chapotraphouse

In reality they just sit on the tank and hop off when things are sus. Or hide on the other side of the tank.

you generally don't want to let the enemy get close enough to shoot a tank with an anti tank weapon, let alone run up to it, that's what the infantry is supposed to be preventing. its harder in urban warfare but you generally want to keep as far away as possible from the enemy, especially in terms of western combat doctrine because we generally have superior optics, but in general you want to engage at the maximum useful range of your weapon system. its true that, when not directly being shot at, a lot of soldiers in a lot of militaries will ride on the outside of armored vehicles, but modern explosive reactive armor and trophy systems make that more dangerous these days, and they still ideally dismount and find cover before combat or as soon as it begins at least.

my pet fanfiction/hypothesis is that some of these tanks were part of units that were further away doing something else (like demining or investigating a tunnel entrance or securing a known hostile position) while the tank was providing overwatch, meanwhile hamas fighters use the tunnels to flank to much closer to the tank than expected to make a surprise attack. all of the tanks in the compilations seemed to be stopped or very much slowed down before getting attacked, like they were distracted or busy or something, at least.