Pyrrhus, king of Epirus : "While he was fighting an Argive soldier, the soldier's old mother, who was watching from a rooftop, threw a tile which knocked him from his horse and broke part of his spine, paralyzing him. Whether he was alive or not after the blow is unknown, but his death was assured when a Macedonian soldier named Zopyrus, though frightened by the look on the face of the unconscious king, hesitantly and ineptly beheaded his motionless body."

Source : Wikipedia

skull issue

rip to the idf but you're built different.

nah their rank system is just real fast for reasons nobody bothers to explain

If you look at the list of IOF casualties they're mostly like Lt. Generals and then it will list their age as maybe 25-26.

The IOF promotion system rewards time served, so SFC is literally the lowest rank you can have if you sign on after your conscription period.

This was my very first thought. My second was the ancient story of David and Goliath, which bears many uncanny resemblances

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/r9Q64HDwGNs

Palestinians have developed armor piercing sling technology.

I remember an interesting video by an ex-IDF, pro-Palestinian resistance Israeli who said they have murals of David taking on Goliath, and when he served in Gaza, he saw a very powerful mural of a child throwing a rock at a tank, a similar image to an important story he grew up with.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkxJd88xkBU

I'm not exactly an expert here. But, everyone's tanks get destroyed by simple methods. Relative to WW2 where a tank could get reliably knocked out by a cheap panzerfaust at 75m tanks are actually pretty resilient. Tanks need infantry support to make sure that enemy infantry can't get close enough to plant explosives or take potshots with anti tank weapons. When assaulting German cities the Soviets coordinated their tanks and infantry to make certain that there were no Nazis within a 75m radius of a tank. The tanks wouldn't move forward ahead of the infantry, or move past them horizontally.

No matter what one might think modern warfare is all about combined arms. Tanks need infantry to protect them at close range and to defend and assault key positions. Infantry needs tanks to take out fortifications, gun emplacements, and to provide quick reinforcement. Tanks aren't built to be invincible, because thats impossible, they're built to be mobile heavy guns that can also lay down heavy suppressive fire.

Its also important to note that tanks aren't very useful in urban environments. Urban environments are meat grinders decided by mostly by infantry. The IDF keeps sending tanks without support into urban environments for some strange reason. Most likely its because the IDF cannot sustain major casualties without losing public support. They send in tanks because its safer than sending in a squad of infantry. However, its also less likely to achieve any actual objectives.

As far as the iron dome i've seen videos of israelis hosting tailgate parties to watch the missiles explode in the air. But I'm sure that it has some weaknesses. No system is impervious.

Also small arms (pistols, assault rifles, ect) haven't really changed all that much since the 60s. AKs and other older rifles still do the job. As ever commanders chose reliable options over shiny options.

The main takeaway is that regardless of technology you still need a committed soldiery and public to sustain a war. If your citizens can't stomach loses then you'll never have the infantry available to take advantage of the openings your fancy weapons create. The only way for israel to have a total victory is to assault the hamas tunnels. But, there aren't any high tech solutions to that. Thousands, maybe tens of thousands will have to die for that operation to be successful. I don't think the Israeli public has the stomach for that. They love to watch Palestinians die, but don't want to pay the price for that to mean anything tactically.

They definitely get some of our best and newest hardware, but that doesn't mean they are good at actual warfare.