The Israeli Military’s Open Secret

Now that she is no longer a soldier in the Israeli army, and only now, can Michal talk about it.

The trouble began mildly enough. First, Michal’s commanding officer made a few remarks about her appearance. Next, she ventured into his office looking for a stapler. She says the commander unzipped his pants and responded with the Hebrew equivalent of “Here, come and get it.”

Then things only got worse. As she was driving with him to a military award ceremony, Michal says, the commander bragged about his sexual conquests, about cheating on his wife and about the professional perks that female soldiers who slept with him were privileged to receive. When he caressed Michal’s thigh and proposed that they skip the medal-pinning and head for the nearest motel, she was stunned.

And when she said no, more trouble started. In the weeks that followed, she says, she was transferred, marginalized and humiliated. Her military career was finished.

In Israel, shaped by wars and historically surrounded by enemies, no institution is more vaunted than the army. Military service is a natural and rarely questioned part of life, a duty, a rite of passage, a formative experience that the vast majority of citizens undergoes.

Israel is also one of the few countries where women are drafted into mandatory service alongside men. More than two-thirds of all Jewish Israeli women have completed military duty.

It is fertile ground, say activists and senior military officers, for widespread sexual harassment: young, impressionable women thrust into the macho and obedient culture of the army, highly dependent on mostly male commanders.

Long a taboo topic, or dismissed as something women simply had to put up with, sexual harassment in the military is now openly discussed in Israel, thanks to high-profile cases, new rules and a handful of crusading activists.

More and more women are coming forward to denounce abuse. Some are going to court--and winning. After downplaying the problem for decades, the army in the past year has dismissed an unprecedented number of officers over sexual harassment.

But, for women, fear and shame persist.

“We are training women to be more assertive, to demand their rights and not stand to one side,” said Brig. Gen. Orit Adato, the highest-ranking woman in the Israeli army and head of its Women’s Corps. “Sexual harassment has existed as long as men and women were together. It is very, very hard to combat.”

Criticism of the army, an institution crucial to Israel’s existence, is often seen as unpatriotic blasphemy. And while attitudes within the service are changing, it remains a close-knit center of power that is the principal channel for getting ahead in society. As such, it is the purveyor of opportunities for men far more than for women.

In the military, men make connections that serve them for the rest of their lives. It is no accident that most of Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s trusted advisors in government also served alongside him in the army’s elite all-male Sayeret Matkal commando unit. For women, the army both reflects and perpetuates the secondary status that society at large gives them.

Michal, who left the army three months ago as a corporal but does not want her real name used because she fears reprisals, pressed charges against her former commander. The details of her treatment told in this story are her version. According to a military investigation, the commander--an up-and-coming major in his early 30s--was subjected to a disciplinary hearing during which he denied the allegations against him. He was convicted on two counts of improper conduct and acquitted on two others. He resigned from the army.

One Accused Claims He’s a Scapegoat

In an interview, the major said the accusations were made by a vindictive young woman unhappy with her own professional shortcomings and his attempts to discipline her. He said he became the victim of a witch hunt conducted by overzealous prosecutors looking for a scapegoat.

The story told by Michal is by no means unique. Ten women interviewed for this story, some of whom served years ago and the others still in the military, recounted personal experiences of sexual harassment, from groping and innuendo to assault.

The army says it recognizes the problem, is taking concrete steps to fight it and is leagues ahead of Israeli business, academia and other civilian arenas in doing so. Female soldiers have for some time been given instruction on sexual harassment; male soldiers now receive training on the topic as well.

Maj. Ayelet Harel, who oversees basic training for about 7,000 young female soldiers each year, said instructors make it clear to women that they can and should resist unwanted sexual overtures--from anyone--and seek help. Recruits are given a list of counselors and women commanders to whom they can turn.

“I am not deluding myself to think that every soldier who has been exposed to sexual harassment is coming forward to complain, but more and more are,” she said. “The ability of military women to step forward, to say ‘I’ve been exposed to sexual harassment,’ has more legitimacy now.”

Harel, 34, spoke at the recruitment center of the Israeli Defense Forces, or IDF, here in Tel Hashomer in central Israel. Several hundred young women were being processed on their first day in the army. Just weeks before, they had been high school seniors.

A typical recruitment day goes like this: The young women bid tearful goodbyes to their parents and board buses to head for basic training. They are then fingerprinted, fitted for gas masks, given tetanus shots and issued a kit with bubble gum, deodorant, tampons and crackers. They are suited in uniforms and immediately begin watching instructional films.

The problem of sexual harassment contradicts an image that the Israeli military has cultivated through the years, of an egalitarian people’s army that against all odds helped forge a mighty nation in the desert. But Israel, despite its socialist roots, is a relatively traditional society when it comes to the roles of men and women. The prevailing attitude is: Yes, women are drafted, but their most important contribution to the homeland is to have children and boost the population of the Jewish state.

For Women, Career Ladder Has Few Steps

“The army teaches you to be a very good servant, to shut up and do what you are told,” said Rakefet Zohar, who recounted her own military experiences in the humorous novel “How I Won the War.” “This is true for men too, but men see the army as a ladder--they can start at the bottom and climb to the top. Women do not have the same opportunity. They go in at one level and stay there to the end.”

Certain inequities are built into the system. Men are required to serve about three years, while for women, obligatory duty is anywhere from 18 to 24 months. While most men then spend the greater part of their adult lives doing reserve duty, the linchpin of Israel’s defensive might, women rarely serve in the reserves.

When paramilitary units such as the Palmach and Haganah were fighting in the 1940s to form the Israeli state, Jewish women battled alongside men. Later, however, and until recently, women were barred from combat positions and relegated to jobs as secretaries, counselors and, in the best of cases, instructors. Those limits imposed a glass ceiling on the ranks women could attain.

But that is changing, and must change if women are to be given their full rights, Brig. Gen. Adato and other advocates of women in the military say. Within the last year, slots have opened up for women in the upper naval command, antiaircraft missile batteries and the border patrol. Israel’s first female fighter pilot recently graduated, and a bill before the Knesset, or parliament, would open up more combat positions to women.

The unique role of the military in this society complicates the definition of sexual harassment. In a social sense, the army serves much as college does in the United States: a meeting ground for young adults often away from home for the first time. Sexual exploration and dating are normal. IDF spokesmen hasten to note the list of major political figures, from Barak to the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and many former chiefs of staff, who married fellow soldiers.

New Rule Requires Attitude Adjustment

The new rule that the IDF is slowly coming to grips with is that sexual relations, even consensual, between an officer and a subordinate represent an imbalance of power and are not permitted.

Lt. Gen. Shaul Mofaz, the army chief of staff, gets high marks in many quarters for his determination to root out and punish sexual harassment and expand the military career opportunities available to women. Twenty-one career officers have been dismissed in sexual harassment or sexual misconduct cases over the 12-month period that ended in August, the army says, and 10 to 12 more officers reportedly face dismissal.

But even those who praise Mofaz point out that it was his own missteps earlier this year that opened the floodgate to sexual harassment complaints.

Mofaz steadfastly defended the promotion of Brig. Gen. Nir Galili to major general even after Galili was reprimanded for using his position to obtain sexual favors from a subordinate. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which blocked Galili’s appointment. It was a rare intervention by a civilian court in a military matter.

Mofaz was widely criticized for being out of tune with public opinion. Leading the charge was Hedva Almog, a 25-year veteran of the IDF who retired in 1991. She and Adato are among only five women ever to reach the rank of brigadier general.

Almog said no one took her seriously when she first started raising the issue of sexual harassment in the late 1980s. There has been considerable progress, though it’s not enough, she said.

“The problem that remains is the girls’ fear of complaining,” said Almog, who heads the Na’Amat women’s organization. “They are subordinated to their commanders, who can dictate their whole life--when they can go home, when they can leave the base, when they can sleep. The dependency is very great, and some girls misinterpret it and think it applies to a sphere that it should not. There is a fundamental difference between the military and civilian society. You can quit the workplace. But if you walk off the base, you are AWOL.”

One reason women are more likely to talk about sexual harassment in the army today comes in the person of Carmela Menashe, a raspy-voiced reporter for Voice of Israel state radio. Menashe is the only woman covering military affairs in the country and has become an inspiration to numerous female soldiers. Hardly a week goes by that she does not receive a call from an anxious recruit or from angry parents whose daughters have been abused.

“Male reporters who covered the military were embarrassed to deal with this,” Menashe said. “It wasn’t about missiles and tanks. It was a ‘woman’s issue.’ It was seen as petty.”

Radio Reporter Offers an Arsenal of Support

Menashe puts alleged victims on the air. She encourages them to sue in civil court once they have left the military. She has turned glaring scrutiny on a number of cases.

“There undoubtedly has been a change,” said the 46-year-old reporter. “More and more women call me. More are filing complaints. Officers are beginning to understand that they can lose their job over this and are being more careful. They may not understand [sexual harassment], but they are afraid of damage to their career.”

Alarmed at what they believed to be a rise in sexual harassment complaints and the failure of the army to adequately deal with the problem, activists from the Israeli Rape Crisis Center in Tel Aviv opened a hotline this summer that targeted women who suffered sexual harassment or abuse in the military. A new advocacy group of lawyers also has been formed.

Michal, now 20, reached a point where she regretted reporting the abuse she says she suffered. The investigation took a year. She was repeatedly warned that it was her word against his, that no one would believe her. She was required to take several polygraph tests. She was questioned extensively by an army psychologist who asked her about her sex life, whether she was a virgin, what kind of sexual practices she would be ashamed to perform and whether she in fact found the commander attractive. She was transferred to a lower-level position.

“I was humiliated,” she said.

Ultimately, the chief investigator wrote in his report that Michal was credible and had passed the polygraph tests. The ex-commander, for his part, says the investigation was bungled from the start. Convinced that he would not get a fair shake, he submitted his resignation from the military before the hearing that led to his conviction.

Michal’s case was apparently clinched when another woman of higher rank reported similar harassment by the same man.

Michal is bitter that her ex-commander was not punished more severely. She is disappointed that the system did not give her more of a sense of justice. But she is not bitter about the army.

“When you grow up in Israel, you know that, after high school, you are going to the army. It is a fact. You must go. You want to go,” she said. “If I had to do it again, I would go in the army.”

But, she said, she would go in a little wiser. She has learned, she said, “not to trust people and not to be naive. You cannot believe people.”