From "The Kinder, Gentler Military" by Stephanie Gutmann Pages 264-5
"If we want to know whether women can hack it on the front line or in the trenches with the rest of the ground-pounders, we should look at the countries that have been putting women on the front lines for decades, right? And obviously that would be Israel, right? Not so. Actually, "women are an somewhat of an after thought in the IDF [Israeli Defense Force]-odd, given the amount of press they receive in the foreign media. " said Shoshana Bryen, who studies the IDF at the Jewish institute for National Security Affairs. In fact, it women are far less equal than ours. Israeli women serve in separate divisions named CHEN (the acronym mean "grace" in Hebrew). They train separately from men and with female instructors. They enjoy a shorter period of conscription and are eligible for many of the waivers from service that men are not. And they are kept much further from the front lines. Up until the mid nineties there were allowed in support roles-as clerks, medics in communications. The wide spread misimpression that women hole up in the front line trenches probably started with the fact that Israel is the only country in the world that drafts women-meaning the tourist see the bronzed women in uniform everywhere. Civilians, who tend to not realize there are a whole lot of jobs that don't involve shooting at all (our ratio is about 30 percent combat to 70 percent support), tend to assume every women Israeli solider is GI Jane. ( I cannot count the times nonmilitary people have smugly produced the "well what about Israel" card when I am skeptical about gender-integrating the combat arms in this country or any other.)
The myth also probably comes out of the fact the Haganah, the underground defense force that grew up to become the IDF, did put some women in combat units-in keeping with the early socialist philosophy that animated the communal farms in the territory than called Palestine. In Palestine's kibbutzim, as the were called in Hebrew, no major personal possessions were allowed, children were raised outside the home in large nurseries and everyone was eligible for any kibbutz job-though in practice people tended to gravitate. the metaplot for example, the people who cared for babies and young children were nearly all female. In keeping in the spirit of comradeship, the Palmach, the most elite, strike force or the Haganah, was gender integrated as well, though in practice, says Martin Van Creveld, a military historian. women were relegated to support and defense positions once again-holding ammunition, acting as communication liaisons. Women would take up rifles on the front line if a position was being attacked, but raids against the Arab positions relied on men---- After in a battle in the Negev, which left the ground strewn with bodies, a number of them female and to form, mutilated in unspeakable ways, Palmach leadership ended the policy of assigning women to combat.---
But Israel has changed sine the forties--in other words, there is less sense of imminent danger, as a recent visitor put it. "There isn't that feeling of claustrophobia, of being surrounded by three hostile enemies and the ocean." able to take a bit of a break. Israel has been able to acquire what Van Creveld calls the "peacetime luxuries" of a litigation industry and an influential feminist movement."