There have been inumerable times when militaries (including the US military) were given orders to do something, but were then hamstrung by the politicians who would not give the military the resources and time needed to comply.
When something like this happens, failure is often blamed on the military, when in fact it should be owned by the politicians.
Re "why thousands of Israeli kids in the IDF died in the past few months," that's a gross exaggeration. As stated by Ha'aretz, a respected left-leaning Israeli newspaper that has as little use for Netanyahu as I do, the total since Oct. 7 stands at 522, and only 189 of those have been since the ground operation began. So if you want me to take you seriously, please recalibrate your pronouncements downward by an order of magnitude.
Hamas is fighting with small arms, with anti-tank rockets, with surface-to-surface missiles, with IEDs, etc. And they are most certainly not fighting "because Israel has two populations." Read their charter. They're fighting because there are Jews in the area they call Palestine, and those Jews aren't dhimmis.
Israeli Arabs have the same citizenship rights as Israeli Jews. They can vote and stand for election, they can work in whatever location and whatever field they wish, etc (albeit they cannot get security clearance and can't serve in the military or work in defense industries). There is a certain level of unequal treatment that isn't based in law, but rather in the Israeli equivalent of systemic racism in the US. This doesn't make it ok, but at least from a legal perspective they have equal rights. Also, when polled, nearly all of them would rather stay Israeli citizens than become citizens in any other Middle Eastern country, including Palestine if and when it becomes a country.
Israel doesn't blame the violence on its Arab citizens (except those who are caught engaging in terror, which is a minute minority of >2 million Arab citizens).
As for why I live in the US and not Israel, that has nothing to do with all of the above. My professional life developed in this direction, and I couldn't do in Israel the work I do here.
Finally, you confuse Israel with the Israeli government. That latter, especially since the latest elections, is a disgrace and disaster for Israel, let alone for the Palestinians who aren't citizens - the ones who live in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
I don't defend them in hardly anything. The only thing they did that I agree with is finally acknowledge that Hamas cannot be "contained" and needs to be eradicated, and take military action toward that goal.
I absolutely advocate for the Palestinian people to have their own country, as long as they leave Israel in peace, within negotiated borders that give the Palestinians the West Bank and Gaza Strip (with minor adjustments of trading equal areas to bring 80% of settlers into Israel proper in return for a similar aread from pre-1967 Israel), with nominal "right of return" to a small number of Palestinians into Israel, and with a Palestinian presence in East Jerusalem, all as offered by Ehud Barak to Yasser Arafat in 2000.
However, I do not at all advocate for any rights for Hamas to do anything other than surrender or die. They've proven themselves incapable of and uninterested in negotiating a lasting peace. They don't care about their own civilians. They care only about torturing, raping, and murdering Israeli Jews and destroying Israel.
While many in the so-called "progressive" left in the US and Europe accuse Israel of genocide and ethnic cleansing, it's their darling Hamas that actually does those things and proudly proclaims they'll keep doing them.
