Question about Israeli troops' equipment

[Golden Hound]

Okay, this is really not gun-related but I don't have any other way of finding out the answer so I figured I would ask the question here. The CNN homepage has coverage of the fighting in Gaza and photos from the conflict. What are the guys wearing on their heads in this picture? I have NEVER seen any troops wearing anything like this before.



Does anyone know? Those are the weirdest helmets I've ever seen.

Also just for the sake of having something that's gun related, didn't Israel switch to using the Tavor rifle? Is that not in common use yet or something? What determines which units get the Tavor and which get the M16/M4?

Any Israelis here who could answer one or both of these questions?

 

[shotgunjoel]

The Tavor is being introduced as they are available. I think that most troops, like those pictured, still have the M4 because they just started to introduce the Tavor. I don't know what those things are either. I wouldn't think that it would be mosquito netting, would it? That wouldn't make much sense to me, isn't the Gaza Strip all desert?

 

[JoshM]

The mitznefet (clown hat) is a camoflage cover for a helmet. I believe they can also be pulled over the face as a handy dust mask/cover as well.

More info here

http://www.slate.com/id/2147495/?nav=ais

 

[Golden Hound]

Wow thanks a lot for the information. I'm not surprised someone else thought they were weird besides me. I had no idea that they went into battle wearing such strange things. For an army that gets talked about a lot in the news, you rarely actually see pictures of IDF guys.

You can actually buy them here.

 

[shdwfx]

The tavor is still a bit exotic.
At least when I was there two years back, I never saw a single soldier with it.
(They just started deploying it in 2006)
M4, M16, and mini Uzi (security) were well represented.
And, that's not likely to change overnight since the unit price for the TAR-21 is 3x that of the M16.

 

[John828]

Glad it is just camouflage, my first guess was some sort of chem warfare garb.

 

[Jorg Nysgerrig]

but I don't have any other way of finding out the answer so I figured I would ask the question here

No offense, but if you're accessing THR through the internet, you certainly have other ways to find out. Googling "israeli army helmet" makes it pretty easy to find out the cover is called a "Mitznefet". Googling that gives you a Wikipedia article and the Slate article above in the first two hits. Googling "tavor rifle" brings up a Wikipedia article mentioning which brigades have been issued it and when it was issued.

Teach a man to fish...

 

[ultradoc]

I saw the same crazy looking helmut thing on the t.v. news the other night and wondered what it was.

 

[Superlite27]

They're wearing bed sheets!

http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=405024&highlight=bed+sheet

I knew it! I knew it!

 

[John828]

Here we go again. What caliber for bedsheet threads?

 

[louie19]

Hehe I saw that too on the cover of The Washington Times. It did look strange at first but yea it serves the same purpose as a sniper's ghillie suit: it breaks up the outline of a soldier, making them harder to detect and hit.

It definitely looks like they have M4s with bolt-on vertical foregrip. I wonder what kind of optic that is.

 

[Jeff White]

Off topic question has been answered.