To see what’s wrong with ‘Israel’s’ military, we’ll look at three things. One week of deaths, decades of decline, and a determined enemy willing to sacrifice.

One Week Of Deaths

This is a list of Israel Occupation Forces (IOF) reported killed during just the last week of 2023 (December 24–31s). This is not the real number because they don’t report the real number. Israel significantly under-reports deaths, and deaths are not reported immediately. My source here is Fotros Resistance (I searched for “eliminated”) but you can look up the names yourself. Consider it just a rough sample, to simply illustrate a point.

Do you see the problem here?

Where are all the grunts? There are twenty names in this list, and they’re all high-ranking. Either Israel is promoting people way too early, the Resistance is targeting and hitting leadership strategically, and/or certain deaths are not being reported. Something weird is definitely going on.

The IDF (their acronym) is pejoratively called the ‘Israel Diaper Forces’ because they literally wear diapers into combat. But you can also call them that because of their age. They have 20-year-old Staff Sergeants commanding squads. They have 22-year-old Lieutenants and 23-year-old Captains. Compare this to the ages of similar ranks in the US Marines and you can see that something is off, by about a decade. Staff Sergeants would be 30 in the US Marines and Master Sergeants would be 40. Meanwhile Israel has 28-year-old Master Sergeants dying in combat, when they shouldn’t even be in that role. These facts are not unrelated.

I was watching an IOF training/explaining video, and you can see that something is off from their basic firearms training. Many IOF troops aren’t even trusted to carry loaded pistols, but these same people are entrusted with entire squadrons. This doesn’t make sense, until it does. As that instructor says,

While this is not my personal choice or what I teach military and law enforcement units around the world we need to understand that Israel’s military operates under its own very peculiar conditions almost in a constant and never-ending state of emergency. Israeli military conscripts drafted a very young age and for a relatively short amount of time compared to other forces around the world. Military leaders in Israel need to develop a curriculum that will get these soldiers to the safest and most proficient level of combat in the shortest amount of time.

So basically, they don’t have much time to train these kids, and they don’t want them blowing their dicks off, so they’re not allowed to load their guns. This gives you a lot of people in uniform who are capable of bullying and shooting stone-throwing kids, but who are certainly not ready for guerrilla warfare against men. Thus Hamas (Al-Qassam) fighters are actually disappointed when they encounter Israeli ground troops. As one Al-Qassam Brigade fighter said after a 2014 raid, “When I embarked on this operation, I had slightly higher expectations for [the IOF]. But the reality was so different from my expectations, [the IOF] didn’t even deserve the strenuous training I had to endure.”

Indeed, according to Israel’s (always dubious) figures, their soldiers seem to be killing each other. Of the (certainly wrong) 170-ish soldiers they report killed, they report 29 deaths by friendly fire. Shooting their own. Meanwhile Palestinian Resistance fighters are popping out of tunnels, lighting up these idiots, and disappearing underground. Even well-trained, experienced troops would have trouble in bombed-out Gaza, and the actual Israeli troops are none of the above. The IOF is a bunch of 20-year-old Staff Sergeants killing each other or getting picked off and then getting replaced with what? 19-year-olds? It seems like their leadership is constantly getting picked off, which is devastating for morale.

Decades Of Decline

This is a deep structural problem for Israel that they can’t fix overnight. Indeed, it’s been decades in the coming. Despite being able to mobilize over 300,000 people in 48 hours, those people obviously suck. Despite being able to destroy hospitals and kill children from afar, Israel is simply losing in close combat on the ground. This is happening because Hamas, Hezbollah, have gotten much stronger, but also because Israel has gotten much weaker. The Israeli military has deprioritized combat roles for years, and its young people just don’t wanna.

Elitism From The Top

Israel is an American garrison state (a satrap army parked near the gas station) and they seem to follow general American military strategy. Ever since World War II, America prioritized low troop numbers and high technology. What they call ‘strategic bombing’ is actually massive war crimes against civilian populations. Industrial terrorism. As Robert McNamara said, “If we lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals.” America’s strategy has long been to bomb everything in order to minimize the use of ground troops. This doesn’t actually win wars, but they never lost their own territory, so these war criminals keep getting promoted. And those are the ideas their garrison state promotes as well.

As Israeli researcher Avi Jeger writes:

Consequently, over the last few years, the IDF adopted some of the most revolutionary policies in its short history, meant to optimize manpower and enhance professionalism. The military’s drafting agenda has transformed overwhelmingly into an army focused less on conventional warfare capabilities, and more on rocket defense systems and cyber capabilities. The common denominator of these changes is the deliberate prioritization of knowledge and professionalism over large numbers of soldiers.

Again, the words ‘knowledge’ and ‘professionalism’ are misnomers like ‘strategic’ bombing. They’d simply rather kill 100,000 civilians than lose one soldier, even though this works against guerrilla warfare never. It’s all just cowardice and cruelty dressed up in MBA talk and is both morally and historically ignorant. But that’s what they’re doing, especially in recruiting, ie the allocation of manpower before the battle ever starts. As people from Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) write:

In systematic and structured fashion, the IDF recruitment process gives priority to recruits joining the Special Forces, Flight and Naval Academies, technological units, and Military Intelligence directorate. These branches have access to the best quality recruits that the State of Israel can offer. The process of locating personnel for the prestigious intelligence units starts in high schools with a sophisticated marketing approach, including assurance that the army will provide them with a profession and skills that will be useful in civilian life, whether in hi tech or other fields.

Israelis seem to look at ‘compulsory’ military service as a sort of internship in an internment camp. They get to use high technology to brutalize poor people and then use those skills to get high-paying jobs. This means that people gravitate towards the Navy, Air Force, and Intelligence services, ie desk jobs to prepare for desk jobs, and the Israeli military encourages this. And as a result, field combat units get starved of attention and resources. As those authors continue:

This is the competitive space in which the IDF field units contend, and without much success. They must be content with those who are not “intercepted” during the triage process by the special units, the prestigious courses, and the technology and intelligence systems. The field units cannot offer their recruits similar advantages.

Disinterest From Below

In response to their leadership, and also because field combat sucks, new recruits increasingly avoid those units. As a 2022 survey from within the IOF showed:

According to the findings, the level of motivation to serve in a combat capacity in 2022 was the lowest in recent years. In December 2022, only 66% of the male respondents said they would like to join such units, compared to 73% in 2020.

Among women would-be draftees, the drop was even more significant: Only 48% said they wanted to be fighters, down from 50% in 2021, 53% in 2020, and 60% in 2018. In light of these trends, the figures for 2023 are likely to be even lower for both sexes.

Now bear in mind that only 35% of the population actually serves in the military due to various exemptions, that 40% of conscripts are women with even less training than the men, and so on. As researcher Avi Jager writes, “One of the most misleading myths about the State of Israel is that it has a “people’s army,” with universal compulsory military service. The truth is that the Israel Defense Forces transformed from a national conscription army to a smaller professional army.”

Thus one goes from a completely theoretical ‘people’s army’ of 9.2 million to an actual army of 170,000 active service personnel with 465,000 reservists. And the latter can’t even be trusted with a loaded gun. So here they are, running into actual resistance armies in Hamas, Hezbollah, etc, and getting clobbered. They’re losing an officer/non-com core that barely existed because they stopped prioritizing it decades ago. As that INSS report from above continues:

Already when he was the commander of the Galilee Division, Maj. Gen. Herzi Halevy warned of giving priority to intelligence and cyber jobs in the allocation of high quality personnel, which could mean that the IDF would one day find itself with inferior company and brigade commanders.

Which is precisely what happened. The fancy recruits that went into military intelligence ‘missed’ the Al Aqsa Flood and the ones that went into the Air Force and Navy are only good for bombing civilians. The only people left to actually fight are 20-something incompetents. And they’re dying, deserting, or literally killing each other in friendly fire. Hamas et al have been strategically eliminating this already thing ‘leadership’ layer, and the Diaper Army is literally shitting themselves.

A Ready Resistance

The Palestinian Resistance chose this war and they must have known about these weaknesses in the IOF. In the frankly brilliant attack of October 7th, the Palestinian Resistance methodically targeted military leaders for elimination and civilians as hostages for exchange. And they accomplished both military objectives. Israel itself reported 507 soldiers, officers, and reservists killed on October 7th (along with 59 police). The Al Aqsa Flood significantly weakened the IOF before it could even take the field.

The Resistance eliminated five colonels that day, eight lieutenant colonels, 45 majors, 63 captains, and 62 lieutenants. That article (which I got ChatGPT to count) listed 94 commanders or deputy commanders, leaving that many units ‘headless’. The story about decapitated babies was racist bullshit, but the decapitation of the IOF’s leadership ranks was real.

Since then, Israel has reported only around 173 killed in Gaza, but that’s obviously bullshit again (they’re always lying). The much more honest Hamas leadership (Yahya Sinwar) reports that, “During the ground war, the Al-Qassam Brigades targeted no less than 5,000 soldiers and officers, killing a third of them, another third suffered serious injuries, and the remaining third sustained permanent disabilities. As for military vehicles, 750 of them were destroyed, either completely or partially.”

If you watch all the GoPro combat footage going around, this is obvious, and the casualties also show up in Israeli hospital data. Israel, in its wanton bombing of everything in Gaza has made the place into an impossible battleground for their own ground troops, Stalingrad by the Sea.

Resistance fighters are safe in kilometers of underground tunnels and they can just pop up and eliminate troop concentrations at will. Israel’s ground troops can round up, strip, torture, and execute civilians, but they’re barely degrading Resistance fighters at all. The IOF combat troops are just hiding in tanks until fighters blow them up from zero distance. If it weren’t for all the men, women, and children Israel’s ‘elite’ units were genociding from the air, it’d be laughable.

Retreat

As you could see from just one week of casualty reports, Israel was losing more and more commanding officers, and as you can see from decades of starving those units, they simply don’t have the depth to replace them. Hence the vaunted Golani Brigades pulled out weeks ago, and now five more brigades are leaving also. They can call it what they want, but thousands of troops are retreating from Gaza. As the New York War Crimes reports (via):

Reservists from at least two brigades will be sent home this week, the Israeli military said in a statement, and three brigades will be taken back for “scheduled” training. Brigades vary in size, up to roughly 4,000 troops, and the Israeli military does not disclose how many troops it has deployed in Gaza, so it was unclear how many would remain.

They quote retired Brigadier General Yossi Kuperwasser saying, “In substantial parts of northern Gaza, we’re ready to advance to the next stage” of the fighting. We can dilute our forces there, because we’ve taken control. To hold on, you need fewer than it took to take over.” This is a joke. Sour grapes of wrath. For all the maps Israel made of ‘occupying’ Gaza, they ignored the Militant Metro underneath them. Wherever Israeli soldiers were, they were always encircled from underground.

During the brief ceasefire, Hamas popped up in the north of Gaza, which Israel supposedly controlled. The IOF can’t even control their own bowels. All they can do is slaughter and starve civilians in a blind rage, but they don’t even know where the enemy is, until the enemy finds them. The IOF’s cowardly, incompetent troops simply can’t take it anymore. Their corrupt leadership is pulling out brigades because the Resistance made them.

Jihad Of Victory, or Martyrdom

None of this is to say the Resistance is able to win this year or even this decade, but that’s necessarily their goal. As the stopped clock Henry Kissinger said, “The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerrilla wins if he does not lose.” Kissinger was well acquainted with committing massive war crimes and losing, which is precisely what’s happening to America’s imperial progeny in Israel. Whether you look at one week’s worth of casualties, decades of military planning, or 75 years of occupation Israel in the wrong and also doing it wrong.

The Israeli military — especially the reservists — are really just pogromists with fancy weapons. In their own combat videos, they run around shooting air and walls, wasting bullets like they have an infinite supply which — thanks to America — they do. In the videos they post to their own social media, they’re going through women’s underwear, getting facials, making fucking lattes, and posing inside children’s beds. Forget the war crimes, the lack of basic military discipline is shocking. These guys are jumping into the ocean in their underwear and grilling steaks. WTF is going on?

In the official images the Israeli government releases, their troops just destroying civilian infrastructure, rounding up and stripping civilians, or outright killing and torturing them. They plant flags on bombed out hospitals and carve obscene stars of David into the earth with tanks. The Israeli Army are just a bunch of rioters with uniforms. Meanwhile they’re getting blown up by guys in tracky bottoms who make their own sniper rifles and operate out of a Militant Metro. Israel is winning the genocide and losing the war. In the short running they’re killing a lot of people, but in the long run their garrison state will collapse. Over the next few decades, it’s simply inevitable.

Israel cannot survive without massive violence in every direction, and at some point both its American patron and planet will run out of the resources to sustain this. Meanwhile Hamas, Hezbollah, and now Yemen are formidable (and much more efficient) fighting forces, backed by the Arsenal of Resistance in Iran. Israel — through its blind genocide of tens of thousands of innocents — is completely isolated and exposed. They depend completely on America and — as every former American ‘ally’ could tell you — America is not reliable. To return to our stopped clock Kissinger for a second time, “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”

As American Empire over-extends and collapses, its most violent colony Israel will collapse too and be gone. It may take years or it may take decades, but in the long run (as in by 2050), it’s inevitable. The whole White Empire and the climate itself is collapsing, what makes you think this violent colony will survive? A lot of innocent people will die in the process, but as Hamas leader Khaled Mashal has said, that’s unfortunately how national liberation goes. He said:

Nations are not easily liberated. The Russians sacrificed 30 million people in World War II in order to liberate it from Hitler’s attack. The Vietnamese sacrificed 3.5 million people until they defeated the Americans. Afghanistan sacrificed millions of martyrs to defeat the USSR and then the US. The Algerian people sacrificed six million martyrs over 130 years. The Palestinian people are just like any other nation. No nation is liberated withoutsacrifices.

Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea, though only after much devastation of their beloved land and people. As Hamas said in a recent statement: “Our people will remain steadfast on their land, defending it, until the occupation withers away and is eliminated.” Or as the PFLP (communists) said, “Our people will not surrender, and the enemy’s delusions will fall one by one.” Or as all the Resistance fighters say, “it is indeed a jihad of victory or martyrdom.” Jihad is not a scary word, it’s a brave word. The greater jihad is the struggle against self, but the lesser jihad is the struggle against oppression. And it really doesn’t get much more oppressive than America and Israel. The only comfort in the massive sacrifice required is that the oppressor is also their own worst enemy. Just look at ‘Israel’.