former Is­raeli Officer. AMA

  Thanks for your question! It’s complicated, and I’ll try to adress it tomorrow.

• Yovel Rom 11 Oct 2023 15:30 UTC

  0 points

  −1

  in reply to: trevor’s comment on: I’m a Former Is­raeli Officer. AMA

  I slightly disagree with David here: Hamas representatives did thank some unnamed countries in addition to Iran in the last couple of days, which might hint to some Russian involvement and supply. However they don’t want to be publicly associated with all this, so I imagine it’s not too substantial.

  I don’t know about the war on terror more than what David said, sorry. It’s a bit far from home, and I was young at the time and didn’t follow it closely.

• Yovel Rom 11 Oct 2023 15:23 UTC

  4 points

  −4

  in reply to: Ansel’s comment on: I’m a Former Is­raeli Officer. AMA

  I don’t expect it, since historically Israel let humanitarian supplies in during wars. I also sincerely hope it will continue do that during this war.

  IIRC (can’t find sources right now) common practice has been to stop electricity for some time, then when international pressure increases supply it interminently.

  Yeah, I don’t understand the water situation myself. I hear Hamas complaining about electricity, and not about water, so it seems to be fine for now.

  About casualties: That’s extremely difficult to answer in the best conditions, depends on the way Israel will do it, and requires actual expertise and classified information which I lack. I will try to give you the way I think about this question.

  The most similar war would be Operation Protective Edge, in 2014. Gazan forces were approximated at 25,000 people. According to Israel [1] in that war 2,125 Gazans were killed, of which 36% were civilians, 44% combatants, and 20% uncategorized males aged 16–50 (probably some are militants, some civilians and some opportunistic attackers who did not formally belong to any organization). Israel suffered 67 soldiers killed. However, the cities themselves were not invaded, and Hamas’s vast bunker system was not directly confronted. Most palestinian casualties were from air strikes.

  The most similar purely urban battle I can think about is the battle of Jenin (AFAIK the Israeli version of the events is the correct one). It consisted of 1000 Israeli soldiers vs 300 Palestinians, in a 40k people city. it ended with 23 Israeli soldiers killed, ~25-40 Palestinian militants killed, and 15-25 civilians killed. Direct multiplication would suggest 2,300 Israeli dead, 2,500 − 4,000 militants, and 1,500 - 2,500 civilians killed. In practice it would be more, since Gaza is better fortified and Hamas would not have anywhere to flee, unlike in Jenin.

  An additional possibility is the usage of siege tatics. It seems siege directed against civilians is prohibited, but it’s possible if you let civilians out. Therefore, if Israel manages to establish a humanitarian corridor to Egypt where Gazans can flee, without too many casualties for itself beyond the 1,000+ it already has. I find it very unlikely we’ll have a siege without such corridor.

  The truth will lie somewhere between airstrikes, urban fighting and siege. I don’t know how Israel will combine the three, and it’s probably being decided right now. We’ll have to wait and see.

  [1] I use Israel’s figures because Hamas’ are trivially unreliable, and UN Human Rights Council is an extremely biased body. For instance, after the recent attack on Israel, they held a moment of silence in memory of lives “lost in Palestinian territories and elsewhere”.

  What links here?

  • Yovel Rom's comment on I’m a Former Is­raeli Officer. AMA by Yovel Rom (EA Forum; 12 Oct 2023 16:59 UTC; 3 points)

• Yovel Rom 11 Oct 2023 7:02 UTC

  4 points

  1

  in reply to: Tao Lin’s comment on: I’m a Former Is­raeli Officer. AMA

  I imagine the US might have something like that. but if it does it doesn’t share it.

• Yovel Rom 10 Oct 2023 22:20 UTC

  7 points

  2

  in reply to: Algon’s comment on: I’m a Former Is­raeli Officer. AMA

  I agree, which is why I tried to answer to the points concretely. Did I miss anything? I did write “your points” where I should have written “their points”, but I don’t think it’s important enough to edit. I’m not surprised at all, I’ve seen worse. The far left is quite antisemitic.

• Yovel Rom 10 Oct 2023 19:44 UTC

  12 points

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  in reply to: Michael Wiebe’s comment on: I’m a Former Is­raeli Officer. AMA

  They did indeed stop going to reserve. However, basically 99% of them who were of relevant age enlisted now. It’s not actually in our cultural DNA not to show up in emergency. Brothers In Arms also called for everyone to enlist immediately (Hebrew, sorry).

• Yovel Rom 10 Oct 2023 19:39 UTC

  4 points

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  in reply to: Richard Horvath’s comment on: I’m a Former Is­raeli Officer. AMA

  Historically wars did not negatively affect long term growth in Israel.
  

  1. Not much, unless maybe Hezbolla joins in and starts seriously shelling us. It has accurate long range rockets which can do orders of manitude damage more than Hamas. However maybe in the long term we’ll frogleap back? IDK.

  2. Not much

  3. I imagine opposition, since it’s seen as a strategic failure by Nethanyahu policy, who was in charge in the last 15 years. However that’s hard to predict, since it might give rise to far right forces who’ll want to retaliate.

• Yovel Rom 10 Oct 2023 19:29 UTC

  28 points

  19

  in reply to: mattposts’s comment on: I’m a Former Is­raeli Officer. AMA

  Wildly off the mark. I’ll try and address your points one by one.

  1. Content warning: discussing slaugter of innocent jews, babies and elderly. Also the Holocaust.
     How many babies and elderly Germans were killed during the Uprising of Warsaw Ghetto? Literally zero. It’s a baseless comparison, making analogy between a last stand of people getting slaughtered against Nazi soldiers, and people who slaughtered hundreds of music festival attendees, beheading babies, taking babies as hostages, killing and burning babies (terrible censored image, proceed at your own risk), and that’s just scrolling my feed for a bit, there are more terrible atorcities commited yesterday, murder, kidnpping and rape.
     Conditions in Gaza are not good, but they are far from genocide. Population is growing rapidly.
     Please actually read about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in Wikipedia before saying such things.

  2. We did not do anything unusual in the Gaza Strip lately, AFAIK. Even if we did, see point 1.

  3. Recent Israeli protests were around reforms in the juidical system, seen as an overreach by the executive branch of Israeli govenment, and led by opposition leaders. It was postponed due to external threats. Both pro- and anti- reform protesters are proudly posting pictures of themselves enlisting.

  4. See previous point

  5. The protests stopped due to the war, where mainly Israeli working class were slaughtered. Who do you think is whose common enemy here?

  I think we’ll continue to get one messy equilibruim after the other, until we get something stable that’s neither a two state solution nor a one state one. I don’t know how it will look like.

• Yovel Rom 10 Oct 2023 18:59 UTC

  6 points

  3

  in reply to: Gesild Muka’s comment on: I’m a Former Is­raeli Officer. AMA

  Nope.

  I don’t think you will be able to get an actual solution in the next 10-20 years (barring SAGI- scale changes), since there’s a sizable fraction of the palestinian population that wants literal jewish genocide and the destruction of Israel [1].

  I do think Israeli government is planning to take over the Gaza Strip, so I imagine we’ll get some kind of a different equilibrium after. But I can promise you nobody knows how what will happen in the day after. Some people are trying to promote solutions, such as the Palestinian Authority taking over the Strip, but nobody knows what’s possible yet and much will change in the next weeks.

  [1] Couldn’t find a survey, but Hamas won elections handily in the Gaza Strip in 2006 and there were no other elections in the West Bank since because Hamas would win them too. Hamas’s constitution literally called genocide of the jews until 2017 (in Hebrew, sorry), and is still an extremely anti semitic document that aims for the destruction of Israel.