Political crisis. Economic crisis. Diplomatic crisis. Israel's genocidal fascism combines all these elements. However, there is another element: a profound military crisis. There is mounting evidence that Israel is facing a severe shortage of tanks and other armoured vehicles because of the prowess of the armed resistance sharpened through decades of experience of Israeli high-tech brutality. In response to a Israeli Supreme Court petition to mobilize women for combat operations in Gaza, the IDF has disclosed severe tank and tank ammunition shortages that require the IDF to delay such training until late 2025.
According to some English-language news websites, such as the Middle East Monitor, the Hebrew-language Israeli newspaper, Maariv, reported in June that 500 Israeli armoured vehicles have been damaged in Gaza. Hamas claimed in December that it had damaged or destroyed 410 Israeli vehicles. In April by the IDF claimed that 84% of its damaged armoured vehicles - tanks, troop carriers, bulldozers - return to action. There is no clarity on what Israel lists as an armoured vehicle. When offered opportunities to hit soft-skinned vehicles over more armoured vehicles, resistance tactics dictate maximizing casualties among Israeli death squads (battlefield example from December).
Signs of armoured vehicle shortages emerged in March with videos confirming the use of M113 armoured carriers - vehicles that were taken out of front line service by the Israeli following Israel's 2014 assault on Gaza in which a sophisticated Palestinian ambush inflicted major casualties on M113-transported Israeli death squads in the Battle of Shuja'iyya. In the spring of 2023, the M113s were finally being taken out of service and replaced with new vehicles, including the 8-wheeled Eitan and tracked Namer. In response to the video evidence, Israeli propaganda claimed the M113s are unmanned and remotely operated.
Israel keeps real casualty numbers a mystery
New reports put the IDF wounded at a minimum of 10,000 since October 7. According to the Middle East Monitor, Hebrew-language Yedioth Ahronoth (aka YNet) has
reported 1,000 soldiers a month are entering the Ministry of Defense's Rehabilitation Division services, which is the
source of the 10,000 figure. This 1,000/month figure was preceded by a June
report by Israel's Channel 7, which put the figure at 8,663. According to the Channel 7 report, 21 percent of the 8,663 are seeking rehabilitation for physical injuries, 35 percent for mental health. The remaining 44 percent are not defined at all, leaving large unanswered questions. Furthermore, it is unclear if these 10,000 are all related to the current war, although it is reasonable to assume the vast majority have been caused by the current conflict.
We also have no idea how many wounded Israeli soldiers have not sought support from the MoD's Rehabilitation Division. Consider that the figure of 10,000 was already reported last December following a Haaretz report drawn on hospital data of casualties related to the new war. Haaretz canvassed some but not all Israeli hospitals for figures on wounded related to the conflict. Including both military and civilians, Haaretz was able to produce the 10,000 figure. This investigate work was done in direct response to the IDF's December claim that 1,500 soldiers had been wounded since October 7. Following the Haaretz report, hospitals were barred from reporting any hospital figures to the press.
As for Israeli combatants killed in action, 373 soldiers and police were killed in the October 7-9 battles. With Israeli death squads entering Gaza on October 7, as recent as June there are reports that only about 300 IDF have been killed in Gaza, putting the total number shy of 700.
It is widely believed outside of the Western press and public that the death toll has been severely under-counted for obvious political purposes. The Israeli state's track record of lying about almost everything to justify its genocidal war and colonial landgrabs has to be taken into consideration. Furthermore, these figures seem highly unlikely given the documentary evidence of large numbers of combat videos, the admitted vehicle losses, and wounded:killed (WIA:KIA) ratios in modern combat conditions.
If we were to take 10,000 wounded and 700 dead at face value, the WIA:KIA ratio would be roughly 14:1, By comparison, American WIA:KIA ratios in Vietnam were 6:1 and, with improvements in body armour and medicine, the figure during the 2003-2008 occupation of Iraq was 8:1. Spanning 2001 to 2021, the 8:1 ratio holds for American casualties in Afghanistan. Taking into account the American experience, Israeli combat deaths might be nearly double the official figure and surpass 1,200.
October 7 casualties still unclear
Last but not least, Israel has also refused to list armed kibbutz militias as military casualties, instead listing them as civilians. The fact is that the kibbutzes attacked on October 7 were established as armed colonial outposts with a number of its adult population belonging to permanent organized militias. It beggars belief that lightly-armed Hamas combat units, carrying nothing more powerful than hand grenades and a few rocket-propelled grenades, were not engaged by similarly-armed Kibbutz militias. It is highly unlikely that all 19 kibbutzes were taken by total surprise and unable to mount any armed self-defense.
Furthemore, it must be reiterated that it is now well-established that the catastrophic destruction of several kibbutzes was carried out by Israeli tanks and helicopters over the period of October 7-9, with confirmed cases of "friendly fire" and the repeated confirmation by the Israeli media itself that the "Hannibal Directive" was widely used. The Hannibal Directive means the IDF set out to kill all Israeli civilians and soldiers deemed to be at risk of kidnapping.
We still do not know how many Israeli civilians were killed by Israeli forces on October 7. This figure may never be known, but given the existence of a "free fire zone" under the Hannibal Directive and the undeniable evidence of widespread heavy firepower used against civilians which was far outside of Hamas capabilities on October 7, the figure likely runs into the hundreds. After all, Israel originally overcounted its civilian dead by including 200 bodies burned in vehicles. These vehicles, almost certainly destroyed by the Hellfire missiles of Israel's Apache helicopters operating under the Hannibal Directive, almost certainly carried dozens if not a few hundred Israeli civilians.
Iron Dome collapse and Israel's fascist death drive
The losses inflicted on Israel have prompted Netanyahu's fascist government to extend mandatory military service to three years and begin opening the door to ultra-Orthodox Jews who have been exempted from service. However, since October, there have been widespread reports from Israeli reservists of basic equipment shortages including body armour, helmets, bomb suits and more. The Israeli military officially denies such shortages.
Another element of Israel's degraded military capabilities is the repeated failure of the "Iron Dome" air defenses. In April, Iran's restrained drone response to Israel's bombing of the Iranian embassy in Damascus demonstrated the weakness of the Iron Dome. This has been facilitated by Hezbollah's patient dismantling of Israel's extensive air defense and communications systems - an air campaign that genuinely earns the description of "surgical" compared to the American and Israeli "surgical" strikes that routinely flatten civilian infrastructure causing colossal civilian losses of life. The degree to which Israel's air defenses have been wrecked by low-cost drone and missile attacks was further exposed by the long-range drone attack by Yemen.
The incredible degradation of Israel's capacity for war has to be a major (but obviously not sole) factor behind the escalating attempts by Netanyahu's fascist government to incite a greater war in which the Americans become involved and Israel may launch nuclear weapons against Iran and other targets.
Western eyes and the Palestinian resistance
New sanctions on Israel by numerous states are also contributing to a
new momentum behind BDS - Boycott Divestment Sanctions. This pressure is
part of the broader economic crisis underpinning Israel's military and
political crises. International legal decisions are
making Israel's fascist leaders, notably Netanyahu, wanted criminals in
much of the world. The scale of international soft power arrayed against Israel is arguably unprecedented.
While the anti-war movement in the West has waxed and waned in the face of
Israeli atrocities and ruling class repression of democratic rights, short of
the American Empire pulling the plug on Israel's fascist death drive, it is also the armed resistance that has driven this profound and broad crisis for the Israeli state and ruling class.
It should go without saying that armed resistance to occupation is legal under international law. It is certainly legal against a nuclear-armed fascist state committing genocide. In fact, it is legal for other nations to intervene militarily to stop the genocide, as Yemen's Houthi government has stated in justifying its interdictions in the Red Sea and aerial strikes on Israeli military sites. None of Canada's ruling elite care to accept let alone understand this. After all, they've proven incapable of distinguishing between a swastika and the Star of David when it comes to fighting fascism, imperialism, genocide.
Whether elections or mass unarmed protests, Israel has drowned in blood Palestine's popular democratic efforts in Gaza and the West Bank to end Israel's brutal and bloody colonialism. After a century of imperially-sanctioned violence, the Zionist colonial project has reached its most extreme genocidal fascist character.
As for the resistance, long gone is any "original sin" that might have defined the character of the resistance at its outset. Generation after generation of resistance, armed and unarmed, secular and religious, popular and conspiratorial, has been defeated, only to be superseded by a new resistance movement inspired and guided by the hard lessons of the past. Israel may have finally met its match. The costs inflicted by Israel are appalling, but this has often been the only way for oppressed peoples to defeat Western imperialism.