TABLET MAG
Israel’s Forgotten Army
Jacob Siegel
October 4, 2025

“It was absolutely abysmal. I mean, it was shocking the equipment that we were given.” Eitan was 27 years old on Oct. 7 when he got the alert. (Soldiers who are identified by their first names only have had their names changed.)…The IDF’s problem was that its leaders had spent decades under the illusion that ground wars requiring mass mobilizations, which are the miluim’s raison d’être, were a thing of the past. In ideal circumstances, a reserve force will still operate at a level of funding and equipment below its active-duty counterparts. But in Israel, where the reserves were no longer seen as vital to the military’s offensive capabilities, the situation had moved past nonideal to dangerously unprepared. Eitan, serving in the reserve component of a special operations unit, should have had better gear than most. Yet, even for the elite commandos of miluim, the initial supply situation was dismal. READ MORE