On the evening when news channels aired recordings of rabbis that proved what we already knew, that the proposed draft law is not a “historic move to enlist the ultra-Orthodox” but mostly a theater of conditions, promises and falsehoods, I was somewhere else entirely, at the launch of the book “Women Warriors” by Ayala Deckel.
The book tells the stories of 20 women combat soldiers, 20 out of hundreds, who fought on October 7 and in the war that followed. Women who were willing to give their lives, to enlist and even to die, for the state, for the homeland, for all of us.
Three women combat soldiers took the stage. They spoke about what drove them, the reactions they received from those around them, the respect they earned and also the contempt they faced from soldiers, commanders and politicians. They do not let those reactions break them. They are focused on the mission. They teach us what responsibility, composure and resourcefulness look like. And they remind us of one simple fact: they were there, in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Beit Hanoun. They fought. They saved lives. It was chilling.
The book was written over the past six months, and its launch was not planned for the very week when it seems restraints were cast aside. Attacks on women in the military have become a daily sport. In studios, videos, opinion columns and on social media, those opposed to equality have raised their heads because “now is the time.”
I would like to send this book to every one of those preachers. Not so they discover they are wrong, and not so they are moved, but so the mockers and defamers feel ashamed.
Joining that chorus was attorney Tamir Dortal. Want equality in sharing the burden? Give up on women, he argued, in one form or another, explaining to the public that the price of drafting the ultra-Orthodox would be harm to gender equality, and that it is impossible to “have it both ways.” One must choose between a mixed, equal army and a large, segregated one.
This old maneuver never tires, but neither do these women. The book should be sent to Dortal, so he can leaf through it and learn something about “both this and that.” The law in question, like all attempts by the Israel Defense Forces to enlist the ultra-Orthodox, will fail not because of the army, but because of the ultra-Orthodox leadership.
The army has already built “sterile” frameworks. It has promised “women-free spaces,” religious supervision, strict kosher standards, routine separation and the transformation of units into something like sector-based laboratories. Yet there is one small problem. Even with all these velvet gloves, they do not enlist en masse. Not by the thousands. Not in critical mass. Not in numbers that would change reality.
So who is really carrying the burden? Young women. Women. They enlist in large numbers. They fight for their right to serve and their right to fight. Some of them are also willing to die, not as a cliché, but as a stark fact of war. The data show a sharp rise in female enlistment, including among religious women, because they know nothing will stop them. They did not ask for special kosher conditions. They make do with what exists.
And here comes the truly astonishing part: the willingness of Dortal and his allies to so easily give up women combat soldiers for the imaginary potential of “mass ultra-Orthodox enlistment.” Today, women make up about 20% of the combat force. Twenty percent. These are not “value margins.” This is operational weight.
Yet Dortal and many others propose excluding women as if they were a decorative accessory that can be removed so the ultra-Orthodox might come. They call it a historic crossroads. At this crossroads, they choose the ultra-Orthodox, even if it comes at the expense of the women who are already there.
The army cannot become a yeshiva. Not because “feminists were offended by a handshake,” but because war cannot be conducted according to modesty charts. War is conducted according to professionalism, availability and camaraderie. That is what I learned from the women combat soldiers I heard that evening.
The military runs on trust, trust that when I fall, the person next to me will lift me, or lift her. The medic on duty will treat everyone.
The choice is between a state that expands shared responsibility and a state that dismantles it, between an army that wins thanks to all who fight in it and an army that weakens itself in the name of a political fantasy.
It will not stop with the military. Anyone who today justifies the exclusion of women in the name of “equality of burden” is laying the groundwork for excluding women everywhere: in academia, in public service, in the civic sphere, at official events, in life itself. This is an attack on the value of equality, and this government declared that attack long ago. Now others are joining in, offering a “logical explanation,” as if this were the most reasonable thing in the world.
So let us put it in order: there is no equality in sharing the burden without partnership. Our future is a partnership between men and women. This is not sentiment. There is no victory without equality, and no victory without partnership. There is no “either-or.” There is only both. This is our watch.
Yael Yechieli is the director of the 5050 Initiative at the Centers for Social Justice