May 10, 2013

A triumph of feminism: Girls with big guns keep illegal infiltrators out of Israel

PM Netanyahu congratulates soldiers patrolling border fence
From the Israeli magazine Y-Net News, January 13, 2013:
Israeli women soldiers have 'right stuff' for border watch 
'We make a real contribution to protecting the country,' says commander of all-female spotter unit on Israel's fenced-off border with Egypt. Retired general claims women better suited for patient vigilance required of surveillance 
Reuters

Breaking cover from a lookout point disguised as a dune, four soldiers storm into the open, ploughing through the sand with rifles aloft. Their battle cries are like seagull calls, and from under their helmets, ponytails flap.

Team Mor is a spotter unit on Israel's fenced-off border with Egypt, deployed at night to intercept would-be infiltrators from the lawless Sinai desert. Like dozens of others along the tense divide, it is all-female.

"We make a real contribution to protecting the country," team commander Lieutenant Mor Dafna said during training drills at Sayarim field intelligence headquarters, marching distance from the frontier.

Any trespass in the Sinai would outrage Egyptians, many of whom resent having signed a peace treaty with Israel that largely demilitarized the peninsula in 1979. That makes spotting Islamist terrorists or illegal African migrants well before they reach the razor-wire border fence a strategic priority for Israel.

While the Israeli conscript military's gender egalitarianism is well known, when it comes to keeping the peace with Egypt over the border, women are valued perhaps even more than their male counterparts.

"It is no accident that so many women are in field intelligence - with all due respect to the men, women bring a special capability," said Major Oshrat Bachar, the chief of operations for Sayarim.

She would not elaborate, but retired brigadier-general Ruth Yaron, a former chief Israeli military spokesperson, voiced her opinion that at draft age, women tended to be better suited for the patient vigilance required of surveillance.

"This is a role that multi-tasks between discipline, pro-activeness and long-term focus, attributes that are often less developed among 18- or 19-year-old male soldiers," Yaron said.

The numbers suggest Yaron and Bachar are not alone in their thinking. Women make up 55% of Israel's field intelligence corps, compared to just 33% of the armed forces overall.

Uniquely for Israel's combat units, which are 96% male, the field intelligence corps has an all-woman infantry surveillance company - around 70 troops, including Team Mor - whose members sign up for an extra year of service in addition to the compulsory two.

Thousands of female sentinels monitor Israel's frontier video-feeds around the clock from hi-tech bunkers. Outside Gaza, some of the screens feature crosshairs linked to heavy machine-guns, allowing the women to remote-fire at Palestinian raiders.

David Tzur, a former general who runs the Israel Intelligence Heritage and Commemoration Centre, said the remote system, known as "Ro'ah-Yorah" or "Sees-Shoots", takes the feminine form in Hebrew in a nod to the gender of its operators.

"The girls were not happy with the original masculine naming," said Tzur.

... "Women remain the minority in our armed forces, because there is not the conscription that sees so many women joining up in Israel," he said.

But he added:

"In my experience, while men tend to be physically stronger, women often tend to be more systematic, thorough and have a greater attention to detail at that age, which is obviously better for intelligence collection and analysis."

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

While the Israeli conscript military's gender egalitarianism is well known...

It is?

--when it comes to keeping the peace with Egypt over the border, women are valued perhaps even more than men
--Women make up .... just 33% of the armed forces overall.
--Israel's combat units, which are 96% male
--the field intelligence corps has an all-woman infantry surveillance company

Image and Reality.

Anonymous said...

Using women as snipers/border guards makes more sense than leaving blond girls from Ohio deep in enemy controlled Rapiststan. The only thing I'd worry about is a situation where a Pali Tavon White worked his magic on the commander of a border crossing.

-The Judean People's Front

Anonymous said...

Good God!,

The words 'illegal migrant' were used in a press report. The official AP guide book forbids those words rather like the word YHWH are forbidden to be uttered.

Dave Pinsen said...

Cheryl Saban (Haim Saban's wife) retweeted this after I shared it with her on Twitter. She has an interest in women's issues globally, and of course an interest in Israel.

Dr Van Nostrand said...

Using women as snipers/border guards makes more sense than leaving blond girls from Ohio deep in enemy controlled Rapiststan. The only thing I'd worry about is a situation where a Pali Tavon White worked his magic on the commander of a border crossing.

-The Judean People's Front

Most of Tavon Whites Amor were of his own kind.
While for sure there are more Pali men dating Israeli women than vice versa-enough to aggravate Kahane types, the number is still rather small due to stigma and shaming due to all sorts of Zionist pressure groups.
There was this woman who successfully got this arab dude charged for rape as he had claimed to be Jewish in order to have sex with her!
So thats the soceity you are dealing with!

Anonymous said...

What luck for the rulers that women don't get bored.

"In my experience, while men tend to be physically stronger, women often tend to be more systematic, thorough and have a greater attention to detail at that age, which is obviously better for intelligence collection and analysis."

lol Mr. Cohen's thesis ruined

Anonymous said...

Dr Van Nostrand said: Most of Tavon Whites Amor were of his own kind.
While for sure there are more Pali men dating Israeli women than vice versa-enough to aggravate Kahane types, the number is still rather small due to stigma and shaming due to all sorts of Zionist pressure groups.
There was this woman who successfully got this arab dude charged for rape as he had claimed to be Jewish in order to have sex with her!
So thats the soceity you are dealing with!

Very true about the stigma DVN. I was mostly kidding about the Pali Tavon White bit. Mostly.

I was completely serious about the stupidity of dangling juicy morsels of healthy young womanhood in front of salivating enemy savages. In fact, even the idea of leaving them in the unsupervised company of our own 19 year old men is something only retards could embrace. The answer to the "epidemic" of "rape" in the military is to acknowledge human nature.

-The Judean People's Front

Svigor said...

Combat Yentas. Makes sense to me.

Nadine Lumley said...

The reason the right-wing government in Israel gets away with murder is because everyone is so scared of being called an anti-Semite. I’m not anti-Semite; I’m anti-murder.

Support for Israel equals support for war crimes against Palestine.

(I think the right-wing corporate-owned Israeli government is just hiding behind the Zionist movement just like Stephen Harper hides his corporate agenda behind evangelicalism).

http://youtu.be/LLrjYIMCl_c


Nadine Lumley said...

Stephen Hawking joins academic boycott of Israel

Physicist pulls out of conference hosted by president Shimon Peres in protest at treatment of Palestinians

A statement published by the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine with Hawking's approval described it as "his independent decision to respect the boycott, based upon his knowledge of Palestine, and on the unanimous advice of his own academic contacts there".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/08/stephen-hawking-israel-academic-boycott

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/09/world/middleeast/stephen-hawking-joins-boycott-against-israel.html



Stephen Hawking joins academic boycott of Apartheid Israel http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/08/stephen-hawking-israel-academic-boycott



Stephen Hawking confirms pulled out of Israel conf due to boycott not "health" reasons http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/stephen-hawking-confirms-he-pulled-out-israel-conference-due-boycott-not-health

http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/stephen-hawking-confirms-he-pulled-out-israel-conference-due-boycott-not-health



http://www.alternet.org/5-reasons-why-smartest-man-world-right-boycott-israel

DanJ said...

It is true that women are fit for surveillance work. A manager of a coastal radar station once told me that women make the best radar operators, because men can not handle the monotonous work, and in their boredom might turn to drinking.

Discard said...

Regarding women and boring work: I used to work the graveyard shift at a big shipping facility. Most of the men who did sorting were zombies, but the women were fully functional. It might of had something to do with their sociability, they talked the whole time they worked, and were faster than most of the men anyway.