The Israeli Tank Corps announced it is heading towards opening its doors to female soldiers. This means that young women and men aged 18-21 will serve together in the confined space of a tank.
Although women have already been integrated in Israeli combat units for years and the second female commander has just been appointed to an artillery unit, this will be a new low for the Israeli army. Even Hesder yeshivot have woken up and announced that the IDF will have to decide between the Bnei Torah or the women serving, but never both side-by-side.
Retired IDF Major-General Yiftach Ron-Tal, who is today the CEO of the Israel Electric Co., warned that the placement of women combatants in the IDF will seriously compromise the military’s abilities. “Have we totally lost our minds? Whoever is pushing this is truly crazy.” He said the idea to put women in the Armored Corps was a leftist plot to weaken the IDF. The decision is a “scandal that will harm everything you can even think of, including the IDF's abilities to fight.”
Ron-Tal added the “trauma of battle” will have a profound change on women, undermining their maternal instincts and the changes that will occur will be irreversible. He was predictably attacked and labeled “chauvinistic” for his remarks.
Reserve Brigadier-General Avigdor Kahalani also opposed the idea because of its ruinous effect on a woman’s maternal instincts. He also expressed concerned about the emotional damage women would suffer after the war.
“I'm just thinking of seeing women injured from wars, like some of my comrades were,” he said. “At the end of the day, a woman's job is to be a mother, and after the traumas of war, she'll be completely different. The motherly feeling, the mother's touch, the ability to nurse and give birth, it won't be the same.”
Former IDF Chief Rabbi, Rabbi Yisrael Weiss, said women in the Armored Corps sounded like a crazy idea no matter how you looked at it. “We can't put a a male soldier and a female soldier into a closed box for a week and expect that nothing will happen. You'll get a little tank soldier in another nine months.”