REPORTS that the Israeli army’s general staff is considering allowing women to serve in tank crews have caused shock waves to ripple through the ranks, and also within Israel’s religious establishment, which opposes mixed-gender service in combat units.
Religious Israelis have been making up a growing number of the soldiers in the Israel Defence Forces’ (IDF) elite units for years now. But under the current chief of staff, Lieutenant-General Gadi Eizenkot, there has been a deliberate attempt to curb the rabbis’ power.
Over the past year this has included transferring some of the roles of the Military Rabbinate to the largely secular IDF Education Corps, and enforcing various regulations on religious soldiers, such as forbidding them to grow beards without a senior officer’s approval. Many on the religious side see allowing more female combat troops as simply the latest attempt at secularising the IDF.
The rabbis have been warning that if more combat units are mixed, their students who abide by strict Jewish-orthodox codes of gender segregation will refuse to serve in them. The official position is that religious soldiers can always serve in their own...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/2hoCtGd
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