Stronger in munitions? One western artillery shell is worth countless Qassam rockets. The Qassam rockets are largely useless from a military perspective because you aren't going to hit anything with them.
This is an apples and oranges type comparison, except Hamas is stuck with crabapples.
Qassam rockets are not "useless." They've killed multiple people, including kids. They are relatively low-yield compared to later Grad/Fajr/M-75 type rockets Hamas used, but to say they're "useless" is a huge overstatement, and the implication that they represented Hamas's entire arsenal is wrong.
The reality is that Hamas also had dozens if not hundreds of R-160 / M-302 medium range rockets (up to 200km) and long range Ayyash 250 rocekts (travel more than 200km).
In addition to the direct devastation the rockets cause, they also force large swaths of the Israeli population into bomb shelters, which has other military benefits for Hamas. It was part of the 10/7 strategy they employed.
People like to pretend Hamas was a tiny force. The reality is what I said: it was larger than many European militaries, with an arsenal to match.
I suggest you look up the concept of CEP, circular error probable. It's a very important measure when discussing weapons like these.
Modern western rocket artillery will strike your target from tens of kilometers away within a circle of a couple of meters.
Your typical Grad will have CEP in excess of 1.5% of range. So at 10KM you'll have only half of your rockets land within 150 meters of your target.
These are weapons where your target selection amounts to "fuck someone in that general direction". Not "better shoot at that guy before he shoots at us". Fundamentally useless for fighting wars.
The Grads can be vaguely useful, but Hamas doesn't have the launch platforms to field them as an area denial weapon as originally intended.
EDIT: and you can probably stop reading right here, I'm mostly just repeating myself after this point.
> They've killed multiple people, including kids
I never thought I'd laugh at the idea of kids being killed, but in this context it comes across as pretty hilarious. This is not a good feature in a weapon of war! In war you typically want to kill enemy soldiers, not kids.
You can point a Gazan artillery rocket towards an urban center, maybe hit someone and kill a kid. It is not feasible to hit a target more specific than that using these weapons.
You can't fire one at a smallish enemy position.
>The reality is that Hamas also had dozens if not hundreds of R-160 / M-302 medium range rockets (up to 200km) and long range Ayyash 250 rocekts (travel more than 200km).
Hamas having dozens if not hundreds of M-302s is certainly a claim I'd love to see evidence for, but even if it were true this isn't very impressive at all. These are terribly inaccurate unguided artillery rockets! Western militaries don't really have much in terms of equivalents because they're practically useless.
>People like to pretend Hamas was a tiny force. The reality is what I said: it was larger than many European militaries, with an arsenal to match.
This is a straight up lie. Hamas had a plenty of manpower, but certainly has never had an arsenal to match. Artillery rockets you can realistically only use to indiscriminately strike civilian areas are absolutely useless when fighting a war.
The whole point is that Hamas is an unconventional fighting force that does aim at civilian centers and doesn't particularly care for accuracy. You sneeringly ask me to look up CEP, as though Hamas tries to be accurate and target military installations rather than sewing terror. They know they can't go head to head against Israel militarily, and they do purposefully kill civilians (see: 10/7). I can see you laugh at kids being killed, which is horrifying!
You also scoff at the idea that Hamas had M-302s, but the reality is not only did they have them but they fired them, for example on July 9, 2014 towards Hadera. In March 2014 the IDF also siezed M-302s being smuggled into Gaza. I can go on. Your snarkiness is no substitute for research.
I wrote "people like to pretend hamas was a tiny force" and you say that's a "straight up lie." But people on this very thread have claimed that. Yes, their arsenal didn't match European countries in terms of accuracy, but in terms of raw firepower, they had lots, which is why Israel spent billions developing the iron dome.
If Hamas had the tech, they'd surely blow up the whole of Israel, including military installations. But they don't (which I agree is good) and their history and words and actions all show a desire to target and kill civilians.
This is an apples and oranges type comparison, except Hamas is stuck with crabapples.