Is there a myth of superiority about the IDF, the israeli defense forces, or, stated differently, is there some structural differences between that military and, say, more conventional militaries that you can explain to us? Yeah. Israel's lived off a legacy of some past exceptional performances, let's call it. I mean, they were caught with their pants down in 67, 73, but they recovered very quickly and won a victory, especially in 73. 

Then the raid in Antebe where they rescued hostages, that was considered very remarkable. So Israel gets this reputation for being, oh, boy, the most exceptional military in the Middle east. But then you start looking at the facts. It is a reserve force. That means reservists. They go through some basic training and then periodically throughout the year, you show up on weekends to get trained. And there may be a two or three week period where you do some additional training. 

But what caught my attention the other day was I was looking at a casualty list. There were nine israeli soldiers that were killed, all but one who was 28 years old. Everybody else was under the age of 23. And you said, well, that's what you'd expect, young guys, except they all carried the rank of either staff sergeant or master sergeant. Now, a staff sergeant in the US army is a guy who's about 26, 28 years old. 

They've been in for a while. They're seasoned veterans. They know how things work. They've come up through the ranks. To have a 19 year old as a staff sergeant is immediately an indication of what's wrong with the israeli army. Because the only way a kid who's 19 gets to be called staff sergeant is because he's politically connected, wired in some way. They give him the title, but he does not have the experience or background. 

Because these staff sergeants, master sergeants, they're like officers, non commissioned officers, they're supposed to be leaders and to have experience. I don't care who you are when you're 19, you don't have experience. So are these people being promoted too quickly or given titles and authority that are not justified by their lack of experience? Is that the essence of your criticism? Well, yes. And look at the performance, or let's call it the lack of performance of the IDF in Gaza. 

They're not making progress, despite what they say. The only progress that's being made is in depopulating the civilian areas with aerial bombardments from primarily aircraft. .