This week we marked International Women's Day, so let me put my five cents on a solar string.
In her main occupation in life, the 31-year-old Sun is the deputy commander of the combat fitness school at the Wingate Institute, with the rank of major.
Her secondary occupation, which she refers to as a life enterprise, is a football referee.
This season she is the fourth referee in quite a few games in the men's Premier League, and there is a good chance that by the end of the season she will be playing as a referee.
This will join Sapir Berman, the first transgender referee in Israel, who became a referee in the top league this season.
Less than two years ago, when refereeing a game in the second league between Maccabi Petah Tikva and Betar Tel Aviv Bat Yam, Petah Tikva owner Avi Luzon, in the recent past chairman of the Football Association, shouted at the following: "You have no idea In football, we are lucky to have a league that we will not have to see you again, because you will never reach the Premier League.
You have no place in football and you'd better retire. " Really in the same league, this time unfortunately for the latter.
Meitar grew up with her older sister Tzlil in the town of Givat Ela in the Jezreel Valley, in a sports house with a father who loved football very much.
Having no sons, the father tried to interest Tzlil in the game, but did not find a sympathetic ear and today the daughter is a doctor.
Meitar was a girl with learning disabilities and attention deficit disorders, and in order to do her homework her father sat next to her and between question and answer they played football at home and broke objects, but got better in all areas.
At the age of 7, Meitar joined the Hapoel Haifa football club in Nahalal, and since there were no girls' teams in the late 1990s, the only option was to join the boys.
From the beginning she felt like a stranger in the landscape, but towards the age of 12-11, when the physical differences compared to the boys began to show their signs, she often sat on the substitutes' bench and the bag of frustrations began to fill, because who wants to spend all Saturday traveling and not seeing a minute on the field.
Meitar did not give up, but the difficulties increased.
She remembers a game in Kiryat Haim where she was supposed to play, but in the end is not a partner.
Her team won, and one of the boys approached her and said, "Even in 100 years you will not play. You have no chance."
She came home crying, but then also realized that she had no more room in this frame.
She continued to captain the school teams in all disciplines, just not in football, and at the age of 16, thanks to a connection between her father and referee Shmulik Steif, decided to take a refereeing course and in the winter of 2006 became a lineman in the children's leagues.
Meitar remembers that morning in the Galilee landscape, then another Upper Nazareth, when it came to being a lineman in the children's league.
The referee and his assistant got stuck on the road due to a puncture and were unable to reach, and she was bounced to the referee's position and passed the game successfully without an assistant or a line judge.
One of the referees' critics, who was at the game, approached her and said she was an excellent referee, and she finished being a line referee and at the age of 17 was already a major referee in the lower leagues.
At first she encountered the same surprised faces of players who did not expect to see a woman running the game, but slowly built a name and status for herself.
Throughout her career she has faced riots, beatings between players and outbursts of fans.
In the third division game in Dalit al-Carmel, for example, she whistled for the end when she noticed the blows between substitutes from the two teams.
"I saw violence and my assistants being blown up with blows and I realized that no matter what - they would not touch me. I got off the grass confidently, and no one approached me."
Shemesh's transition from the lower leagues to the first division was lengthy and full of obstacles.
She promises that in a book she will publish one day she will write everything, but in the meantime, with the support of the judges' chairman Ronit Tirosh and the general manager Yariv Tepper, she has become a full-fledged referee in the national league for the past three years.
She also received the badge of an international referee in women's games and last December she judged Northern Ireland against Bosnia in the World Cup promotions.
In Northern Ireland, she says, women's football is more popular than men's and 6,000 spectators came to the game.
She also refereed in the Champions League match for women between teams from Turkey and Ukraine, and her international dream is to referee at the Women's World Cup.
For this to happen she has to jump from level 1 to level 3 - out of 5 levels in total.
• • •
The violence in football here, along with the mitigating justice of the disciplinary courts, will bring destruction to our football.
Disasters occur almost every week, but dead on stretchers have already been marked from above.
Ten days ago, Sheftah Shemesh played a national league game between Kfar Saba and Ness Ziona.
A quarter of an hour before the end, she approved a goal for Nes Ziona, even though Kfar Saba claimed an offside.
There is no VAR mobile in the national league, Shemesh set a goal, and at the end of the game, when she was on her way to the cars and despite a security guard and escort, dozens of Kfar Saba fans were waiting for her, fourth referee Yoav Mizrahi and Kwon Chai Sommer, and all three were spit and cursed.
And what about the court?
There is nothing to talk about locating and judging the rioters, so Kfar Saba is fined NIS 7,000 - Next.
This week I asked Meitar, who is also in charge of the judges' development project at the union, why she has all this.
"I'm in love with my profession," she replied. "I come from a world of management and command and that gives me adrenaline."
And what is the dream?
"To get to the World Cup, to be a full-fledged referee in the Premier League and to referee the Men's National Cup final, because I have refereed the Women's Cup final several times already."
Judging a men’s final is indeed a distinctly female victory.
Aviadp65@gmail.com
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