Forum Dvorah demands clear support for women in combat as IDF gender debate escalates

On Sunday, dozens of Golani Brigade soldiers and officers walked out of a large conference hall to protest female soldiers singing at the ceremony.

Following a series of events taking aim at the role of women in the IDF, the Forum Dvorah NGO, which supports female military service, on Wednesday called on Defense Minister Israel Katz and IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir to declare “clearly, unambiguously, and publicly their support for women combat soldiers.”

On Sunday, dozens of Golani Brigade soldiers and officers walked out of a large conference hall in protest of female soldiers singing at the ceremony.

This event, by itself, was not hugely unusual and has taken place before.

However, Noam party leader Avi Maoz then went on the attack about including women in the IDF.

Likewise, on Tuesday, Channel 14’s prominent journalist Yinon Magal said he opposed women serving in the military.

All this takes place as the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee (FADC) debates certain compromises toward the coalition’s haredi parties over women’s roles in the IDF, aiming to keep them even more separate from haredim (ultra-Orthodox) serving in the military.

However, Forum Dvorah said it was clear that opposition to women serving in the IDF is a tactic used by certain groups to deflect attention away from the failure of haredim to serve.

Forum Devorah says women-in-IDF debate masks draft crisis

According to the NGO, these groups hope that a debate over women serving in the military will reduce the focus on the haredi exemption bill that is being discussed in the Knesset FADC.

Forum Dvorah stated that women already make up 20% of the IDF’s combat soldiers and serve in nearly every branch of the military, including some special forces units, with the exception of the IDF Rabbinate.

Moreover, on October 7, 2023, many female combat soldiers engaged in extended gunfights, killing many Hamas invaders, and some were killed while defending Israeli positions.

In that light, the NGO said any claims that women are problematic as combat fighters “is a cynical political stunt.”

It added that no one had brought any operational evidence as the basis for the criticism of women in combat roles.

Forum Dvorah warned that “silence at the high command level in the face of the attack on female combat soldiers could be misunderstood as an agreement through silence, which would harm combat women and harm the IDF’s resilience.”

At press time, neither Katz nor Zamir had issued a statement, but when Zamir has commented on women in combat, he has generally been supportive and is even planning to open new tank combat units to women.

In that sense, it is unlikely that there is a large-scale campaign against women in combat roles, but rather a mix of haredi and “hardal” (more extreme religious Zionists) criticism of women in the IDF, which is less representative of the broader general public.

Even within the wider religious-Zionist community, a recent survey showed that up to 40% now choose to join the IDF, despite religious women having the right to choose national service instead.

In contrast, the issue of women singing in army ceremonies remains controversial, and in the past, compromises have been reached allowing religious men who oppose the practice to quietly leave before such a performance.

It was unclear whether the Sunday event organizers had discussed the issue with the wider Golani Brigade.