I’ve ofter heard it used as a mark of high quality training or reliability as far as their military or intelligence. I’m assuming part of this is an aura they cultivated, but how good are they really, vs, say…the US?
Nah, the Israelis are totally overraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
To the extent that there really is a GQ answer to this, the esteem of the Israeli military in the eyes of the Israeli public has fallen considerably, particularly after the poorly prosecuted 2006 war in Lebanon.
That’s nothing new. Heads rolled after Israel’s lamentable performance (being surprised for one) during the initial phase of the '73 Yom Kippur war.
I guess the GQ answer is this: the actual performance of the Israeli military varies widely; they are often quite competent, but certainly not always; there have been plenty of screw-ups (the Yom Kippur surprise, the recent Lebanon disappointment) to set off against major triumphs (the Entebbie raid, the '67 War, the Iraq reactor raid, the recent Syria reactor raid).
The above cited article illustrates one of the Israeli military strengths vs. its Arab opponents: that generally, after a screw-up, the military is subject to scathing public criticism and very often does shake itself up.
Are they over-rated? Quite possibly; opinions vary. On the one hand, the quality of their “conventional” opponents is low in its human material (no slight on them - they are a product of societies with much lower levels of education and literacy, of cultures not well suited to modern conventional war, and of leadership inferior in commanding cohesion and patriotism than a modern democracy) which shows them to advantage - on the other hand, they are actually at war much more frequently than most other first world armies, and they face a much worse unconventional threat than any, which gives them considerable institutional experience.
Well, they’re significantly better at conventional warfare than any conventional opponent they’ve ever faced, or are ever likely to face. Yes, they were surprised in the Yom Kippur War - but even there, they ended up successfully repelling the attack. The IDF’s performance against non-conventional forces has been a lot more uneven (Lebanon was a mess) - but the key point is this: Although terrorism is likely to remain a problem, there is no military force in the region that could successfully invade Israel, or threaten the stability of the Israeli state. That doesn’t mean Israel and the IDF are invulnerable - far from it - but it does mean that the IDF is very good at its job.
Put another way: The IDF is well-trained and equipped with modern arms. I wouldn’t want to run into them in a dark alley.
To be fair, to date no first-world army has had great success against non-conventional forces, because none have had the will, the competence and the ruthelessness to simply steamroller over the civilian population amoung which non-conventional forces hide without any concern for whether they live of die (while the Israelis are often accused of doing this, as a matter of strict fact they do not). The reason, in my opinion, is that any modern society which attempted such a war would quickly damage the institutions and morale which make it a first-world society.
This does not mean non-conventional forces cannot be defeated, simply that their defeat is likely to be a lengthy, messy, difficult and expensive proposition. No limited, precision war on the cheap can do the trick - which is what Israel attempted in Lebanon.
“It was a trap! There were two of them!”