I don't know where the petitioners who asked the High Court of Justice to allow female soldiers to serve in elite IDF units come from, but it's clear to me where the soldiers will come from if the petition succeeds: mostly from religious Zionist ranks.
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From the prestigious religious girls' high schools or colleges in many different settlements, via a year in pre-army preparatory programs.
This is what happened following intense opposition against allowing female soldiers to serve in the Armored Corps. It was presented as a "dangerous" trend, one that would allow into the corps those who want to bring an anti-national agenda to the army. This, they claimed, would brainwash the soldiers with "extremist feminism," something that would lead to tank commanders parking their Merkavas and listening to podcasts about "women waging peace" instead. Ultimately, though, the first female soldier to become an officer in the IDF Armored Corps was Reshit Farkash, from the settlement of Eli, who studied at the Zvia Reveva Ulpana in Samaria.
When the IDF significantly widened the combat units that women could serve in, many rabbis revolted and launched a campaign with an intensity that had never been seen on the streets of Israel, entitled "If you love the IDF – stop the mixed service." I researched the campaign in depth with my colleague Dr. Dana Masad. We quickly learned that the Haredi national religious groups who funded the campaign – and it was only them – were not worried about the IDF. They were worried about the status of men, and especially the rabbis in their communities. The statistics were unequivocal: those who would rush to the newly opened units would be girls from the religious-nationalist community.
Until then, the IDF – the national army in a democratic country – cooperated with a community that sought to replicate its own gender inequality, and allowed it to create a reality where only its men would benefit from the "military capital," i.e., the "Israeli capital" (exposure to social media, attractive professions, status within Israeli society). The women would automatically receive an exemption and would be sent to do national service. All of this was liable to disappear before the surprised eyes of the religious Zionist rabbis, who had spent millions on the campaign. What did they claim? Everything from fears that recruiting women would make the aggressive IDF weak and it would lose the next war, to claims that their integration into the army would make them impure and they wouldn't establish a family.
Now, with the opening of the gates of Unit 669, Sayeret Matkal, the navy commandos and the Shaldag Unit, the rabbis are threatening again. This time: a threat that the IDF will become an army of tribes. As mentioned, it's not the army's status that worries them but their status in their communities. If the data in my possession is also in their possession, they know that the first to compete for these attractive roles will be religious-nationalist girls, who, upon completing their army service, will be more Israeli. And those who care less about the rabbis are the ones who won't stay at home, but will go on to have careers where there are both men and women present, and they will become more independent. They will leave the rabbis in the domestic sphere, and they themselves will be in the public sphere.
Smotrich's threat "to abandon a recruitment cycle" won't be realized (and not for the first time). If so, there will be a recruitment cycle that will abandon him, at least at the polls.
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