I woke up early this morning and was shocked to see a surprise attack of such an enormous scale by a terrorist group anywhere in the world. As a former American intelligence analyst, I have an immense appreciation in particular for Israel's formidable intelligence apparatus. It seems inconceivable that HAMAS would be able to coordinate an attack like this over the course of at least a couple of months without alerting Israeli intelligence. HAMAS claims to have launched 7,000 rockets in what has been their most coordinated attack in years. According to the BBC about 2 hours after the start of the attack:

• 40 Israelis killed
• 700 Israelis injured

Those casualties will go up as bodies are found and the injured die from their wounds. However, for 7,000 rockets, 780 casualties is very... low.

The video of the rockets launching is very impressive, but it doesn't tell the complete story. HAMAS' rockets are manufactured in factories in the Gaza Strip for just this purpose. They are cheap, wildly inaccurate, and wield a tiny explosive payload. Although the 7,000 rockets are more than enough to overwhelm Israel's "Iron Dome", the rockets themselves are weak and impractical for anything besides being showy. Although the casualties are sure to go up, despite all the carnage, it is still a laughable number of rockets fired for just one injury. In the grand scheme of things, 7,000 rockets targeting the have resulted in death or injury to less than 0.00015% of the Jewish population of Israel. All they're doing is kicking the hornets nest.

And perhaps kicking the hornets nest is all they're trying to do. If Israel overreacts, it may hamper their efforts to normalize relations with their Arab neighbors; who have traditionally been the biggest backers of HAMAS and the Palestinians in general.

Still, when you launch a coordinated attack like this, you're making the attack look more deadly and powerful than it really was. That will only justify a larger scale response from Israel, even in the eyes of foreigners who have traditionally been skeptical of Israel in the past.

HAMAS is pretty pathetic. We'll see if their idiocy inspires Hezbollah and other terrorist groups to kick up activity and participate in attempting to topple the Israeli state. I'm extremely skeptical that anything will come of this that results in a net benefit for HAMAS, especially anything worth the cost in lives, wealth, and resources that HAMAS put into this. Right as I was prepared to upload this page, Palestinian leaders have reported the death toll on their side is already up to 161 from Israel's retaliation.