The illusion of Israeli military invincibility

For decades, Israel has cultivated a myth of military invincibility—a myth eagerly repeated in Western media, echoed in congressional speeches, and treated as an unshakable truth in U.S. foreign policy circles. But peel back the layers of propaganda, and the reality is far different. 

Israel’s military reputation has been built not on consistent battlefield prowess, but on surprise attacks against weaker foes, U.S. sponsorship, and colonial repression dressed up as “defense.” Far from a model of strength, Israel’s military record reveals a pattern of overreach and failure.

This same historical sequence is on display once again in the latest war launched against Iran by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. With the Trump administration racing to get its forces in line to back Israel, it’s worth reviewing the record of past conflicts.

The 1967 mirage

The illusion of Israeli military superiority began with the Six-Day War in 1967. Israel launched a surprise pre-emptive strike on June 5 that year against the air forces of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, destroying most of their equipment before a single plane got off the ground. 

The war was short, brutal, and decisive. Israel seized huge swaths of land, including the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, the West Bank, and Gaza. Western observers swooned over what they described as a “David versus Goliath” victory, ignoring the reality that it was David who struck first and Goliath was already limping.

The Arab armies were poorly coordinated, ill-prepared, and politically fractured. Egypt’s military—the strongest of the three—was still reeling from a previous disastrous intervention in Yemen. Syria was in the midst of dealing with internal instability. As for Jordan, it was dragged into the war by a series of misleading reports and geopolitical pressure. 

Israel’s victory, then, was not a testament to unmatched military power; it was a well-planned ambush against disorganized adversaries.

Humbling defeat in 1973

The air of invincibility didn’t last long. In 1973, on Yom Kippur—the holiest day in the Jewish calendar—Egypt and Syria launched a coordinated attack to retake the territory they lost in 1967. Israeli forces were caught off guard. 

In the Sinai, Egyptian troops crossed the Suez Canal under heavy fire, destroying Israeli defenses with surprising effectiveness. In the north, Syrian forces pushed into the Golan Heights. 

It took weeks, massive U.S. airlifts of weapons and supplies, and a near-nuclear alert to stabilize Israel’s position.

Despite eventually pushing back the Arab armies, the war damaged the myth of Israeli military dominance. Israel was forced to acknowledge that it could not endlessly occupy Arab land and remain in a state of perpetual war. 

The conflict set the stage for Israel’s eventual peace treaty with Egypt in 1979, which required Israel to retreat from the largest territory it conquered in 1967 and return the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt. It wasn’t Israeli strength that secured peace, but Israel being forced to at least partially accept its own limits.

The Lebanon quagmire

Whatever lessons Israel might have learned were quickly forgotten a couple of years later when the country’s leaders attempted another offensive in 1982, this time in Lebanon. 

Using the pretext of targeting the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) that was using Lebanon as a staging ground to organize its forces against Israeli occupation, Israel invaded southern Lebanon at a time when that country was consumed by a multi-sided civil war. What followed was a long, bloody entanglement, military quagmires, war crimes, and eventual defeat.

Israeli forces laid siege to Beirut, committed atrocities in collaboration with far-right Lebanese militias (such as the Sabra and Shatila massacres), and ended up occupying southern Lebanon for nearly two decades. 

Far from securing northern Israel, however, the occupation radicalized a new generation of resistance fighters—most notably Hezbollah, thereby creating a much more powerful adversary.

When Israel finally retreated in 2000, it did so under the cover of night, abandoning outposts, weapons, and prestige. Hezbollah, the very force Israel had hoped to crush, filled the vacuum and inherited its military equipment and outposts.

2006: Hezbollah fights back

In 2006, Israel returned to Lebanon under the banner of rescuing kidnapped soldiers. What began as a punitive strike quickly devolved into another humiliating campaign. 

Hezbollah, now battle-hardened and better equipped, inflicted significant casualties on Israeli forces, fired rockets deep into Israeli territory, and stood its ground despite Israel’s overwhelming firepower—funded and supplied by the United States.

The war lasted just over a month, but Israel achieved none of its stated objectives. It failed to retrieve the captured soldiers (they were later returned in a prisoner swap), failed to destroy Hezbollah, and failed to re-establish deterrence. A commission of inquiry in Israel itself concluded that the war was a strategic failure. 

The “invincible” army had been exposed again.

Genocide in Gaza

Now, more than two years into a full-scale war in Gaza, a small territory Israel has starved for decades, it is once again trapped in a military quagmire of its own making. After launching what it claimed would be a decisive campaign to “destroy Hamas,” Israel has found itself bogged down in a bloody war, facing continuous resistance and growing international condemnation. 

Gaza lies in ruins, tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed, and yet Hamas remains the most powerful Palestinian organization in the territory. Not only has Israel failed to eliminate it, but Hamas continues to operate militarily and politically even amid constant bombardment, while finding new allies and sympathizers from around the globe.

Meanwhile, the cost to Israel is mounting. Economically, the war has strained Israel’s economy, reduced foreign investment, and dragged down its global credit ratings. Politically, its “moral standing” in the West is in freefall. Militarily, its vaunted image of supremacy lies increasingly broken.

War with Iran

Now, Israel has embarked on its latest military misadventure. Still believing their own propaganda about the strength of its armed forces, the country’s leaders have once again launched a surprise attack—this time not on a fragmented militia or smaller neighboring state, but on a far more formidable opponent: Iran.

While Israel managed to land a few militarily impressive opening strikes—achieved through deception and surprise—it now finds itself under a relentless barrage from powerful ballistic missiles capable of penetrating even its U.S.-funded air defense systems. 

The cost of this reckless campaign is mounting. Each strike on Iranian territory burns through massive quantities of jet fuel, while Israel’s stockpiles of missile defense interceptors are rapidly depleting. 

Meanwhile, civilian infrastructure is being destroyed, civilian casualties are rising, and the world is beginning to see the truth: Israel lacks both the capacity and the strategy to achieve its stated objectives of dismantling Iran’s nuclear program or toppling its government.

As panic sets in, Israel appears increasingly desperate for the United States to intervene, hoping that American forces can accomplish what the Israeli military cannot. Of course, such a move would ignore a long and bloody history—the U.S. military’s own string of failed adventures across the Middle East. Once again, the illusion of military might risks dragging the region into deeper chaos.

Manufactured strength, real weakness

At every stage, Israel’s supposed military strength has relied on surprise attacks, the selection of weaker opponents, and total U.S. backing—not on strategic brilliance or moral legitimacy. When confronted with protracted conflict against capable resistance forces, Israel has repeatedly faltered.

The myth of Israeli invincibility has long been weaponized to justify endless U.S. military aid, occupation, apartheid, and colonial expansion. But myths don’t win wars. They don’t defeat peoples fighting with determination for liberation and national survival. And they certainly don’t hide the truth that Israel’s war machine is not a symbol of strength, but a mask for deep political, strategic, and ethical weakness.

History is clear. When the tide of war turns, Israel either retreats or gets bogged down and battered. Now, facing a far stronger adversary in Iran, it is waging a war it cannot win. And in the meantime, civilians on both sides are paying the price—because Israel’s leaders still believe their own lies.

As with all news-analysis and op-ed articles published by People’s World, the views reflected here are those of the author.

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