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In this war, Israeli women serve on the front lines — as snipers, anti-aircraft officers, rescue officers, fighters in gunner units, or in other combat positions.
The emergency call-up of many reservists includes hundreds of women who have been sent to the war in the north.
Though Israel began allowing women to serve in combat units six years ago and, in the past four years, the Israel Defense Forces has started integrating women into the reserves, nowhere are the policy changes more apparent than in the current offensive against Hezbollah.
Of all the women called up for recent duty, about half are in combat battalions: 14 percent are fighters, 21 percent medics, 11 percent combat officers, and the rest are in intelligence.
On the northern border, Anat Bershkovsky and Efrat Kaufman serve in a mortar unit that is shooting at Lebanon. The two started their reserve duty as instructors for reserve soldiers on a training base, but very quickly found themselves on the border shooting mortars.
Bershkovsky spoke of the sharp transition from training to the battlefield: “We find ourselves driving north, and more north, and more north, almost to the end, and shooting — shooting into Lebanon and participating in the fighting. Throughout my entire army service I never thought I would be shooting at Lebanon.”
The reservists said their participation in the fighting was at first received with chuckles by their male colleagues, but that they quickly earned the men’s respect.
Their first days on the border were accompanied by many sexist comments, added Kaufman. “At first they asked us, degradingly, ‘Oh, you’re reservists? When did you get released, a year ago?’ And then when they heard we are both 26 years old they started saying, ‘What, you’re not married? You don’t have kids? What are you waiting for?’
“The moment they hear we are six and a half years after the army, they appreciate us a little more. We are here to give our professional emphasis and they know they need it. They ask for help and also know to say thank you.”
Ultimately, their reservists understand that the women and the men are all in the same situation, Bershkovsky explained. “They know that they also suddenly extracted us from our normal lives and that we are here to help in the fighting, exactly as they are.”
Reservist Nimrod Ratner praised the women’s participation in the war effort. “Six years we haven’t trained. We don’t remember how to operate these mortars. Sure we were professionals once and we did it in our army service, but if they weren’t here, some of us wouldn’t know what to do.”
There are other benefits as well, he said. “When you finish training all sweaty and sandy and out of nowhere they offer you a moist towel, what could be better than that? Only for that it’s worth it to enlist women into the army.”
Before a recent weekend when they would be allowed to go home, Bershkovsky and Kaufman said they were looking forward to the respite. “On one hand,” said Kaufman, “there’s all the corniness of ‘a mission, people rely on me.’ But on the other hand, I want a bath!
“In some moments I ask myself what I’m doing here, and what is all this black under my fingernails. But I think as soon as the guys call me asking me to come back, I will get up and go even if I’m in the middle of a manicure.”
Bershkovsky imagined an indulgent beauty treatment — after the war. “I have no problem being here for however long they need me,” she said. “It’s a good feeling knowing that you are taking part in something important, that you are doing something for the good of the fighting, contributing. Whenever they need me, I am at their beck and call. Afterward, I will do a thorough treatment and will return to being a woman.”
Meanwhile, the navy, too, is using more women than ever as it intensifies its operations to eliminate the threat of rocket attacks on Nahariya, Haifa and the Kiryot area.
In a naval operations room, young women soldiers direct INF missile boats in their mission to destroy terrorist rocket launchers.
A group of female soldiers, who constitute 80 percent of the personnel in the outpost, had been laboring around the clock for 26 days in an attempt to prevent a continuation of rocket attacks on the northwest.
One of them, Cpl. Moran Kdushim, 20, has served for more than a year in the outpost, as a shift leader.
“The first days weren’t easy,” she said. “Managing such a complicated operation while the outpost is under attack from rockets and mortars is scary, but it’s also toughening. The girls here have incredible responsibility on their shoulders and they consider it an honor to have the important job of communicating with the crews at sea.”
The women’s relative youth doesn’t constitute a problem, Kdushim added, because they underwent extensive training and were executing the things they had learned.
At one station, Sgt. Sivan Cohen sat in front of a control screen, trying to help stop the next rocket barrage from being launched on her home in Nahariya, in the north. While on leave, she’d spent time with her family in their fortified structure.
“We’ve been here for almost three weeks straight,” she said of her current post. “It’s like an unending school trip.
“We have a strong military and, alongside the strength demonstrated by residents of the north such as my parents, we are waging a difficult battle along the Lebanon coast.”
At approximately 12 p.m. the radars showed a group of missile boats that sailed out to attack targets on the Lebanon coast, including outposts that house rocket launchers.
Cpl. Nitzan Yogev held the two-way radio and directed the crew to the target. A few seconds later, she received the report of a direct hit on all targets, a foil of an attempted rocket launch towards Nahariya. The missile boats, their mission completed, later returned safely to Israeli shores.
“After every success, there’s a feeling of fulfillment. We feel that we helped reduce the damage that could have resulted from that launching,” Yogev said. “We have become a close-knit group over the past three weeks, fighting here, eating here, sleeping here, and feeling that the weight of the mission is on our shoulders.”
Head of the navy’s command and control system in the north, Lt. Cmdr. Amnon Kinreich, expressed pride in his unit’s operations. “When the fighting started, they wanted to replace the girls who staff the station with male combat soldiers, and I explained to them that the most effective force for the job was already in place. I supervise the girls in their work in real time … Much of the time, the outpost is under heavy fire.”
“To see them sitting in the fortified structure, focused on identifying and helping the ships’ crews, makes me truly proud. Their main job in the battle is ongoing communication with air, land and sea forces, cooperation that is important both to foil attacks and to assist our forces serving in mortal danger in order to protect residents of the north.”
Shift leaders and deputy shift leaders work 12 hours straight before earning a break, and controllers work six-hour shifts — staring at the shoreline and border fence, instructing naval teams in various operations and guiding them back to Israeli shores with achievements and, more importantly, with no casualties.
“It’s like we’re in a closed ship, only without the rocking of the waves,” Kinreich said. “We’re closed off in this room and working around the clock in a closed area, determined to win this battle.”
And in Lebanon, one of the doctors to evacuate wounded IDF soldiers from Bint Jbeil on July 24 was also the first female soldier to serve in Lebanon: Lt. Dr. Marina Kaminsky of the 52nd armored battalion.
“I entered Lebanon in a ‘tankbulance’ [a converted tank functioning as an ambulance] after we received word that there were injured soldiers,” she said. “We had no idea how many casualties there would be. I took care of injured infantry soldiers from the Golani division. The whole time, mortars, Katyushas and Sager missiles were falling all around us.”
A short while after the tank with the injured soldiers rolled back to Israeli territory, it was discovered that another tank had been hit — that of the 52nd armored battalion’s commander. After briefing rescue workers in Israel on the injuries and conditions of the wounded soldiers, Kaminsky returned to Lebanon with fellow medics.