This week Sara Netanyahu hosted the wives of the leaders of the coalition parties.
Her photo with Yaffe Deri, Rivka Goldknopf, Galit Maoz and Ila Ben Gabir sparked - how unsurprisingly - a media interest mixed with shock and a hint of disgust.
It's not just popular reactions on social networks.
Respected members of the media could not hold back their emotions, which focused on an unusual item in the photo: the gun on the waist of Ayla Ben Gabir.
"Haaretz" analyzed the image and its meaning in two articles (at least until these lines were published), and a political commentator in "Walla!"
He wondered: "Is the gun on the skirt from the Arafat collection?"
And "Wonderful Country" hastened to caption a sketch.
The gun overshadowed even the usual kind of meanness about Sarah Netanyahu, as her photo partners were all very visibly religious women in long skirts and headscarves.
All the things that naturally offend the fashion sense of connoisseurs of the Ghosh-Danish variety.
But the gun, oh the gun!
It was a little harder to digest and stuck in the throat like exploding buses in the midst of a new Middle East.
In recent years, the attitude of the enlightened public towards women fighters is very clear.
for.
Of course in favor.
The army was under pressure to integrate women into combat roles, including frontline units.
Not only did the women's lobby ask to join the petition to the High Court to open up all positions to women (among other things funded by the European Union), but also Naamat - an old organization with a much more maternal and traditional aura. Preserving women's lives and keeping them away from the front line was pushed into a corner due to equality, and feminism added His goals include increasing the number of women who will fall in battle. In the experiments conducted by the army, it became clear that women drop out more from the courses, are injured more, and need a stool to climb a wall in the combat fitness test.
An experiment to integrate women into armor failed, among other things because the time for loading shells and deploying a caterpillar among women was twice as long as among men.
But then the year was 2020 and today we have moved forward, we are at the end of 2022, and under the auspices of another petition to the High Court, the IDF announced that the last experiment was crowned with such success that women will also be integrated into the armor.
Her photo partners were religious with skirts and head coverings.
Everything that offends the fashion sense of connoisseurs of the Ghosh-Danish variety
Deborah Forum, an association whose goal is "to promote equal representation for women in decision-making centers, in the Israeli security-political establishment and in the public discourse, based on the understanding that this contributes to Israel's national security," welcomed, but added in a not non-threatening tone: "Let us recall that these days A petition is pending in the Supreme Court, demanding that all patrols in the IDF be opened to women's service. An institute that coined the term "collaborative security", as if there is such an animal. But the words "security" and "sharing" are so beautiful separately, so why not a friend.
The discussion regarding the service of women in combat positions has until now only focused on their physical ability and the value of equality.
Even Avi Maoz from the scary "Noam" party chose to attack the army's decision to open the 669 rescue unit for women with arguments from the field of physical fitness and operational competence.
In an article from June of this year, he did refer to the identity politics that had taken over the army, but he emphasized: "A woman is not allowed to lift too much weight, it could simply harm her body," and reprimanded the army's adviser on gender affairs (Yohlam) who refuses to "stop the IDF's gendering process only Because of women who may be harmed and the competence of a special unit which may decrease."
The Noam party platform also emphasizes the aspect of physical fitness, and not traditional values of protecting women or seeing them as part of civil society, those who, together with the children, will be the first to descend into the lifeboats of the Titanic.
It is certainly not claimed in the platform that it is the role of men to protect women in times of danger, and not to hide behind them.
I am not a member of the Knesset, so I say: physical fitness is the least valuable argument of the opposition to women in combat positions.
He emphasizes the material over the soul, fragments of effort over the most intimate and essential basis of society: the family, and the essential differences between the sexes.
Equality when it comes to combat service is based on seeing women as men, but a little physically weaker.
And there are weak men who can still serve in the armor.
It's not really equality, but erasing the difference with D-9.
Apart from the gun, Ila Ben Gabir is a stereotype of a woman from the past, before the era of equal security.
She is a wife, mother of six and a language teacher.
She is not a member of feminist organizations and did not submit petitions to the High Court for the inclusion of women in the Matkal Patrol.
She is the nightmare of the Change Bloc voters, and embodies Yair Lapid's warning "If this group comes to power, you will not be fighters in the IDF, you will not serve in the government, you will not be senior CEOs, you will not have rights over your body. The glass ceiling will return , tougher than ever."
In a world governed by abstract values formulated by the best minds and written on the highest quality paper, the value of equality tramples other values under it, especially those derived from human diversity in general and the differences between men and women in particular.
That is why the gun on Ben Gvir's waist may shake the soul of those who draw their values from High Court rulings. On the one hand - a right-wing Dossite woman with six children, and not an 18-year-old girl, imbued with motivation and patriotism, who is behind radical leftist organizations. On the other hand - Ben Gvir lives in Hebron, an area plagued by terrorism. Her husband is the most threatened politician in Israel. Schools in East Jerusalem stage end-of-the-year plays in which he is murdered. She has been armed with a gun for seven years, and is ready to use it to protect her life and the lives of her children. She chose to live in Hebron, and she chose To carry weapons not as a matter of principle, but as a practical necessity.
The gun on Ben Gabir's waist reminds those who seek cooperative security that Arab murderousness exists, despite the value of peace, that the chances of survival of an armed Jew are higher than those of a Jew protesting against the occupation, and that a woman can defend herself even without being pushed into the line of fire.
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