As the fighting in Gaza continues, the question of who is winning remains. In an in-depth report with elaborate graphics, CNN argued recently that the IDF had not made as much progress against Hamas as it claims. While the report does contain some outright falsehoods, it is better researched and contains less distortion than much coverage of the conflict. Yet it ultimately is of a piece with another CNN article from April about how “Israel has no viable plan for how to end the war” and isn’t achieving its goals.

Key to CNN’s argument is the fact that Hamas’s battalions are reconstituting themselves. Yaakov Amidror explains the flaw in this reasoning:

Suppose a Hamas battalion consisted of 1,000 fighters divided into five companies. After a fierce battle, the IDF killed, severely wounded, or captured about 700 of them. Additionally, the battalion commander, one of his deputies, and four company commanders were killed. During the battle, the IDF also eliminated the commander of the brigade to which the battalion belonged and destroyed the command centers from which the brigade commander, battalion commander, and company commanders operated.

After the IDF withdrew, 300 young Gazans were recruited into the battalion. . . . Not only is the battalion now smaller by a third, with only 600 fighters, but it also bears little resemblance to its former self: half of its members are completely untrained; most of its commanders are new and far less experienced than the previous leadership. It lacks brigade-level support both logistically and operationally, and it can no longer receive intelligence and fire support from the destroyed command centers.

While it may appear to be the same battalion, in reality, it is ten-times weaker.

Meanwhile, the New York Times, in a similar attempt to show that Israel is doing something wrong, makes the opposite argument: the IDF, it claims, “has achieved all that it can militarily in Gaza,” and must now stop fighting.

Yesterday, the beepers used by hundreds of Hizballah operatives were detonated. Noah Rothman puts this ingenious attack in the context of the overall war between Israel and the Iran-backed terrorist group:

[W]hile the disabling of an untold number of Hizballah operatives is remarkable, it’s also ominous. This week, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant told reporters that the hour is nearing when Israeli forces will have to confront Iran’s cat’s-paw in southern Lebanon directly, in order to return the tens of thousands of Israelis who fled their homes along Lebanon’s border under fire and have not yet been able to return. Today’s operation may be a prelude to the next phase of Israel’s defensive war, a dangerous one in which the IDF will face off against an enemy with tens of thousands of fighters and over 150,000 rockets and missiles trained on Israeli cities.

Seth Frantzman, meanwhile, focuses on the specific damage the pager bombings have likely done to Hizballah:

This will put the men in hospital for a period of time. Some of them can go back to serving Hizballah, but they will not have access to one of their hands. These will most likely be their dominant hand, meaning the hand they’d also use to hold the trigger of a rifle or push the button to launch a missile.

Hizballah has already lost around 450 fighters in its eleven-month confrontation with Israel. This is a significant loss for the group. While Hizballah can replace losses, it doesn’t have an endlessly deep [supply of recruits]. This is not only because it has to invest in training and security ahead of recruitment, but also because it draws its recruits from a narrow spectrum of Lebanese society.

The overall challenge for Hizballah is not just replacing wounded and dead fighters. The group will be challenged to . . . roll out some other way to communicate with its men. The use of pagers may seem archaic, but Hizballah apparently chose to use this system because it assumed the network could not be penetrated. . . . It will also now be concerned about the penetration of its operational security. When groups like Hizballah are in chaos, they are more vulnerable to making mistakes.