Right Behind You, Scarlett!
Norden, Edward
as only one facet of a free existence. Throughout Centesimus Annus John Paul takes pains to insist that it should not be read as a political treatise. This is not to say, however, that it is...
...What a message of hope this is on the eve of the third millennium, not least to a developing world accustomed to World Bank studies and United Nations initiatives that treat people as mouths rather than minds...
...It was conceivable that all of America's wars to come would be brilliant Nintendo games, or that Arlington National Cemetery would fill up with women and the country would tolerate it in the name of justice...
...Warner and McCain, and the myth-debunking industry—it was hard to approve of where Americans' ideas of "justice" were leading them, and hard to avoid the conclusion that a country that sends its women into battle out of anything short of desperation isn't worth fighting for...
...A reservist in the Israel Defense Forces is stunned by post-Gulf War moves to allow American women front-line combat roles in the next war...
...He was wondering how this American had gone all his life without meeting an aggressive woman—was this possible in California, land of the future...
...Of course, Golani girls only instruct, they don't fight...
...Not that women instructors aren't as savvy and dedicated as men...
...Finally, something called the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, by a vote of 29-4, had asked Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney to work for repeal in all the services...
...But she lived and died in those desperate times, not today...
...Had she been one of those who had brought them champagne and cake...
...16 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1991...
...But if this high-tech war proved anything, it proved that the traditional concept of the combat zone has been blurred...
...Would she consider them to have been in combat, as Life did...
...This requires forgetting a great deal and keeping women out of the front line, even if it's only a few kilometers away...
...That said, unless you go along on ambushes with the paratroops, or patrols with the navy, you'll see women everywhere in the IDF...
...But getting women into combat isn't on their agenda...
...It had to do, he suspected, with America's all-volunteer military, with Women's Lib and coed military academies...
...It was unexpected, brief, and very unpleasant, the ambulances wailed and the med-evac copters came and went, but the women radio operators kept their cool and carried on, performing under pressure...
...Some of the smartest and best-looking are attached to intelligence, the medical corps, and general headquarters, all based in the rear (if Israel has a rear...
...The Israeli grandmothers with their hair-curling memories appear seldom on TV...
...Law" are broadcast in Israel, "GI Joe" is not, so Israeli kids don't get to hear the comely helicopter crewperson, weapon blazing, shouting "C'mon...
...San Diego t'Va gotta have 'em for fighting...
...These are the units that come under fire the most, the units among which one most often sees the blood-red epaulet tabs signifying combat experience...
...The Israeli had heard National Public Radio airing the cons and especially the pros of the matter...
...Forty-three years ago women fought for a while, really fought...
...The Israeli tried to keep an open mind, but nothing proved Edward Norden is a writer living in Jerusalem...
...The heroism for which IDF women are likely to be celebrated these days is of another kind...
...In school, the scarce women in the Bible who either killed for their people or commanded them in battle—one thinks of Judith displaying the head of Holofernes and Deborah orchestrating the Battle of Kishon—get no great emphasis either...
...What the Israeli did instead was to have the cabbie drop him off at Jack Murphy Stadium for a San Diego Padres game, where two companies of Marines from Camp Pendleton were being hosted...
...They fight the usual fights (equal pay for equal work, limitations on porn, abortion on demand, shelters for battered wives), plus a few special ones arising from the Jewishness of the country (relief from the rabbis who rule on divorce...
...But what, exactly...
...The rest make coffee, answer the phone, shuffle paper, water the plants, and decorate the bases while they cross out the days until discharge...
...As soon as he read Bush's words, the Israeli thought of two women in quick succession...
...fringes, and then usually by accident...
...That's exactly what happened in the sudden chaos of the Golan Heights when the Syrians attacked on Yom Kippur 1973...
...It was a major campaign...
...He hadn't thought of Ahuva in years...
...Although "thirtysomething" and "L.A...
...Golani—the Israeli marines, known affectionately as ha-hayot ("the animals")—would have brought their girls with them...
...But if the latter were the case—pace NPR, Life, Rep...
...Slim, unwrinkled beauties speaking a clipped monotone, they were teaching men twice their age to cock a .50-caliber machine gun...
...The generals decided on their own, the main idea being to make the IDF more formidable by making more males available for combat...
...Waiting for the bus that would transport him back to where he was staying, the Israeli was confronted with one of those public service posters that cannot be ignored...
...to Joe, who replies, "Right behind you, Scarlett...
...The fans and Marines took it peacefully...
...A serious type would have gone to the UCSD library and read the relevant books...
...T he Padres blew their lead and lost 1 the game...
...displayed an unprecedented level of sensitivity and commitment," in the words of her citation for valor as a nurse at a casualty clearing station in the Sinai during the Yom Kippur War...
...There are lots of young women in khaki all over Israel at all times, thanks to the fact that the IDF drafts almost all boys and girls as soon as they finish high school: 95 percent of the boys go in, with only the ultra-Orthodox exempted because of an old political deal, and about 60 percent of the girls, the rest being excused if they marry, become pregnant, or declare believably that they have religious objections to a scene where men and women are very casual together...
...To the antenna of his Chevy was tied a yellow ribbon...
...Balls, I mean...
...More famous is Hannah Senesh...
...In the Los Angeles Times, Rep...
...Schroeder, Sens...
...Furthermore, unless they sign up for the corps or professional army, females serve only two years, after which they do no reserve duty, while males serve three, after which they can expect to fmd themselves in uniform for a month or two every year until age 52...
...The ones who volunteer and make the grade are great, and it's said that 18-year-old boys learn faster and perform better under their tuition, since anything a girl can do they must do at least as well, right...
...The law says they have to be evacuated in the event of hostilities...
...Edward Norden RIGHT BEHIND YOU, SCARLETT...
...It wasn't enough that 33,000 of them had been shipped to the Gulf, where they had faithfully spotted artillery, loaded bombs, maintained aircraft, driven trucks, sorted mail...
...Also, without a doubt, they were reassigned back behind the Israeli border after the siege, while the IDF spent three years leaving Lebanon, harassed every step of the way by Palestinian, Shi'ite, and Druse snipers, bombers, and kidnappers who giggled at the distinction between front and rear, combatant and non-combatant...
...Women in the pre-state underground had done everything from broadcasting over clandestine radio stations to smuggling guns and explosives in their blouses to seducing British officers, and in the six months between the U.N.'s partition resolution of 1947 and the day the British left, during which Arabs and Jews were already at war, some of these women saw combat, including the 4-foot, 10-inch, 90-pound future Dr...
...She had made major in the IDF and hit the glass ceiling...
...No one...
...Which isn't to say that praise and publicity are reserved for bravery in the Florence Nightingale mode...
...Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo...
...Take the siege of Beirut in 1982...
...The middle-aged Israeli himself was used to being instructed in the arts of war by women...
...Although Hannah Senesh's example is studied in the schools, nearer to reality are the stereotypes of children's books, which reflect and explain and justify Israeli routine to young Israelis...
...These were moot, not rhetorical questions...
...In the meantime, the House Armed Services Committee, voting on the 1992 defense budget, had said that women should be able to volunteer to pilot combat missions...
...The first was the GI from Mississippi who was a member of the Patriot crew flown in to protect Tel Aviv and keep the IDF out of the fighting, and the second was Ahuva...
...And how much sweeter this taste of freedom from a Pope who has known firsthand the bitter flavor of its absence...
...But young women also train raw recruits in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF...
...Life magazine, which he was charmed to see had been resurrected, had come out with a handsome spread, the text of which endorsed women's "right to fight...
...The real focus of the encyclical is the human per-son, stung by original sin but endowed by his Creator with a dignity and intelligence that find their full flowering in an atmosphere of ordered liberty...
...Israel has its feminists, from the secular right to the Zionist left to the loony left...
...If you eat everything on your plate, they'll tell you tales to curl your hair...
...If Operation Desert Storm had been a real war, with thousands or tens of thousands of Americans killed, how many women in body bags would Americans have accepted before losing their composure, before demanding either that all women be evacuated or Baghdad nuked...
...Now he saw her in his mind's eye, the friend of a friend, an intelligent, gentle, brave, and altogether devoted creature worth her weight in gold and wearing red tabs on her shoulders...
...Women in the IDF are expected and encouraged to provide support in the most generous sense of the term...
...F or, in the crunch, IDF women get treated no differently from civilians, and it doesn't matter whether they're tough officers or gentle secretaries...
...They sat segregated in the second deck overlooking third base, the Israeli at field level overlooking first...
...The women sporting red epaulets (there are a few) are an exception that proves the rule, since a woman in the IDF earns them not by being in the gory thick of things, where she isn't sent or even allowed to be, but on the THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1991 15 non and replaced by men, none complained about being taken out of the way of the Syrian army, nor did anyone in the Israeli feminist movement cry sexism...
...Just before leaving, he had been called up, along with other 14 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1991 reservists of his potbellied unit, for a refresher course...
...In one entitled Daddy Does Reserve Duty, which seeks to calm a youngster's distress at the absence of a parew, it's taken for granted that Daddy should be the one going off to play soldier while Mommy tends hearth and home...
...Women," said McCain in odd English, "have demonstrated again that they can perform any role they are called upon to make...
...The Stars and Stripes were everywhere...
...That's where the testosterone comes from...
...Ahuva understood perfectly that the purpose of the IDF is to win wars, but she was torn over the consequences: that men will fight and be promoted all the way to the top while women, even the best and most precious, fall away or get stuck...
...They're not expected or allowed to do more—that is, kill and be killed—and little Israeli girls growing up today aren't presented with what Americans call "role models" for combat...
...Many women (and men) in the military," Life explained, "contend that combat exclusion laws protect women from just one thing: promotions...
...The army girls who earlier this year helped locate people in the rubble of buildings hit by Scuds and extricated them got good press, as did the navy's female radar operators, sitting on dry land, who spotted approaching terrorist dinghies in time...
...Whatever the other services were doing, the leathernecks were keeping women away, maybe by requiring that recruits have their heads shaved as smooth as bowling balls...
...If the Patriot batteries in Israel and Saudi Arabia had begun to be bombed by the enemy, how long would the women have been kept there...
...Parachuted into Hungary in 1944, she was tortured to death by the Gestapo and has a village named after her...
...But it is safe to say that some developments are more breathtaking than others, and this is certainly one of them...
...Israel is a complicated and uncomfortable little country, where most of the time most of the people try their best to live as if their common situation weren't still pretty desperate...
...John Warner (R-Va...
...Maybe this was because Americans realized that "the idea that one life is more valuable than another insults both sexes...
...Ruth Westheimer, last seen by the vacationing Israeli in a TV ad with Bo Jackson...
...and John McCain (R-Ariz...
...America wasn't Israel...
...Were there women among them...
...You meet the survivors nowadays mainly in kibbutzim, sweet grandmotherly types...
...And, although the time was ripe for abolition, "women in the military fear that no one in Congress will be brave enough to stand up for them...
...The instructors in weapons, radio, atomic/biological/chemical warfare, and first aid had been, as usual, women—no, girls, of nineteen or so...
...His fare, an Israeli enjoying a break from the Holy Land, made noises of agreement to be nice...
...But as soon as the British departed and the IDF was formed, as soon as the situation became merely dicey, the women were removed from the trenches, never to return...
...Her poems are continuously in print...
...It quoted the State of the Union address of January 19, 1991: THERE IS NO ONE MORE DEVOTED, MORE COMMITTED TO THE HARD WORK OF FREEDOM, THAN EVERY SOLDIER AND SAILOR, EVERY MARINE, AIRMAN AND COASTUUARDSMAN-EVERY MAN AND WOMAN NOW SERVING IN THE PERSIAN GULF...
...This is perhaps because they have so much else on their hands, perhaps because even the peaceniks among them know that the IDF has to be a winner and doubt in their hearts that women and combat make a winning combination, perhaps because they subscribe to the widespread Israeli superstition that the death of a young woman is even more of an insult to nature than that of a young man, and most likely because they know that in Israel the "right to fight" won't remain an abstract one for long...
...Between one pitch and another they suddenly got to their feet as one person and shouted their hymn, to stormy applause...
...As soon as the British departed and the IDF was formed, as soon as the situation became merely dicey, the women were removed from the trenches, never to return...
...Said Life: "Officially, keeping women out of combat positions is supposed to reduce their chances of being hurt...
...And heroines—in fact, a big push was on to let women fight, really fight, next time...
...Lieutenant Osnat Zahir, "although physically and emotionally exhausted...
...Memory is a queer thing...
...The Israeli was amazed...
...T he Israeli wondered what she 1 would now have to say about the American women Scud-busters...
...In connection with the last ex-myth, Life recalled that two women had been captured by the Iraqis and ten killed (of whom two by enemy fire), yet "the public remained composed...
...was all for repeal of the sexist statutes, as were Sens...
...From coast to coast, it was a season for victory parades to honor the returning heroes...
...She wasn't eaten up by ambition, she certainly wasn't power-hungry, yet in her gentle eyes the Israeli hadn't been surprised to see a glint of steel, and when she quit her beloved army after fifteen years of eighteen-hour days to have a child, she was almost as mad as she was sad...
...No testosterone, no aggression...
...This is not to say, however, that it is without awesome political implications...
...Combat isn't a job description but a place—a place where a lot of killing and dying is going on...
...Those who expressed reservations about women in combat spoke with forked tongues...
...It wasn't the local feminists who forced the IDF to put girls in these slots...
...They doubtless got their red tabs...
...He was ready to wager that she wouldn't...
...Though some IDF career women grumbled about being snatched out of Lebanly the ones with a special fire ‘,..1 burning in them—tough chicks, smart and patriotic tomboys—get to be instructors and officers...
...Some women and men now wanted women to have an equal opportunity to be honored not only on the Fourth of July, but also on Memorial Day...
...No, these Marines were as unisex as the Padres and Expos...
...1. It was Mother's Day, and the San Diego cabbie crushed an empty Sprite can and filed it in his litter bag instead of chucking it onto Interstate 805...
...to him so neatly how far the so-called Gulf War had been from a genuine war than cries he had heard to junk the laws barring American women from combat...
...It wasn't there to stop women but to stop those without rich combat experience, experience women can't get...
...It was a desperate time, when defeat meant massacre and possibly the end of Jew-ish history, and anyone who could handle a weapon was put in the line...
...The Israeli rooting for the Padres remembered how it was when PLO Katyusha rockets began impacting around divisional headquarters several miles from the focus of the fighting...
...Others wear the badges of the air force, paratroops, Golani, navy, armor, and combat engineers...
...Many "myths" had been "buried in the Arabian sands," according to Life, including the notions that: (1) "Women can't perform under pressure," (2) "Mothers shouldn't —and don't want to—go to war," and (3) "The public isn't ready for female POWs or women in body bags...
...Catholics don't talk about changein authoritative church teaching, we talk about developments," says Neuhaus, who until last year was a prominent Lutheran theologian...
Vol. 24 • August 1991 • No. 8
