Column says tank integration fight is displacing religious combat soldiers

In a monologue aired on Channel 14, commentator Dana Varon argued that the push to integrate women into tank crews is not driven by an urgent operational need, but by an ideological agenda of equality and pluralism. She said the dispute, which has reached the High Court of Justice through petitions, is now disrupting the Armored Corps and, more broadly, the ground forces during wartime.

Varon said that for years there had been a clear status quo, under which hesder yeshiva students enlisted in the Armored Corps and served as fighters in a way that was, in her words, both operationally effective and halakhically acceptable. She said the new legal and public campaign has upset that arrangement, not because the soldiers stopped wanting to serve or fight, but because “the rules of the game” were changed.

She stressed that these soldiers are not asking for exemptions or special treatment, only the ability to serve without abandoning the Jewish law and lifestyle they were raised on. Varon questioned what mixed-gender service in a tank means in practice, citing privacy, modesty, bodily needs in combat conditions, and the physical and personal constraints involved in such service.

According to Varon, advocates of equality are ignoring life on the ground and, in the name of a “fictional pluralism,” are actually harming true pluralism by sidelining thousands of religious combat soldiers. She said these men want to contribute to the state and do not want to leave the Armored Corps, but are being pushed into a collision with their religious commitments. She also said the High Court warns of a constitutional crisis, while rabbis warn of a spiritual one, and called the fight unnecessary. Varon ended by suggesting that many women themselves would agree with her view.