The IDF's chief of staff decided to launch a pilot program that will allow women to test for combat roles in the army's elite search and rescue unit 669. I'll spare the readers the need to read between the lines, and before delving into all the rhetorical acrobatics, I'll lay out my personal opinion in the frankest possible terms: Sending women to the front lines is reprehensible and immoral, and is an act that runs counter to human nature. To protect, fight, and be willing to give your life for your family – is the man's job. In my view, this is a type of moral axiom, and as such requires no further explanation.
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I will be the first to stand and applaud any woman who completes the training course for an elite reconnaissance unit, there's no contradiction there. What more can be said about a person who chooses the most difficult option and succeeds against all the odds? Such a person is only deserving of respect and profound admiration. My two daughters are named after women warriors. However, there's a clear line between an individual person who chooses her own fate and a society determining its moral guidelines; or in our case, erasing them.
To the grumbling conservatives who had their afternoon naps ruined by the chief of staff's decision, I say: fear not.
Women will not be integrated into combat roles in the foreseeable future. The ritual is a familiar one: A military review committee is created, it opposes integrating women in combat roles, and the initiative is shelved. Then a petition against the IDF is submitted to the High Court of Justice, which stands the army at attention and orders it let women fight. The army creates a pilot program, and a review committee concludes that women should not be integrated in such a manner. And round and round we go. My research has revealed that since 1999, 10 such reviews have been carried out by various professional military bodies with expertise in physiology, combat doctrine, combat medicine, and more. Even Unit 669 conducted its own review and came back with the same conclusion.
Yes, this issue has been forced on the army by the court, but this doesn't absolve it of responsibility. Similar to previous chapters in which the court has overreached into military matters, this time, too, the answer needs to be "no," as in "Sorry, but this isn't your business." If this sounds unpleasant, all complaints should be referred to the first chief of staff who faced such an invasion and raised the white flag. The IDF chief of staff has one job: win in war.
It's strange to see officers dealing with things that have absolutely nothing to do with winning in battle, busying themselves with matters such as equality and diversity, and creating professional review boards instead of training for the next war. This is a tactic employed by progressive social justice warriors against what they view as toxic patriarchy intrinsic to militaries. This crusade, however, doesn't seem to pertain to professional sports, for example. Indeed, why shouldn't all-male soccer teams also include women? End the segregation! From whence did this pathological hatred of men, because of which 99% of all pre-school teachers are women, stem?
The progressive tactic hasn't changed: justice for women interests them far less than eroding Israeli nationalism, and they wrap their campaign in slogans that can't be opposed unless you are willing to appear as ugly as me. Once upon a time, long ago, we decided as a society to spare women; and that men would be the ones to die on the front lines. The State of Israel changed its mind and decided that the justest thing for women is to train them for battle and accustom them to the horrors of war. Who could have imagined that advancing women would translate into sending them to the depths of hell?
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