*A poster wrote* *“The country is still reeling, the hostages are not all back, and we face very real existential threats.”* I think there is a false narrative that there is an existential threat to Israel. One that, by perpetuating, gives Israel almost free rein to behave, politically and militarily as it likes. Hamas, when compared to the might of the Israeli military is puny. The horrific devastation and death it caused on October 7th was not through military strength or superiority, but through a catastrophic failure of Israel’s defences, one even greater than that of 1973. Whilst not being the largest of the world’s armies, Israel has one of the best trained, best equipped and most effective fighting machines. In addition to that, its intelligence capabilities are pretty good. It has a greater proportion of reservists than nearly all of the world’s armies. Its military superiority is reflected in the asymmetry of casualties when it engages with an enemy, losses on Israel’s side are a small proportion of total losses. It is the 5th or 6th highest spending in terms of proportion of GDP on defence. It is also one of the world’s top ten manufacturers and exporters of weapons. It also has the backing of the USA and it almost certainly has nuclear weapons. There is no existential threat. Hamas may bluster with rhetoric about how they want to eradicate the Zionist project, but there is absolutely no way they could do that. Their rockets are pretty ineffective, and are simply for the purposes of propaganda and causing Israel to have to spend a fortune defending against them. Militarily they are neither here nor there. More people are killed or injured on Israel’s roads than through rocket attack. Israel will never be pushed into the sea by Hamas. The rest of the Arab world learnt their lessons in 1967 and 1973 and will not try that again. Iran also knows that invasion is just not an option. Do you honestly think that the UK would be selling so many arms to Saudi Arabia if they thought they would be used against Israel? I’m happy to be corrected, but at present I believe the state of Israel cannot be militarily defeated and there is no existential threat, it’s simply a line spun to help justify its actions. Thank you, Discuss.