IDF Women Soldiers: A Tokenistic Representation

In the backdrop of the Israel-Hamas conflict, the Israel government seeks to gain the support of the West and other nations around the world. One of the ways in which they execute this is through their portrayal of the Israel Defense Force’s (IDF) women. Using this they demand the support of feminists around the globe.

Learning to see war through our enemies’ eyes is a vital first step (Barkawi, 2004). I will hence attempt at explaining how Israel deals with its conflict against Hamas. Then I will dive into the shortcomings of their actions and narrative with the help of a gendered post-colonial lens.

Security is an essentially contested term. In this case IDF is the security actor providing security to the Zionist State of Israel. In security terms, Israel becomes the referent object, i.e. you look at the conflict from their perspective. For them the threat object is what they call the “terrorist” organizations of Palestine such as Hamas. This security threat provides Israel with the means to dictate the actions of its military against Palestine.

The purpose of this military defense force is to expand the state of Israel while displacing the Palestinians who according to them occupied their territory. When we see this same conflict from the eyes of the Palestinians, their narrative will be quite the opposite. Security is therefore relative to its actor.

In an interview conducted by Swati Pransar, Ann Tickner, a feminist scholar and Philip Darby, a post-colonial scholar agree that the two theories intersect. This intersection allows us to see the role of gender in Israel's colonial project. Ann Tickner mentions the gendered symbolism of the colonial project where colonization is attributed to the masculine role.

Israel is a settler colonial state that has subjected Palestinians to “military occupation, land dispossession and unequal rights” (Avelar & Ferrari, 2018). Since the October 7 “terror” attacks, Israel has used national security as a justification for increasing its centralization of state power along with its growing monopoly over legitimate use of force.

Now what do IDF women soldiers have to do with all this?

To answer this question, we look at how these women have been objectified and romanticized while being used as state symbols by the Israel state. Female soldiers are stripped off their teenage years when it becomes mandatory for them to serve IDF. The fascist state uses them as killing machines to murder Palestinians (Hassan, 2021). Some of these women soldiers oppose the occupation of Palestine while others still take active role in perpetuating violence against the Palestinians.

There is an attempt at glorifying the role of women in military through photographs showing the unseen lives of female soldiers. These photos try to adhere to the female audience by showcasing the women soldiers who work in creative roles like journalists, teachers, and filmmakers.

But in reality, these photoshoots hypersexualize women by showing femininity through photographs that capture pretty women sitting at nice beaches, tying their hair, buttoning up their shirts, sitting next to laptops and with their phones ((Brooks, 2016). This inherently satiates the male gaze and downplays the true agenda of IDF i.e. displacement of Palestinians and genocide.

Another aspect of IDF women that we must acknowledge is the kind of sexual harassment they have to deal with while performing masculine roles. Judith Butler provides us with the notion of performativity which underlines the actions of the body as integral to the constitution of its identity (Butler, 2002).  

A research conducted by Orna Sasson- Levy, showcases the IDF women soldiers who gender identities are shapes by their “masculine” performance. They perform a stylized repetition of acts that mimic the actions of combat male soldiers’ bodily discursive practices. They adopt the deep loud voice, standing with their legs apart, use limited makeup and accessories in order to be taken seriously.

Regardless, they are prone to sexual harassment with the Defense Forces. They are often catcalled, get hit on by other male officers and have to deal with other kinds of misogynistic slurs (Levy, 2003). The women soldiers trivialize this kind of harassment as jokes. They refuse to identify as the victim as they are expected to show a strong masculine behavior who are unaffected by such actions.

All this has to be kept in mind when the mainstream narrative portrays IDF as a gender inclusive, and supportive of the female empowerment. This only plays into the hands of state power which tries to glorify and romanticize forces occupation in Palestine. All the while committing genocide associated with the patriarchal nature of the state.

Another interesting angle through which we can see the conflict between Israel and Palestine is through the misleading Pink washing agenda. The Islamophobic media seeks to convince the West that supporting Israel means one is siding with women, queer individuals and their allies (Bohrer, 2014). They portray Israel as a state that is committed to democracy and human rights but refuse to acknowledge the racist connotation that disregard the rights of Palestinians.

Israel also uses social media tools like TikTok to garner the support of the youth portraying themselves as “empowering women” and propagating themselves as modern states. IDF women themselves use social media platforms to market themselves as “feminists” who defend their nations (Hassan, 2021). They use captions such as “We’re serving looks since 1948”. We must keep in mind that these are diversion tactics to conceal the atrocities against Palestinians. They fail to take into account that feminism condones violence all together.

Israel is perpetuating violence, genocide and disinformation in a quest to dominate the narrative (Singh, 2023). Ann Tickner’s “Knowledge/ Power discourse talks about how the West tries to dominate this narrative (Pransar, 2017). For Israel the “enemy” is Hamas, and a part of their “self” is the IDF women soldiers who help them propagate their neo-liberal agenda.

This is a very Eurocentric way of analyzing world politics and we must be aware that Western narratives tend to be universalized. We shouldn’t fall for such tokenistic narratives which only talk about women when they support their colonizing agenda. It is a trap we must all avoid.

References

Avelar, D. & Ferrari, B. (2018, May 29). Israel and Palestine: a story of modern colonialism. OpenDemocracy. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/north-africa-west-asia/israel-and-palestine-story-of-modern-colonialism/

Barkawi, T. (2004). On the Pedagogy of 'Small Wars'. Oxford University Press. International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-), Jan., 2004, Vol. 80, No. 1, pp. 19-37 https://www.jstor.org/stable/3569291

Bohrer, A. (2014, August 9).  ‘Against the Pinkwashing of Israel’. Opinion. Al Jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/8/9/against-the-pinkwashing-of-israel.

Brooks, K. (2016, June 2). Gorgeous Photos Capture The Unseen Lives Of Female Soldiers In Israel. HuffPost. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mayan-toledano-female-soldiers_n_57486060e4b03ede44148d7a

Butler, J. (2002). Gender trouble. Routledge. Introduction.

Hassan, N. (2021 June 14). ‘The Romanticisation Of Israel Defense Forces’ Female Soldiers’. Women’s Republic (blog). https://www.womensrepublic.net/the-romanticisation-of-israel-defense-forces-female-soldiers/.

Prashar, S. (2016). Feminism and Postcolonialism: The Twain Shall Meet, Postcolonial Studies, 19:4, 463-477 https://doi.org/10.1080/13688790.2016.1317583

Sasson‐Levy, O. (2003). Feminism and military gender practices: Israeli women soldiers in “masculine” roles. Sociological inquiry, 73(3), 440-465.

Singh, B. (2023, October 24). Israel-Hamas war shows the formidable power of narrative. Opinion. Nikkei Asia. https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Israel-Hamas-war-shows-the-formidable-power-of-narrative