There are actually a number of reasons which are spelled out by Raphael S. Cohen in this piece for Foreign Policy:
Israel’s ‘People’s Army’ at WarSince the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, a parade of U.S. defense officials, politicians, former generals, and defense policy wonks have offered advice—largely unsolicited—about how Israel should conduct its offensive in Gaza, based upon the lessons the United States learned from its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most of these recommendations have centered on the need to protect the civilian population during the ongoing fighting and plan for the day the war ends, if only to prevent a power vacuum and subsequent insurgency. Much to this group’s increasing frustration, a lot of the advice has gone unheeded.There are many reasons why Israel has so far chosen to ignore these recommendations. For starters, Iraq and Afghanistan were much larger and half a world away; Gaza is far smaller, more compact, and right next door to Israel. The Israel-Hamas war is also bound up in the long and troubled history of Israeli-Palestinian relations. And then, of course, there is the fact that most Americans leave unspoken: The United States lost the Afghanistan War and produced, at best, a muddled outcome in Iraq. Neither war is a great selling point for the U.S. model for fighting an insurgency or a group like Hamas.And yet, on top of these considerations of military strategy and tactics, there is another important factor at play, just below the surface. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is fundamentally different from the U.S. military. Its relationship with society, cultural predilections, and individual norms of behavior are uniquely its own. And so, despite outsiders’ advice and pressure to the contrary, the way it fights in Gaza is—and will continue to be—different, too.
At the Ben Gurion Airport gift shop, there are T-shirts showing a tank, an attack helicopter, and a fighter jet, along with the slogan “America Don’t Worry—Israel Is Behind You.” The motto is drenched in irony. After all, Israel receives more than $3 billion a year in aid from the United States, and the F-16 fighter jet and AH-64 Apache helicopter emblazoned on the shirt are both U.S.-made. But the shirts also capture Israel’s prewar idolization of its military—a mixture of nationalism and a deep-seated, if misplaced, belief in the invincibility of its military prowess. Prior to this war, there was an unspoken contract: For all the turmoil and chaos in Israeli society and politics, the military would always be there to keep citizens safe.
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