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  • Israel's Women Soldiers over the Generations:A Panel Discussion
  • Bat-Sheva Margalit Stern, Zimra Peled, Yehudit Grisaro, Yifat Sela, and Shira Melammed

Bat-Sheva Margalit Stern (chair): The participants in our panel, representing four generations of women in Israel's defense forces, are Dr. Zimra Peled, a veteran of the Palmach; Brigadier General Yehudit Grisaro, the army's current Advisor on Women's Issues to the Chief of Staff; Yifat Sela, the head of Alumah, an organization that assists religious women in preparing for military service; and Shira Melammed, who recently completed her service, via Alumah, as a mortar commander in the Tank Corps.

This discussion is divided into three segments. The first part deals with motives and motivation; the second with the army experience itself, and the third with personal conclusions. In this first segment, we want to hear about your expectations in joining the army or the Palmach, whether there was someone who encouraged you or served as an enabler for your recruitment; and who, ultimately, was behind your decision to enlist.

Part One

Zimra Peled: I joined the Palmach because it seemed to me the most important mission there was in 1946. I came from Pardes Chana, a moshavah [a veteran, non-collective agricultural settlement—ed.], and I was the only woman from there to enlist in the Palmach, then and afterward. This was just when the Jewish struggle against the British and the preparations for the establishment of the State were getting under way, right after World War II and the Holocaust. My expectations were to be part of the fighting forces. No one told me to [End Page 206] enlist; no one encouraged me or pushed me to go. I think what inspired me was the Zionist education I received from my parents, who had come as pioneers to Eretz Israel in the early 1920s from the United States, and turned themselves into farmers—not very successful ones, since they had no agricultural background—out of Zionist motivation.

Unlike most members of the Palmach, I didn't belong to a youth movement. The Palmach was made up of training groups (hakhsharot) that were meant to found kibbutzim later on; but I already knew that I couldn't live in a kibbutz, that I wouldn't be able to cope with the personal strains. I knew that after my service, I would want to study.

At first I joined a training group whose members were younger than I was. I had finished high school at the age of 19, because the agricultural high school I attended was for five years, not four, like elsewhere. The group started out in Kibbutz Ashdot Yaakov and went on to found Maayan Baruch, but I transferred to Kibbutz Afikim, because a friend of mine, who had joined the Palmach before me and was in a training group at Mishmar Hasharon, remembered a very nice boy there from his first or second-grade class in Jerusalem, named Elad. If I had any problems, he would help me out. I've been living with that boy for the past sixty years!

Yehudit Grisaro: I could speak about my own motives for joining the army, but that might take the whole evening! So instead I'll try to answer a more general question: What motivates young people, male and female, to join the army? Since both sexes are subject to mandatory conscription here in Israel, I think there's no difference between the boys and the girls from this point of view, especially in an era when 90% of the positions in the army are open to women. I think there are three factors at work here: First, for most, there's no choice but to sign up, because of the mandatory conscription law. Second, we have wonderful young adults in Israel. They are very involved; they value being citizens of the State of Israel and are well aware of the challenges facing it in the area of security, and they want to do their part. Despite all speculations to the contrary, young people come in every year wanting to do something stronger, bigger, more impressive and more dangerous. Finally, we cannot...

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