In the Israeli Air Force, women account for about half of the personnel serving in the Air Defense Array, a unit central to intercepting incoming missile threats.

By TPS

As Israel marks International Women’s Day on Sunday amid war with Iran, the Israel Defense Forces released new data showing the growing role of women across its combat forces and in the current conflict.

According to the army statement, women now make up about 20 percent of the IDF’s combat force and roughly 20 percent of reservists mobilized during the ongoing war.

“Also in this campaign, the operational reality is revealed in full force: female soldiers are crossing borders, operating precise fire, commanding forces in the field, and serving in intelligence, in the air, at sea, in cyber units, and in combat support roles,” Brig. Gen. Rosital Aviv, the Gender Affairs Adviser to the Chief of Staff, said in a written statement to The Press Service of Israel.

“Effectiveness on the battlefield is not a product of gender. It is the direct result of training, excellence, and commitment to the mission,” she added.

The figures released by the military on Saturday emphasize women’s participation in current operations across several branches of the armed forces. The IDF did not make female personnel available for comment.

“Since its founding, women have served in the IDF, and their service makes a significant contribution to achieving its objectives. Today too, during Operation ‘Roaring Lion,’ women are an integral part of the IDF’s operational activities,” the IDF statement said.

In the Israeli Air Force, women account for about half of the personnel serving in the Air Defense Array, a unit central to intercepting incoming missile threats.

The IDF said approximately 5,000 female reservists are currently serving in the Air Force during “Operation Roaring Lion,” while around 130 female aircrew combat personnel are taking part in operational missions.

The Israeli Navy also reported a significant presence of female personnel during the conflict.

About 25 female commanders who graduated from the naval officers course are currently engaged in operations, alongside approximately 130 female naval combat soldiers serving aboard missile ships.

According to the military, about 40 percent of personnel involved in intelligence, planning, command, and fire direction roles in the Navy are women.

Women are also serving in large numbers in technological units.

In the C4I and Cyber Defense Directorate, the IDF said more than 40 percent of the combat soldiers in the Electronic Warfare Battalion of the Sapir Brigade are women.

Beyond the current operation, the data released for International Women’s Day highlights a broader increase in female participation across the military.

In 2015 women represented 7.2 percent of combat troops, compared with 21.2 percent today, a threefold increase over the past decade, according to the army.

The military also said women currently constitute about 35 percent of all career service personnel. By rank, women account for roughly 24 percent of lieutenant colonels and about 15 percent of colonels.

More than 90 percent of military roles are now open to women, as the army has expanded opportunities in combat and operational units over the years.

“Precisely at a time when our enemies seek to undermine our security, it becomes clear that the people’s army is strongest when women and men, religious and secular, from cities and villages stand together at the center of decision-making and on the front lines of action,” Aviv told TPS-IL.

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Under Erdogan, Turkish courts legalized religious marriages and reduced the legal age of consent for sex to 12 years of age.

By Burak Bekdil, The Gatestone Institute

No doubt, Turkey is more secular and modern than Afghanistan and Iran. But that is not good enough news for Turkish girls and women.

A total of 327 women were murdered by their husbands, ex-husbands, fiancés and partners, between January 1 and November 11, 2022, according to the Turkish Federation of Women’s Association. The Islamist government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan should be proud.

Although they are now “ex-allies,” Erdogan, when he was the prime minister of Turkey in 2007, elected as president his long-time, staunchest ally at the time, Abdullah Gul, a fellow Islamist. Gul reportedly married his wife, Hayrunnisa, when he was 30 years old and she was 14.

The marriage of underage girls and women is part of Islamist culture, including in Turkey.

In March 2021, under pressure from pious Muslims, Erdogan announced that Turkey was pulling out of the “Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence,” effective July 1, 2021. The accord is better known as the Istanbul Convention after Turkey’s biggest city where, in 2011, it received signatures, including Erdogan’s.

“Turkey’s decision to ditch a landmark international treaty to tackle violence against women and girls, could significantly set back efforts to tackle the problem,” said Reem Alsalem, a senior UN-appointed independent rights expert.

Officially, around one out of four women in Turkey has suffered physical or sexual abuse from their partners, according to latest available government data from a 2014 survey, said Alsalem in a statement. There are also likely “hundreds of femicides” every year, she added, pointing to serious underreporting of the issue, owing to a lack of confidence in protection mechanisms, widespread impunity and gender-related bias and discrimination.

This is the gloomy background in a country where women won the right to vote in national elections in 1934, ten years before French women. In 1935, 18 women became Turkish MPs, or 4.6% of the parliament.

That was secular Turkey.

Today, in Turkey, the driving force is political Islam. On November 25, protestors gathered in several provinces to commemorate the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. They were met with a heavy police presence and violent crackdown. Several women were detained in the protests, including 20 journalists. “We are not allowed to leave the [police] blockade,” journalist Sultan Eylem Keleş wrote in a tweet.

This is a picture of Turkish “progress” between 1934 and 2022.

It is only the tip of the iceberg. As Erdogan’s political Islam has poisoned the uneducated masses’ freedom over the past two decades, families have turned “medieval” in their social life. The prominent Turkish columnist Yilmaz Ozdil compiled a list of crimes committed in Erdogan’s Turkey in just the past few years:

–  An 11-year-old girl, who had been married by an imam, gave birth: Bolu province.

–  A 12-year-old girl gave birth under a fake ID that showed her age as 18: Gaziantep province.

–  A 12-year-old girl gave birth: Izmir province.

–  A girl named Kader, or “fate in English.” She did not have good fate. She was forcibly married at 12, became a mother at 13 and committed suicide at 14: Siirt province.

–  A girl was married, at 13, to a 40-year-old man. She ran away after severe violence from the husband. Her family rejected her. At 17 she, with her three children, had no place to live: Ordu province.

–  A 15-year-old girl was forcibly married. She took refuge at a police station: Sakarya province.

–  A notary public was caught endorsing the illegal marriage of a 14-year-old girl: Tekirdag province.

–  A 12-year-old girl, who was forcibly married, appeared to be four months pregnant: Tokat province.

–  A 16-year-old girl who had been married off by her family committed suicide by throwing herself under the train: Adana province.

–  A 16-year-old married girl jumped from the seventh floor of a building: Konya province.

–  There was a case of a girl of 14 being forcibly married to a man of 70, father of five and grandfather of nine.

The Kanuni Sultan Suleyman Hospital in Istanbul reported to have received 115 pregnant girls under 15 in just five months. The hospital said it admits 500 pregnant girls in one year.

Before Erdogan came to power, civil marriage was compulsory in Turkey, and conducting a religious marriage before the civil one was punishable by a prison sentence. Under Erdogan, Turkish courts legalized religious marriages and reduced the legal age of consent for sex to 12 years of age.

Against this backdrop, even Turkey was shocked at news that a prominent Islamic sheik, the leader of a religious order fiercely devoted to Erdogan, had married off his six-year-old daughter to a 29-year-old disciple. Six!

The girl had been forced into sex and became a mother at 14. She complained to the prosecutor’s office, but Erdogan’s authorities apparently did not want to bother the sheik. As she became an adult, she collected evidence of abuse, made it public, and only then the judiciary took action. Initially the court decided to try the suspects without detention, but under huge public pressure, the court detained both the father and husband. The father, in a statement, said that he was answerable only to Allah, not to a court.

Hey, West! Time to get to know your NATO partner. Erdogan’s Minister of Family and Social Services, Derya Yanık (a woman), claimed that violence against women and child abuse are not the subject of politics because they are “human nature issues and can be seen in every society.”

What is the link between these criminal acts and Erdogan’s government? First, the sheik who married off his six-year-old daughter heads a foundation linked to the influential radical Islamist Ismailaga community. Second, the Ismailaga community is one of many that fall under the umbrella of the Naqshbandi-Khalidi order, a branch of Sunni Islam of which Erdogan is said to have been a follower. Third, the funeral of the Ismailaga sect’s longtime leader earlier this year was attended by Erdogan and Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu.

There are civilized and medieval worlds in the 21st century — and there are medieval leaders dressed in suits and ties who pretend to belong to the civilized world.

Burak Bekdil, one of Turkey’s leading journalists, was recently fired from the country’s most noted newspaper after 29 years, for writing in Gatestone what is taking place in Turkey. He is a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

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Major General Tamir Hayman sends a letter thanking the wives of men under his command, then corrects to add the spouses of the women that serve too.

By Paul Shindman, World Israel News

A top IDF general got an embarrassing lesson on women’s issues when a letter he wrote for International Women’s Day raised a ruckus for praising only the wives of the men serving under his command, Channel 12 reported Monday.

Maj. Gen. Tamir Hayman, head of the IDF Intelligence Corps, sent a letter to the families of those serving in intelligence units in which he thanked the spouses for supporting the soldiers.

“This is an opportunity to express my deep appreciation for the remote support that enables your spouse to lead, contribute and influence the day-to-day work of the Intelligence Division,” Hayman said in the letter.

However, in Hebrew that sentence came out referring only to male spouses who serve in intelligence, as the language is specific for the male and female genders.

Following the many angry reactions received by the head of the armed forces, Hayman realized that he had made a mistake and moved to try and reduce the damage. A few hours later, he issued a corrective message in which he specifically referred to male and female spouses, writing: “I would like to make it clear that the spouses of the men and women serving are part of the IDF intelligence family.”

He then used the specific Hebrew gender form to emphasize the women serving under his command.

“I will use this platform stage to point out that in the intelligence division there are many women serving who hold key positions, by right and not by charity. We will continue to promote equal opportunities and work for the integration of women in all positions and ranks in the division.”

On Monday, IDF Chief-of-Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi hosted a special International Women’s Day forum with the CEOs of top high tech firms in Israel and announced a strategic plan to continue the advancement of women in the IDF, the IDF Spokesperson’s Office said in a statement.

The heads of Microsoft, Intel and Facebook in Israel shared their various strategies for promoting gender equality of opportunity as part of improving business effectiveness.

Kochavi noted that the number of women in IDF combat roles has increase by 250% in the past six years, adding that women serving in the IDF “have been integrated into senior key positions, including groundbreaking positions in which women have not served in the past.”

“I welcome the increase in the number of women serving in the IDF in compulsory service in recent years, emphasizing the significant increase in the number of women serving in combat roles and technical systems, as well as the number of officers serving permanently,” Kochavi said.

“We must preserve these trends and, at the same time, act to increase the number of [female] senior officers by about 50% in the next five years, as well as act to increase the number of women serving in the technology and cyber professions,” Kochavi added.

“The IDF must also serve as an example and role model in the field of women’s integration, and the commanders must lead the change and deal with it personally,” added Kochavi, although his comments were apparently not specifically addressed to Hayman.

“I am full of appreciation for the women who serve in the IDF, for their great contribution and for their professional, valued and dedicated service throughout the year, which is a source of inspiration and pride,” Kochavi said.

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Palestinian Authority TV used International Women’s Day last Friday to glorify female terrorists and murderers.

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On International Women’s Day, the Palestinian Authority’s official TV station praised women’s roles in terror, focusing on suicide bombers and other criminals responsible for killing Israeli civilians.

By Itamar Marcus and Maurice Hirsch, Palestinian Media Watch and World Israel News Staff

To mark International Women’s Day, Palestinian Authority (P.A.) TV broadcast an interview with the director of the Palestinian Women’s Union in Gaza, Amal Hamad.

Instead of discussing the achievements of Palestinian women or the inequality that they suffer in Palestinian society, Hamad chose to highlight that Palestinian women have played an important role in violence and terror, what she calls the “Palestinian national struggle.”

“We have had female martyrs, wounded and prisoners,” said Hamad, referring by name to Shadia Abu Ghazaleh, Dalal Mughrabi, Wafa Idris, Ayyat Al-Akhras, and Darin Abu Aisheh, a list that includes suicide bombers and women responsible for the deaths of Israeli children.

Terrorists Shadia Abu Ghazaleh and Dalal Mughrabi both have P.A. schools named after them.

While P.A. TV paid lip service to International Women’s Day, the network has also endorsed domestic violence against women during a number of segments, with a female reporter in 2017 exhorting viewers, “To those who use beatings and violence to solve their marital problems: Carefully read the Koranic verse again [Sura 4:34]. There are solutions before giving beatings. If you have to, there are religious rules for beatings that must be obeyed. Guys, the goal of the beatings is rebuke in a way that does not cause injury. You can even go ask someone about it.”

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