Pressures from both within and without are increasing for religious girls to enlist in the army.

IDF Pressures, MK Ariel Protests
The IDF Recruitment Office in Jerusalem is reportedly making it uncomfortable for girls to declare that they are religious and thus receive the exemption from IDF service that has been automatic ever since the inception of the State.  MK Uri Ariel (National Union) has writen a letter of protest to the Deputy Defense Minister, saying, "The IDF is trying to persuade religious girls to enlist, using psychological pressure and challenging their motivation."

Religious Organization Weighs In
On the other hand, organizations such as Alumah (see below) are seeking to visit religious high schools for girls and explain why enlisting in the IDF need not be as bad as they fear. They have been welcomed in about a quarter of the country's religious girls' high schools.

Cultural Harassment
The B'Sheva weekly reports on an unexpectedly difficult encounter that 11th-grade ulpanah student Tzurit Shmuel faced in the IDF Recruitment Office.  Tzurit said, "I made the customary declaration in the Rabbinate that I am religious, and then I brought it to the Recruitment Office and asked for my exemption.  But the clerk did not accept it, and instead started challenging me: 'So what if you're religious? Why shouldn't you serve in the army? In what way are you religious?' She also told me very curtly that there is no problem to observe the Sabbath and kashrut in the army, and tested me on religious issues, and said, 'Let me tell you something: The fact that you have a declaration doesn't mean that you have an exemption.'  Only after a long debate did she finally agree to give me the exemption."

Tzurit said that several of her friends underwent similar attacks in the IDF office. 

MK Ariel wrote to Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai, "This description of what happens in the Recruitment Office is very grave, and the religious public will not accept it.  I ask that you issue a clear order to cease such behavior... As it is, having girls serve in the IDF does not bring, in most cases, real benefits. In the long range, Israeli society, values, morals and even its economy lose out from having girls serve in the army."

One Fifth
Tzurit's account is part of a running debate within the religious-Zionist public regarding female service in the army.  The most recent official figures show that 21% of the some 7500 girls who graduate the public religious school system enlist in the army - but every year brings with it increased pressures and difficult deliberations.

One female ex-soldier, who began to become religious during her high school years, told Hagit Rotenberg of B'Sheva about her army experiences in a base with mostly not-religious soldiers:
"It was humiliating. I felt humiliated from the way they expressed themselves towards me.  I didn't know how to behave.  I was stunned at the way they talked and acted: You would walk in the hall and soldiers would touch you. They don't understand that religious males and females don't touch each other, and there's nothing you can do about it. They touch and kiss freely, they are always together and that's it, with no consideration for whether I'm there or not... The expressions and gestures of the soldiers and the officers - it's more than just dirty talk. This is what they're used to, and I was hurt by it many times."

Other girls give similar reports. Though the army makes official allowance for a religious lifestyle, "it is a day-to-day war," said another newly-religious girl who ultimately succeeded in leaving the army. "You have to constantly justify yourself, you have to wake up extra early to pray, you can't always eat the food, officers will give you little pinches out of affection, you have to work on certain days of fasting, people will make comments about my skirts and tell me to wear shorter ones... I cannot understand why a religious girl would want to go to the army; you can contribute much more by doing national service."

Alumah's Position
Some do not agree.  Yifat Sela, a mother of four from Modiin, heads the Alumah organization, which accompanies religious girls who wish to enlist in the army.  She makes light of the above issues:
"Girls in the army are not harassed any more than those in National Service, or more than in the bank or grocery store.  You can observe Jewish Law in the army, and there are rabbis there, and the army's policy of 'suitable integration' between girls and boys is implemented.  The girls' problem is not the boys in the army; it's the girls. Religious girls meet, for the first time, girls of their own age who are totally not religious yet have values and a different set of morals and political views - and this is difficult for them... They can go to the army in groups of two or three, making it easier for them. The secular girls sometimes go with them to the prayers, and this gives them [the religious girls] a feeling that they are having an influence on others and that they have a mission."

Col. Rabbi Hager
Rabbi Moshe Hager, an IDF Colonel in the reserves and head of the pre-military yeshiva academy in Yatir, has participated in seminars run by Alumah, but says he clearly prefers National Service for girls over the army. "Alumah is good for those who are taking the less desirable course.  Sometimes they imagine that when they go to the army, they will change the world, but the fact is that it is very hard and the chances of doing so are very small... In general, the fact that there are girls in the army is not good - mainly for the boys. It makes the boys function less well, especially in the combat units, which are clearly harmed by having girls there."

Rotenberg noted that several educators noted that if the National Service would be more efficient in placing girls in appropriate positions that matched the girls' desires, the option of the army would be less attractive.

Rabbi Magnes
Rabbi Yehoshu Magnes, a long-time head of the Tel Aviv Ulpanit (girls' high school) and a senior teacher in Yeshivat Merkaz HaRav, says the issue is really not up for debate: "Girls' service in the army in whatever framework was clearly forbidden by former Chief Rabbis Shapira and Eliyahu, so what's the question? Having girls under the control of men is not modest, and that's it. So why are we looking for ways to permit that which is forbidden?"