A bunch of senior rabbis from the nationwide spiritual camp signed on to an announcement Thursday urging IDF Chief of State Aviv Kohavi to stop efforts to draft ladies into fight items alongside males.
“The Chief of Workers’s obvious resolution so as to add extra blended items to the infantry brigades brings us a lot nearer to a military of separate tribes,” the 15 rabbis wrote of their letter. They argued that troopers who observe conventional Jewish regulation will be unable to serve in blended items, leaving those who stay gender-segregated with a a lot greater share of Orthodox recruits.
״We name to keep away from these harmful steps and preserve the unity of the IDF and the unity of the nation, based mostly on standards which have all the time been accepted within the IDF,” they added.
The open letter, to be revealed in weekly Sabbath pamphlets which might be distributed in nationwide spiritual synagogues, is signed by a various group of yeshiva heads, together with some who’ve backed the enlistment of girls into the IDF. The group consists of Or Etzion yeshiva head Haim Druckman, Bnei David yeshiva heads Yigal Levinstein and Eli Sadan, Ma’ale Gilboa yeshiva head Yehuda Gilad and Lindenbaum Seminary head Ohad Teharlev.
It was drafted after the IDF introduced final Friday that ladies will probably be allowed to serve within the elite helicopter-borne search and rescue Unit 669 for the primary time.
The IDF announcement was geared toward preempting a Excessive Court docket of Justice resolution on an attraction by 4 feminine recruits demanding full gender integration within the IDF, together with in elite items comparable to Sayeret Matkal and Unit 669. The court docket delayed ruling on the case till the army finalized a committee it was forming on the matter.
Illustrative: Feminine troopers of the Bardales Battalion throughout coaching, July 13, 2016. (Hadas Parush/Flash90)
Girls serve in a wide range of roles within the IDF, in lots of circumstances alongside their male counterparts. There are additionally absolutely built-in mixed-gender fight items such because the Caracal and Bardelas battalions, that are tasked with defending Israel’s border with Egypt and Jordan, respectively. Within the Air Pressure, ladies and men serve collectively within the air protection items, together with the Iron Dome — technically thought of a fight unit.
Right now, some 95 % of Air Pressure positions can be found to ladies, in accordance with the IDF.
The military has insisted previously that it’s permitting extra ladies to serve in fight positions out of sensible issues, not resulting from a social agenda, saying it requires all of the woman- and manpower obtainable to it.
Critics of gender integration within the army typically decry it as a harmful social experiment with potential ramifications for nationwide safety, whereas defenders usually trumpet it as a long-needed measure, one which has already been applied in lots of Western nations.
Emanuel Fabian contributed to this report.
