Plan to Assign Women to IDF Armored Units Draws Opposition

YERUSHALAYIM
Israeli soldiers seen preparing the canon of a Merkava tank near the border with Gaza during the 2014 Operation Protective Edge. (Miriam Alster/Flash90)
Israeli soldiers seen preparing the canon of a Merkava tank near the border with Gaza during the 2014 Operation Protective Edge. (Miriam Alster/Flash90)

Woman have been serving in the IDF in combat roles for several years now, but a move to integrate them into armored units has encountered strong resistance from within the ranks.

More than a thousand soldiers and yeshivah students have signed the “yeshivah students petition” protesting a planned change in the army’s standing orders on mixed-gender units and broadening of female participation in combat units, Arutz Sheva report on Wednesday.

The signatories object to the proposed change on grounds of immodesty, not in keeping with the standards of a Jewish army, and invoked the passuk, “Your camp shall be holy so that He (G-d) should not see anything unseemly among you and will turn away from you.” (Devarim 23:15).

Rabbi Dror Aryeh, Rosh Yeshivah of the Hesder Yeshiva in Sderot, further asserted that the plan to integrate women further into combat units is the work of leftists, and is irrelevant to the IDF’s mission of providing national security.

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