Israel has mobilized 300,000 reservists in the past 48 hours, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced Monday, as carried live by Israel’s Army Radio.
The IDF normally has fewer than 200,000 soldiers on active duty. The 300,000 reservists represents an expansion of more than 150%.
Given that the country’s population is just under 10 million people, that means about 5% of the Israeli population is currently deployed at war.
In American terms, 5% of the population would mean over 30 million people were deployed.
According to the IDF, the mobilization is the quickest of any war or event in Israel’s history.
Scores of Israelis living overseas have flown home in the past several days — not just those who were called up for military duty, but many who simply volunteered to join units heading to war.
Israelis who are not deployed are volunteering in every capacity — donating blood, collecting food and supplies for the troops, and filling in at jobs that deployed reservists are leaving behind.
The attack on Israel on Saturday, which killed over 800 Israelis, wounded over 2,000, and saw over 100 kidnapped by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, took place on the Jewish holiday of Shemini Atzeret, the last festival of the High Holy Day cycle.
Most of the victims of Palestinian terror were civilians, including women, children, and the elderly, who are also among the hostages taken to Gaza.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
