The IDF Has Been Exposed as a Mediocre Army

In a couple of previous posts about the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict (link 1 and link 2), I made an observation about how this conflict has exposed the very limited real-life capabilities of the IDF. This post will take go a bit deeper into the level of general and systemic incompetence which this war has exposed. But before we go there, let me tell you how I first got the idea of writing this post. In late-October 2023, about two weeks into this conflict, I noticed a few unusual features about Israel’s response to the events of October 7. Please note that ‘unusual features’ is just a polite way of saying ‘utterly thoughtless and incompetent actions’. So let us start by talking about the first example of (systemic) incompetence- the almost complete lack of a realistic set of strategic objectives for the IDF. As you will soon see, this sets the tone for the rest quite nicely.

1] Any moron with more than half-a-brain in Israel should have known that an attack of the scale which occurred on October 7th was always likely and inevitable. I am sure that some defenders of Israel will spout some nonsense about the superiority of their electronic surveillance, “artificial intelligence” or some other hyped bullshit. Others may invoke a conspiracy about how the Mossad and Shin Bet allowed this to happen, but let us be honest about something.. this is not the first time such a massive failure of the Israeli intelligence apparatus occurred. In fact, something very similar occurred almost exactly 50 years before October 7, 2023 during the Yom Kippur war. But even if we ignore the intelligence failure which led to October 7th, it is clear that the situation n Gaza was going to lead such a situation- sooner or later.

2] And this brings us to the topic of whether Israel ever had a realistic plan to deal with something like October 7th. In my studied opinion, they never had anything approaching a realistic plan because they never expected it to occur on that scale. Here is why.. If you study the response of Israel to similar but much smaller uprisings in Gaza in past two decades, they followed a very predictable and short-sighted plan of action. This involved bombing a few dozen big apartment buildings, killing a few hundred to thousands of people, followed by a few local incursions in that area which inevitably caused a few dozen IDF casualties resulting in withdrawal within a few weeks- rinse and repeat. However the underlying problem was never addressed and in fact could not be addressed for a number of reasons.

3] While Egypt did sign a peace treaty with Israel in the late 1970s, it had firmly held on to its position that the Gaza problem belonged to Israel because they ‘bought’ it in 1967. While Egypt does nominally cooperate with Israel in sealing the borders of Gaza, it is obvious that they don’t do a good job for reasons that should surprise no one who has talked to Egyptians outside their elites. More importantly, the pressures of public opinion in Egypt make it impossible for their government to ever accept any relocation of Palestinians from Gaza into Egypt. The same is true for every other country in that region, which is a nice way of saying that there was never any realistic possibility for pushing the Palestinians in Gaza outside. Similarly, killing over 2 million Palestinians is not a viable option for Israel because that would make their own existence untenable for a number of reasons- regardless of how many nukes they have.

4] Therefore any realistic plan to deal with Hamas (an entity which Israel actively supported till October 6th) had to factor in the unpleasant reality that there was no realistic military solution to this problem. Bombing civilians and destroying buildings, at best, was always going to create a new crop of recruits for Hamas and similar organizations. This is especially true in an era of global social media and smartphones. To be quite blunt, the whole strategy of Israel of actively ignoring the situation in Gaza and West bank while trying to make peace with its Muslim neighbors was an incredibly simple-minded idea because there was never going to any lasing peace unless those issues had been solved to the general satisfaction of all involved parties. This was the political equivalent of trying to build high-rise buildings on ground which is too unstable to reliably support them. But it gets worse..

5] Let us, for a minute, ignore the fact that Israel has not yet figured out that changing demographics in Western countries does not work in their favor. Instead, let us talk about the IDF- specifically the ‘army’ part of those forces. As some of you might know, the naval arm of IDF is basically non-existent and no.. five diesel-electric submarines with a few barely middle-range ballistic missiles does not count, especially in a real war. While their air-force is well equipped on paper, they have not faced a serious adversary in war since the early 1980s or over four decades ago. Bombing civilians or shooting a few glide bombs and missiles into Syria once in a while does not count as real combat experience. But let us focus on the level of competence displayed by the numerically largest part of their armed force aka the army.

6] If you have seen enough footage released by Hamas (on Telegram) as well as the unfiltered bits leaking from the IDT, a few things become apparent. The army part of the IDF is mostly made of incompetent conscripts with zero combat experience dressed in impressive looking gear- otherwise known as all hat and no cattle. There are a huge number of clips of them walking around Gaza in close groups, acting as if nobody is stalking them and otherwise displaying zero situational awareness. This is an army of TikTokers cosplaying as soldiers, not the hyper-competent super-soldiers they would like the rest of world to believe. But here is the fun part- this is totally predictable since the army part of the IDF has not had any real combat experience since 1973 (five decades ago). As it exists, the IDF is a colonial policing force whose only real proficiency lies in beating and killing unarmed women and kids.

7] But it get worse.. just look the level of rank inflation among the IDF. How do you promote someone to positions of Major, Major General, Lieutenant Colonel etc with barely a few years of service? Even the American army in its current state of decay, tries to make sure that people promoted to their positions have a decent amount of relevant experience before promoting them. Which actual wars have these people experienced or distinguished themselves in? Which real conflicts have their special forces participated, in recent memory? How does their training schemes even work? Or are they just jumping through hoops in some made up tests like trained dogs at dog shows? About three weeks ago, I heard a casualty number for IDF of over 6,000 with over 2,000 of them serious enough to permanently cripple them. The real numbers are likely higher, but their government claims only about a hundred of their soldiers have been killed. Who are they trying to kid? This is a gong show.

What do you think? Comments?