2aguy
Diamond Member
- Jul 19, 2014
- 113,046
- 53,553
- 2,290
And here we have an actual look at women in the Israeli military and how they are not in the combat roles that American politicians want to put women in.....
Stop Using Israel’s Example to Justify the Barbaric Practice of Drafting Women into Combat, by David French, National Review
It is true that women fought as part of the Haganah, the Jewish militia that defended Jewish settlements during the struggle for survival prior to and following World War II.
But, as outlined in a comprehensive paper for the School of Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth, this policy — born of desperate necessity as Jewish citizens defended their homes and villages from genocidal assaults — also showed the limits of gender-integrated units.
Mixed-gender units had higher casualty rates, and Haganah commanders stopped using women in assault forces because “physically girls could not run as well — and if they couldn’t run fast enough, they could endanger the whole unit, so they were put in other units.”
Indeed, when the IDF was formally established, women were soon put into an “Auxiliary Corps.” When the IDF engaged trained Arab armies in some of the most vicious conventional combat engagements in the modern era, it did so with all-male combat units.
As reported in the Leavenworth paper, Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion justified the changes with a statement of sheer common sense: There is a fundamental difference between the Haganah and the IDF. Until November 1947, the Haganah was for local defense.
There was a need to defend the place of settlement and the call to defense included everybody who was capable. But an army is a totally different thing. In war, an army’s main task is to destroy the enemy army — not just defend. When we protected the home with rifle in hand, there was no difference between boy and girl. Both could take shelter, and everything he knew — she knew.
But in an army and in war, there is a reality of inequality in nature, and impossible to send girls to fighting units. Yet an army also needs non-combat units. And women are needed for appropriate professions to strengthen the nation’s fighting force by releasing men from those tasks for combat.
Since that time, while Israel has drafted women, it has restricted their role in combat, and it presently restricts their role even more than the United States.
In an extended August 2015 report, the Jerusalem Post declared, “Despite some progress, most combat roles are closed to women in the IDF.”
With much fanfare the IDF launched its Caracal Battalion in 2000, a mixed-gender force that largely patrols the border with Egypt, but the primary ground-combat role is still carried out by men.
Critics of the IDF’s gender-integration policies call recent changes to expand women’s roles merely “symbolic.” Crucially, the Post reports that the IDF is unlikely to make further changes until a “court case” — not military judgment — forces it to do so.
Indeed, the first major expansion of women’s roles in the IDF was due to a decision by the Israeli Supreme Court. In other words, Israel is beset with many of the same forms of gender politics as the United States. 3
Stop Using Israel’s Example to Justify the Barbaric Practice of Drafting Women into Combat, by David French, National Review
It is true that women fought as part of the Haganah, the Jewish militia that defended Jewish settlements during the struggle for survival prior to and following World War II.
But, as outlined in a comprehensive paper for the School of Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth, this policy — born of desperate necessity as Jewish citizens defended their homes and villages from genocidal assaults — also showed the limits of gender-integrated units.
Mixed-gender units had higher casualty rates, and Haganah commanders stopped using women in assault forces because “physically girls could not run as well — and if they couldn’t run fast enough, they could endanger the whole unit, so they were put in other units.”
Indeed, when the IDF was formally established, women were soon put into an “Auxiliary Corps.” When the IDF engaged trained Arab armies in some of the most vicious conventional combat engagements in the modern era, it did so with all-male combat units.
As reported in the Leavenworth paper, Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion justified the changes with a statement of sheer common sense: There is a fundamental difference between the Haganah and the IDF. Until November 1947, the Haganah was for local defense.
There was a need to defend the place of settlement and the call to defense included everybody who was capable. But an army is a totally different thing. In war, an army’s main task is to destroy the enemy army — not just defend. When we protected the home with rifle in hand, there was no difference between boy and girl. Both could take shelter, and everything he knew — she knew.
But in an army and in war, there is a reality of inequality in nature, and impossible to send girls to fighting units. Yet an army also needs non-combat units. And women are needed for appropriate professions to strengthen the nation’s fighting force by releasing men from those tasks for combat.
Since that time, while Israel has drafted women, it has restricted their role in combat, and it presently restricts their role even more than the United States.
In an extended August 2015 report, the Jerusalem Post declared, “Despite some progress, most combat roles are closed to women in the IDF.”
With much fanfare the IDF launched its Caracal Battalion in 2000, a mixed-gender force that largely patrols the border with Egypt, but the primary ground-combat role is still carried out by men.
Critics of the IDF’s gender-integration policies call recent changes to expand women’s roles merely “symbolic.” Crucially, the Post reports that the IDF is unlikely to make further changes until a “court case” — not military judgment — forces it to do so.
Indeed, the first major expansion of women’s roles in the IDF was due to a decision by the Israeli Supreme Court. In other words, Israel is beset with many of the same forms of gender politics as the United States. 3
