Would-be women of the IDF busted shirking and snogging
Filed under: A New Reality, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Religion, War
The way the Israeli army interfaces with religion is not so straightforward, which makes sense in a land where the separation between synagogue and state is still being sorted out. The IDF’s Rabbinate came under scrutiny this winter for attempting to boost soldiers’ morale on shaky theological grounds.
And the Rabbinate is notorious for being stingy when it comes to handing out shaving exemption papers for soldiers looking to be able to wear beards based on their interpretation of Biblical commandments, sometimes telling soldiers that they’re “not religious enough” to qualify for the exemption. But if it’s a rabbi’s goal to foster observance, he ought to embrace the individual’s interests, regardless of that individual’s flaws or hypocrisies.
In a society where we are constantly being pigeonholed due to what we’re wearing on our heads and elsewhere on our bodies, I don’t know about you, but my inclination is to say, “Please don’t put me in a box. I’m a real person, not a tidy category.”
Of course, embracing the religious grey area gets trickier when we’re talking about exemption from serving in the army altogether. Ditching the draft is relatively common among Israel’s Orthodox, for better or for worse, and the mechanisms for obtaining exemptions on religious grounds are relatively straightforward, making pleading religious a tempting option even for those who might not necessarily truly have theological qualms with the experience of being a soldier.
After years of turning a blind eye, more or less, to this phenomenon, the IDF is getting smart and trying to crack down on young women who “lie” and plead religious. Sure, it’s possible that a young woman who is too observant to serve, whatever that means, might experience a lapse in faith, but in general, if the army’s detectives catch you making out with someone, you should probably suit up.
“We need those girls, Lt. Col. Gil Ben Shaoul, deputy commander of Israel’s military recruitment center,” told The Associated Press.
The Israel Defense Forces says the surveillance program began last year and has caught 520 young women, many who admitted they did not deserve the religious exemption and signed up for military service.
….Catching the draft-dodgers is fairly straightforward: It takes one weekend, said Ben Shaoul. The young women are usually caught driving on Saturday, drinking or smoking.
Many who attempt to shirk the draft justify doing so on the grounds that women aren’t given “real” opportunities in the IDF.
“I served for two years doing nothing. All the girls do nothing,” said Shiran Cohen, 24, a university student. She said she was assigned to check on ammunition stockpiles during her service, but was frequently sidelined by men in her unit.
Although being a woman in the army can’t be easy, this excuse simply doesn’t hold water. I have fond memories of my days serving in the IDF’s Shiryon (armored corps) unit, where everything I learned about tanks was taught to me by women.
On the first day of tank training, the training officers took me and my fellow conscripts out to the open field and gave us a powerful demonstration of tank maneuvering and weaponry. The audience loved it. When the demo was over, the tanks pulled around and parked by the bleachers where we sat. The hatches opened, and out came four women from each vehicle. Surprise surprise. The bleachers shook with hooting, extra applause and jumping up and down as a special reaction for the ladies. It was a bit embarrassing, and it might serve to highlight how rough it must be to get respect as a woman soldier, but the point is that the opportunities are there for those who are motivated to go after them.
Image of Israeli modern Orthodox teenage women courtesy sethfrantzman from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.
Shas trying a bit of feminism
Filed under: A New Reality, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Politics
The Shas party has had the upper hand on Tzipi Livni ever since the Kadima leader’s aspirations to take over from Olmert as prime minister were dashed by Shas’s coalition holdout tactics.
As a result, Livini and Kadima were forced to keep Olmert at the country’s helm, and the general elections scheduled for next week became a necessity. With Kadima trailing in the polls, one can’t resist wondering if Livni has been secretly regretting her decision to not kowtow to Shas back in the fall.
One of the most popular of the second-tier parties, the ultra-Orthodox Sephardi Shas party doesn’t stand a chance to elect a prime minister, but it always finds a way to obtain big cabinet appointments and budgets for its programs as coalition bargaining chips.
But until now, Livni has had one clear advantage over all of the other parties: the feminist card. No other major contending party in this race has a woman at the top of its list, which, as we know, can be a major draw.
And Shas can always use some good PR for believing in the leadership potential for women – especially given that the party’s spiritual figurehead, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, makes a habit of saying politically incorrect things. Shas has been “trying a bit of feminism” (as our friend Ali G puts it) ever since it launched a “Strengthening Women” platform in December.
This week, the party upped the feminist ante by allowing Rabbi Ovadia Yosef’s daughter-in-law (and flat-mate), Yehudit Yosef, to take on a more public role, Haaretz reports. Apparently, Yehudit Yosef has for years been a major playing behind the scenes with Shas, but this week, she began campaigning on behalf of the party, rallying supporters with an inspiring speech in Jerusalem on Monday:
“I know how concerned [Rabbi Ovadia Yosef] is about women’s issues, how he educated his children to take care of their womenfolk so that they would not lack for anything,” she said. “When he gives his class on Saturday night and comes to the issue of women, he gives them a lecture on how to treat a woman, what to do for her, how to behave, what to buy her, and so forth. It’s such a lovely thing.”
Will lip service like this woo away some potential Kadima voters? We’ll know next week.
Image courtesy tzipilivni2009 from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.
Israel picks up the bill
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, General, Israeliness, Life, Medical Breakthroughs, Politics, War
While the news is full of Israel’s “crimes” against the civilian population in Gaza, here’s one “crime” you probably haven’t heard about. Israel routinely admits residents of Palestinian Authority controlled territory into its hospitals – and the Israeli taxpayer foots the bill. Not only that; Israel even helps pay for treatment of patients in PA hospitals, where the patient never even comes near an Israeli hospital!
While many of us probably have heard of exceptional cases of Israeli doctors treating PA Arabs, I, and probably you, were under the impression that it was limited to high profile or complicated cases, such as the Save a Child’s Heart Foundation – with ill PA residents coming to Israel as a last resort. That kind of thing has been going on for a long time – even during the current war, as evidenced by the photo (courtesy of the IDF spokesperson), captioned “Injured Palestinian receiving medical treatment by Israeli and Palestinian medical personnel at the Erez crossing.” 
But Israel’s contribution to the health of Palestinian Authority residents goes far beyond emergency assistance; according to some folks I interviewed for a story on a new database system being developed by an Israeli software company for hospitals in Bethlehem and Ramallah (an amazing story in and of itself!), Israel’s Health Ministry often pays for care of PA residents both in Israel and in the Palestinian Authority itself!
The company building the database, called i-Rox, is located in Bnei Brak, and consists almost entirely of ultra-Orthodox women programmers (this story just gets better all the time!). According to the company’s CEO, the programmers are building in a component that allows PA hospitals to share their information with Israel’s Health Ministry, because in some cases, Israel’s health funds help provide – and pay for – treatment of patients in PA hospitals.
Yes, I had a hard time believing it too – until I Googled this World Health Organization PDF document. According to this eye-opening reporting (for 2006-7), “Approximately 60,000 Palestinians from the West Bank area have been treated in Israel hospitals over the past year. Around 20,000 were hospitalized, and about 40,000 received ambulatory services of all sorts. Approximately 5,000 patients from the Gaza area have been treated in Israeli hospitals over the past year – about 2,000 hospitalized and about 3,000 receiving ambulatory services of all sorts. Among the patients receiving medical care in Israel, approximately 2,500 were children, the majority of whom received long-term treatment for cancer and complicated operations.”
As far as Israel providing services to PA hospitals, “Public health laboratories at the Israel Ministry of Health continue to regularly provide assistance to the Palestinian Health Authority in the way of laboratory tests for poliomyelitis, measles, mumps, influenza and other viral diseases,” the report says. Israel – via the health funds and the Health Ministry – continued those tests throughout the year, “in spite of the fact that the Palestinian Authority delays or halts payments.” Of course, the anti-Israel forces out there have never let themselves get confused by the facts – but at least we know the truth, and in this day and age, that’s no small feat.
Drawing, sculpting and designing women
It’s well known that women played a key role in the forging of Israel’s military, intellectual and agricultural successes in the early generations of the nation. Just ask the leadership of the Union of Creative Women in Israel.
But many argue that women’s role in Israel’s formative visual arts scene has been given the short end of the stick. A group of women scholars has recently undertaken an extensive research project exploring the matter, yielding a formidable report entitled Creative Women in Israel, 1920-1970. The volume chronicles the lives and accomplishments of some 51 female photographers, 28 female architects and 86 female painters/sculptors, many of whom were celebrated in their time but are sadly overlooked or under-respected now – and that’s not counting 35 more figures not covered in depth in the book but currently being examined by the group.
Now that the book is set to be published imminently by Tel Aviv University’s Faculty of the Arts, the school has organized an entire day-long conference surrounding the occasion.
Entitled Creative Women of the Visual Arts in Israel and taking place this Sunday from 10:15 a.m. into the evening hours, the conference has been planned by an academic board headed by Dr. Ruth Marcus of the TAU Department of Art History. Many local and international presenters are involved as well, including Dr. Ines Sonder of Potsdam’s Moses Mendelssohn Center for European Jewish Studies, speaking about under-celebrated architect Lotte Cohn; Dr. Ruth E. Iskin, Ben-Gurion University professor of the Arts, author of Modern Women and Parisian Consumer Culture in Impressionist Painting; and Prof. Tamar Garb of London’s University College, speaking about Feminism, Art History and the Challenge of the Woman Artist.
Pictured is long-lost sculptress Sulamit Nem Salom’s bronze Sitting Torso, used by permission from Creative Women in Israel, 1920-1970.
Israeli Women Shine at Annual Biomed Conference in Tel Aviv (Here’s Two of Them)
Filed under: A New Reality, Profiles, Technology
We’re always excited every time we meet women who are running companies, and it seems in Israel there are a lot of women focused in the biotech sector.
Meet NeuroQuest, a young diagnostics company, run by four ladies. We met two of them the other day at Israel’s world-famous Biomed conference in Tel Aviv (above).
Watch the video Israelity made, click here.
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