About thirty religious recruits in the Paratroopers Brigade turned their heads when a parachute instructor showed them one of the exercises they had to perform in training.
Shira Margalit, the head of the Salona women's site, whose daughter is the same parachuting instructor, was unable to sleep at night after the incident.
Yesterday I fell asleep after a hard day when I had to hear my daughter Noa the soldier who is a parachuting instructor. She tells me that while she was demonstrating 70 paratroopers, 50 of them turned their backs ... because she was a woman! And this is not a group of haredim, that is the sad reality," Margalit wrote on Twitter.
It should be noted that the father of the parachuting instructor is the head of the Operations Branch in the General Staff, Major General Aharon Haliva.
Angry responses were not long in coming. "A self-respecting commander should have dismissed 50 unsuitable students," one comment said. News Ten military commentator Alon Ben David responded: "Our army is losing it."
After the incident, the recruits' commander made it clear to them that according to the orders of the IDF there would be no separation between male and instructors at any stage in training the paratroopers, and any trainee who behaved with disrespect towards paratroopers from the Paratroopers Brigade would be removed.
The IDF reported: "During the Paratrooper Parachute Parachute Training Course, an instructor taught an exercise to the apprentices of a platoon composed of yeshiva students. About thirty students who did not want to watch a demonstration by a female soldier turned their heads."
"Following the incident, a conversation was held with the trainees, in which their commander made it clear to them that according to the orders of the IDF there would be no separation between male and female instructors at any stage in training the paratroopers. The IDF is a national army and the unity of the ranks of the army is emphasized in all types of activities regardless of religion, race or sex."
"The IDF sees importance in realizing the IDF's mission, with an emphasis on an egalitarian and national vision," the IDF Spokesperson said.