Women Soldiers in Conflict: Breaking the Silence's Women's Testimonies
Women are largely prohibited from serving in combat units in the IDF, though they are ubiquitous as medics, scouts, officers, education officers, social workers, and more. Even still, women soldiers have increasingly been combatants over the past few years (see picture).
Yet most day-to-day work related to policing and securing the occupation is not ostensibly combat-related — so why are female soldier voices so few? Even among voices of conscience, female voices are rarely heard. Sometimes women soldiers are privy to the worst of human rights abuses by men — and yet remain silent still. Why?
Breaking the Silence is changing that with a new booklet of women’s testimonies and a cross-country mission to the American Jewish community this month. Dana Golan is bringing their first-ever women-only testimonies to America as the organization strives to educate the American Jewish public on what “occupation” entails.
Their first woman CEO, former Border Police officer Dana Golan, explains:
“Israeli society does not want to think about our girlfriends, daughters and sisters taking an active role in carrying out the ‘occupation,’ just like the male soldiers. We want to believe that the female soldiers stationed in the territories are not as aggressive and that they do not get their hands dirty.”
She explains women feel it is not their place to out their peers, and the pressure to be “one of the guys” often begs them to be more harsh than their male counterparts.
Breaking the Silence is one of Israel’s most important — and hard to hear — contributors to the debate around the conflict. Neither heroes nor villains, they say, Israeli soldiers are young people put in impossible situations. I highly encourage you to attend these humanizing (de-hero-izing and de-villifying in turn) voices, this time from women of conscience.
Full tour list below the fold. Read more on Ynet and CommonDreams.
Friday, February 19, 2010
12:30PM – NYU, Richard Ettinghausen Library, 50 Washington Square South.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
7:00PM – Columbia-Barnard Hillel: the Kraft Center for Jewish Life, 606 West 115th Street (between Broadway and Riverside Drive). Sponsored by New Israel Fund’s New Generations, RSVP here.
Monday, February 22, 2010
2:00PM – Wesleyan University
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
3:00PM – Tufts University, Mayer Campus Center, 44 Professors Row, Medford, MA
7:00PM – Cambridge Synagogue-Eitz Chayim, 136 Magazine Street, Cambridge, MA
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
12:00PM – Lesley College
7:00PM – Temple Hillel B’nai Torah, 120 Corey Street, West Roxbury
Thursday, February 25, 2010
7:30PM – Congregation B’nai Israel, 253 Prospect Street, Northampton
Friday, February 26, 2010
4:00pm – Hampshire College, Franklin Patterson Hall, Amherst
Tuesday, March 2
7:00PM – UC-Berkeley, 2060 Valley Life Sciences Building
Thursday, March 4
7:00PM – Village Homes Community Center in Davis
Sunday, March 7
3:00PM – Montview Blvd Presbyterian Church, 1980 Dahlia Street, Denver, CO
7:30PM – Boulder Friends Meeting House – 1825 Upland Street, Boulder
Neither heroes nor villains, they say, Israeli soldiers are young people put in impossible situations. I highly encourage you to attend these humanizing (de-hero-izing and de-villifying in turn) voices, this time from women of conscience.
Is it my imagination, or has KFJ become much more sympathetic to Israelis’ problems lately?
Nope, he was always this sympathetic, you just could not see it because you were looking for a particular rhetoric.
On another note, how can I get in touch with the tour organizer and get these folks to come to my city?
Even still, women soldiers have increasingly been combatants over the past few years (see picture).
Huh? I see a picture of two female soldiers in everyday uniform standing near an unarmored public bus–almost certainly not in a combat zone.
Women are certainly involved in the administration of the occupied territories. I have a friend who had a desk job in Gaza (pre-withdrawal), for example. But are women really increasingly becoming combatants?
I was a combat soldier in the IDF and never encountered women in combat. I had women commanders when I was in training (artillery), but in actual combat situations there were never women with us. The closest I ever saw was women military police who actually handled the interactions with Palestinians at some checkpoints, but they were not combat soldiers (02 training) and we were there to serve as the token combat soldiers and protect the MP’s should something go wrong.
God I look forward to the day when I am not constantly commenting on the army.
That said. Women serve in Search and Rescue squads (all of which require combat training and do routine security on Gaza border, in the north, West Bank, etc.) in light infantry (called Karakal), in a few instances as pilots, in the canine unit, and I believe in the artillery unit. And as military police, Border Police, and the “blue” police (the regular police force).
Opportunities for women to serve in combat are increasing.
On a separate note, I appreciate people looking at BtS as having a political agenda (soldiers are not immoral but are placed an immoral situation by the government) as opposed to looking to demonize the people serving in the IDF.
Are you accusing me of going soft, Jonathan1? Maybe just because I’ve taken a brief haitus.
Either way, I’ve consistently been against demonizing any group as a whole, particularly soldiers. Early in 2008 I worked with Breaking the Silence extensively and have come to really rely on their view of the average soldier’s path to dehumanization of Palestinians. Now settler extremists and extremist politicians get my villanizing, and rightly so.
Just as a caveat, I always try to specify who I’m discussing. I avoid saying “Israel did X” or “the Palestinians did Y”, except where brevity won’t permit or context provides. I always try to say “Bibi’s administration” instead of “Israel’s government,” and “right-wing parties in the Knesset” instead of “the Knesset,” and “X sector of Israeli society” instead of “Israelis”. I strive to showcase the same dynamic public debate within Palestinian society, which I feel gets even shorter shrift in common blogging.
COA — I’ll send you their staffer’s email, but I suspect the tour is pretty well planned by now.
micah and Yaacov — I’ve seen and heard anecdotal evidence of women increasingly called upon to aid security teams, especially with the increased need to search for female suicide bombers. I encountered plenty women soldiers at checkpoints. But I didn’t say so in this post until I noticed the Ynet article made the same statement.
In Breaking the Silence’s women’s testimonies, you’ll read a lot about women being put at checkpoints as a mitigating presence in sensitive locations. Based on the testimonies, that is only partially effective.
Arie — Not sure if I understand your last statement fully, but BTS would say they have no political agenda beyond protecting Israeli soldiers for being blamed for circumstances beyond their control. You cannot blame a soldier for holding back a pregnant woman at a checkpoint if said soldier knows terrorists have faked pregnancies before. And you can’t blame the IDF either, for policies that prohibit or leave the decision to the soldier. BTS is not anti-IDF. You can only blame civil society — the IDF’s owner — for putting the soldier in that position. And that’s the target of BTS’ educational outreach: average Israelis and American Jews, who are the decisionmakers as to whether or not the occupation with worth it.
Are you accusing me of going soft?
No, I’m praising you.
‘… as the organization strives to educate the American Jewish public…”
According to the list of venues, outside of Massachussetts, apparently not.
PS the border police is not part of the IDF.
“You cannot blame a soldier for holding back a pregnant woman at a checkpoint if said soldier knows terrorists have faked pregnancies before….BTS is not anti-IDF. You can only blame civil society — the IDF’s owner — for putting the soldier in that position.”
—Kung Fu Jew · February 17th, 2010 at 7:53 pm
Should civil society instruct the IDF to stop searching for terrorists?
Eric- what KFJ is correctly saying correctly saying is that the IDF’s instructions come from the government, elected by Israeli civil society.
If the government determined that there should be no presence of Israeli citizens in the WB/JandS, and told the IDF and BP to pull out all troops, then the IDF and the BP would pull out all troops.
But KFJ- do you not see BtS as having the agenda, among other things, of ending the occupation? Their stated goal is to force Israeli society to face the reality they’ve created in the territories. Presumably that goal is meant not only to make people aware, but also to do something about it.
Arie- BtS has no such agenda. Do with their results what you will.
Arie — Actually, no. Some individuals among them do, plenty don’t. Particularly the soldiers who testify are from the full spectrum of Israeli politics. But for sure none of them want to be branded as a “rotten apple” and court martialed for carrying out the orders of their superiors.
I don’t think your views adequately represent Israel; your notions of Hasbara distorted. Your rants, rather, appear to come across as an anthropological study of a place you are curious about, which you haven’t really spent enough time in committing to its culture and true problems. This specific post about women in the army is BS. Half of my friends have been in the army and I have never ever heard such hogwash.
-Karin