Jalfrezi, please take a break from the thread untill 12:00 AM Eastern Time for low content posting. Thank you.

Knowing that hostage negotiations have failed completely because Hamas refuses to budge from its demands that Israel leaves completely, Hamas remain in power, the world rebuilds Gaza, and only then will they start any hostage negotiations (and these maximalist demands are a non starter for Israel); and knowing Israel has done nothing but find dead hostages for months, and this may be the last chance to retrieve any live hostages; do you think Israel should have just passed on the rescue attempt because the risk for collateral damage was too high?

So details are leaking out.

Israel intelligence indicates it was 2 separate simultaneous rescues; and the rescue of the Israeli woman hostage who was being held hostage by the "doctor" and his family went smoothly; but the rescue of the 3 male hostages being held by the Al Jazeera "journalist" and his family resulted in a firefight with said "journalist" that ended up with one dead IDF soldier and the "journalist" and his family dead.

And then while driving to the extraction point 2 vehicles had mechanical issues that delayed them; and it appears this is where the IDF may have overreacted, as they laid down heavy aerial fire to buy the extraction team time, and this is probably when most of the collateral damage casualties happened. One thing we dont know is how much imminent danger the extraction team was in, and whether laying down such cover fire to buy them time was warranted or not. But hard to make these kind of decisions in the heat of the moment and the fog of war, especially when you are transporting a severely wounded soldier (who ultimately didn't make it).