Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of the Israel Defense Forces, the combined military forces of Israel.
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The Latest
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Life Female Soldiers Forced Away From Torah Dancing
Simchat Torah wasn’t much of a celebration this year for a group of angry female Israeli soldiers who were furious over being segregated far from their male counterparts, and completely out of their sight line when it came time for the traditional round of dancing with the Torah that ends the holiday, known as Hakafot…
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Life Gilad Shalit Inspires My Daughter To Join the IDF
My daughter was the first person to tell me that an agreement had been reached for Gilad Shalit’s release. Her voice was joyous in a “shouting-from-the-rooftop” kind of way. Shalit’s captivity has been very much on my teenage daughter’s mind since she saw the halting video of Gilad as a prisoner of war two years…
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Opinion New Year’s Greetings From the IDF Chief of Staff
Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, offers a 2-1/2 minute video new year’s greeting to “Jewish people in Israel and around the world.” Here’s the Hebrew version, in which he says mostly the same things but sounds a lot better, if you can follow it. He’s got a nice…
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The Schmooze Orthodox IDF Men Boycott Women Singing
Where are the limits to Israeli multiculturalism? This is the question that the Israeli military woke up to today, after a seminar focused on the Gaza War last night turned controversial. Cadets who will soon become officers were seated in the audience at the event, when two female soldiers got up to sing. Orthodox Jewish…
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The Schmooze ‘Israel’s Best Friend’ Dogs Trained To Attack
Just as we are getting word that the IDF is training West Bank Settlers to handle possible confrontations with Palestinians following the expected vote in the U.N. General Assembly in favor of Palestinian statehood, a rather disturbing video has surfaced about another defense force, the IBF. IBF stands for Israel’s Best Friend, a non-profit organization…
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The Schmooze Female IDF Soldiers Suffer More Stress Fractures
A study of women soldiers in Israel has found that for the IDF to attract more women to combat roles, it is going to have to make changes to more than just the design of military gear. The IDF thought that it had eliminated the problem of women soldiers getting stress fractures by designing a…
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The Schmooze Majority of Israeli 18-Year-Olds Not Drafted Into Army
It is common knowledge that all 18-year-old Israeli males serve in the Israel Defense Forces for three years, and all females for two years. Only that common knowledge is wrong. Israel’s Channel 2 News reports that in an interview with Israel Defense magazine, the IDF’s top human resources commander, Brigadier General Amir Rogovsky, said that…
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Opinion Demography as Destiny: Israel’s Growing Right Shapes Law, Military
The increasingly progressive Atlantic Monthly correspondent and former Forward staffer Jeffrey Goldberg (for the last time, no, we’re not the same person) posted a link on his blog Tuesday to an online essay — which he called “hard to disagree with” — by senior research fellow Hussein Ibish of the American Task Force on Palestine….
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