During my days as University student, I lived with fellows who served in the IDF armored corps. 

Besides  combat situations that my friends sometimes  found themselves in,  my  tankist colleagues described in gross detail what it was like to be in a tank with the rest of the crew for days or weeks.

Sanitary conditions are never the best. Seeing a real toilet is a rarity. And the use of a gericans for bodily needs inside the tank when "you have to go" is not unusual.

If you ad to to these rough conditions, which allow for no modesty whatsoever, the presence of women in the tank, the sheer daily embarrassment  of having to tend to intimate issues can be all the more grueling.

It  therefore came as no surprise that this past Sunday evening's newsreel on IDF radio reported that 96 new IDF Armored Corps consc‎ripts would not report for their new assignment, after they heard that they would be ordered to share tank facilities with young women recruits.

IDF radio posited that these guys were all Orthodox.

However, that was not the case. These guys simply did not not feel comfortable sharing  a tank with young women.

The answer of the IDF is that women can most certainly operate a tank. However, that is not the issue at hand.

The subject to address is whether a mixed IDF armored corps would demoralize the army and undermine its effectiveness as a fighting unit.

Senior staff of Israeli intelligence have confided that the politics of these kinds of feminists who advance ideas like  "mixed tanks"  may  have another agenda -  to undermine the IDF.

The time has come for mental health professionals to make their voices heard with the IDF and to make it clear that  the idea that men and women should serve together in a combat tank is simply unhealthy and inappropriate. As an MSW, I concur.

The answer to those who insist on mixed units , the answer should  be  "no tanks".