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Comment by xyzal | Hacker News Reader

I can't understand just how is Israel able to deliver precision strikes in Iran basically landing explosives to key personnel bedrooms (which is impressive!), but w.r.t. Hamas -- allegedly a weaker adversary -- it just isn't possible! We have to end 60k people first.

Does anyone have some rational explanation?

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If you look at the NY Times video shared above - the strikes are very precise. First they hit viewpoint/staircase favorited by journalists. Then 10min later they hit exactly the same spot with two separate strikes in a row.

There aren't many other rational explanations than that this is intended? Targeting journalists and then their rescue parties… oof

They have access through software companies who actually provide security. Almost all western companies depend on security solutions (ex: endpoint & SOC providers, that means every electronic device including IoTs has some tracking enabled) provided by Israel founded companies. And we all know Israel seems to be not following rules, even though these security companies have some restrictions on access to customers data, there is no one stopping them from accessing these data in the name of support. Many security companies depend on Israel based employees. And often these employees are drop outs from high rank military intelligence or some family member in a high rank military positions. So if a supply chain has US companies, they have access to the companies data. I am definitely guessing a lot. But the kind of intel they have makes me think they are illegally accessing these data somehow.

If this is true, think twice before using second hand devices. You might be mistaken for someone and unnecessarily targeted.

Note that you can’t basically avoid these companies. They codified using one of these companies in some US regulations. There are no alternatives between. Even though the companies themselves mention they are US based, most of critical technical stuff happens directly from Israel. There are basically no alternatives. They make rules, US follows.

Could you provide a reference for the Israeli company in US regulations?

Compliance is driven by federal and state data protection laws (like HIPAA for healthcare or CCPA in California), industry standards (like NIST and CMMC). All companies are bound to follow these standards which is expected.

Like I mentioned these security companies identify themselves as US based, but all technical work is based in Israel. Like front office is US.

All I am saying is I am suspecting information leaks out of offices in Israel. Again this is suspicion. One of the theories on why Israel has all the intel it needs. Some information access illegally using some backdoor. Backdoor could be as simple as direct access through an existing employee who might be linked to Israel military intel.

Section, man. Citation. Or give a name to search.

I already mentioned the standards that companies are supposed to follow for various reasons. Exact reason on why companies are supposed to follow these standards is immaterial. The point I am making is that these standards are not wrong, but all operations are based out of Israel and only front office and token work is being done with in US. When you have access to these critical security systems out in a country which uses questionable means for end goals, don’t you question how it gains abnormal amount of leverage against the worlds only super power. For this reason, there is high probability that there is some level of misuse of the US data at these locations. Especially if the personal has links to Israel military in someway or other.

Starting point for your research into some US regulations for Defense contracts. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/10/15/2024-22...

In Iran they mostly blew up stuff that's fixed in place, like the nuclear reactor.

Most stuff in Gaza that was fixed in place has been destroyed already.

A few thoughts,

- We don't really know the civilian casualty ratio for Gaza, but in seems somewhere in the normal range for urban wars (e.g. based on some losses Hamas admitted early in the conflict). The Iran strikes also harmed civilians, e.g. from a collapsed building in Nobonyad Square. If Israel had to repeat things 10,000x, we might have seen many collapsed buildings and it might start to resemble Gaza.

- Intelligence gathering methods that work for a few high-profile targets might not scale to a war against tens of thousands of combatants.

- Israel had the element of surprise against Iran, so the relevant targets were mostly not in bunkers/tunnels. They never did against Hamas.

Compare it to the 2022 Ukraine war. For more than a year almost all the fighting happened in densely populated areas, with many such shorter phases before and since.

And Soviet-stock bombs just aren't as precise and unguided rocket artillery even more so.

Yet after more than 3 years the number of civilian deaths and injured COMBINED just barely surpassed 50k recently.

[flagged]

13,883 civilians died in Ukraine as a result of Russian invasion between 24 Feb. 2022 and 31 July 2025 according to United Nations. It's really easy to Google it.

On 11 April, Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko stated that over 10,000 civilians had died in the Russian siege of Mariupol.[323] On 12 April, city officials reported that up to 20,000 civilians had been killed.[323] (this is 1 month into siege) On the same day, the Mayor of the city reported that about 21,000 civilians had been killed.[324] An updated Ukrainian death toll the following month put the number of civilians killed at at least 22,000.[325]

On August 29, President of Mariupol Television, volunteer and civil activist Mykola Osychenko said to Dnipro TV that, according to the insider information, 87,000 deaths have been currently documented in morgues in Mariupol. Besides, 26,750 bodies are buried in mass graves, and many more are buried in the yards of the apartment blocks and private houses, or still under the rubble.[326]

In early November, Ukraine stated that at least 25,000 civilians had been killed in Mariupol.[46][47] In late December, based on the discovery of 10,300 new mass graves, the Associated Press estimated that the true death toll may be up to three times that figure.[327] The Uppsala Conflict Data Program estimates of the total death toll resulting from the siege range from 27,000 to 88,000 fatalities, most of them civilians.[49]

just to put things into perspective, this siege lasted less than 3 months

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Mariupol

If you had quoted but one more sentence by accident, you might have included the study that counted individual graves in and around Mariupol:

"According to a 2023 study by Human Rights Watch and two other organizations, there were at least 8,034 excess deaths in Mariupol between March 2022 and February 2023."

The very same UN stresses that these numbers severely undercount due to lack of access to occupied territories and mostly reflect deaths in free Ukraine. The figures from the areas where most of the fighting has taken place remain unknown. Realistic estimates go far beyond the death toll in Gaza; people illegally conscripted from the occupied territories into the Russian armed forces alone add several tens of thousands more deaths.

Ukraine goes out of its way to evacuate civilians, who can flee to safer parts of their vast country, or to other countries which have collectively accepted something like 7 million Ukrainian refugees.

Gazans have none of that - they’re trapped in a tiny territory, no states are taking significant numbers of Gazan refugees, and Hamas isn’t doing anything for civilian safety.

Any differences in Israeli vs Russian military tactics are rather secondary to these fundamental differences in civilian exposure.

Israel with the support of literally all of the West cannot cope with a bunch of poor muslims. I cannot understand it, outside of conspiracy. The same holds for any distant war between the USA and some medieval counties in the last 30 years. If I were in charge, I would obliterate the enemy with any means.

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