When the young woman in the video below woke up on the morning of October 7, she undoubtedly did not imagine that a few weeks later, she would be standing with Chief of the General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces, Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, telling him what transpired that day.
But she did end up telling him, because during that day, she and her fellow female tank crews made history—not just Israeli history, but history period. Here (below) is the meeting with Halevi, and what Halevi said to the crews (note the entirely mixed gender group of soldiers) when she was finished explaining what had transpired. (We didn’t translate what she says, because she covers the same material in the video above.)
Halevi:
As you know, there has been an ongoing conversation in Israeli society over the past years as to whether or not women should be in combat positions. Sometimes, one needs to speak a great deal to explain something. We tried it in practice drills, we tried it in training exercises, we tried it in operations in normal times, but I think that here we received an answer without words. It’s the answer that comes from performance in wartime combat.
The video at the top was prepared by Keshet 12 news (and disseminated by Niv Calderon on his twitter feed). It speaks for itself.
The Times of Israel also covered their story here:
The dispute about women in combat positions is far from over, I suspect. There are religious objections that have nothing to do with their battlefield capabilities or performance, and good old fashioned chauvinism in other cases.
But across the Israeli press, one hears that the needle has moved significantly. If it has, then these are some of the women who have changed history.
If you’re just joining us, Israel from the Inside typically posts a written column on Mondays and a podcast on Wednesdays. That is obviously irrelevant for the time being.
We’ve delayed all the podcasts that were ready to go, because the people whose stories they tell deserve to tell them when we all have the bandwidth to hear. Hopefully, that will return some day.
In the interim, we’ll post as possible. Here in Israel, there are non-stop funerals to go to, shiva homes to visit, grandchildren to help care for while sons and daughters are in the army, so we’ll see.
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The first women-led armored battle in history