.IN THE EARLY hours of October 7th Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist organization that runs Gaza, launched more than 2,000 rockets towards Israel. Over a 1000 Hamas boxers, some in motorised gliders, crossed the border between Israel as well as Gaza. They struck civilians on the streets of little Israeli communities and also in their homes. In the next 48 hours they killed greater than 900 Israelis, a figure much exceeding the fatalities in the previous 19 years of conflict, and also took about 150 captives. Israel was captured unsuspecting mostly considering that Hamas had actually never executed such a sizable attack. The nation's protection facility had actually presumed that in recent times Hamas had chosen to refrain from wide-scale conflict-- and that its own capability to carry out thus was restricted. They mistook. Simply exactly how strong is Hamas?