Israel to stop training female combat soldiers over ‘lack of fitness’
Not saying that every single one is a raging beauty but seem fairly fit to me.
Good, so now obvious joke is obvious:
Israel has stopped training female soldiers for combat over health and fitness concerns.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) ended a pilot programme for women to serve in “combat mobility units” after finding they were unlikely to meet the required standards after six months’ training.
The IDF said female trainees showed “very high” abilities in the “professional fields” but in combat and physical fitness they were “not expected to successfully complete the requirements for the profession”.
Lugging 80lbs around for 3 days just isn’t what the female physique was cut out for. Ho Hum.
And because Israel is actually fighting, continually, they care about such things rather more than our own elite does. Also Ho Hum.
If you insist on getting duffed over by people in uniform always go for
Italian lady coppers
Or
Israeli lady soldiers
Oh I insist.
Definitely.
It’s a trap, Tim.
They’d make you get circumcised, because Jewish women want 20% off everything.
Hmm
Not ‘lack of fitness’, just unable to meet the required level
Plenty of roles for these women elsewhere in IDF, I have met a few: very sharp, focussed and determined
Just like their UK equivalents that seem to be employed as drug mules in SE Asia?
Tim
There’s been concerns from the IDF over deploying women in combat roles for decades and Israeli feminists are I am sure just as dangerous and kool aid soddled as our own, so this is no doubt to forestall criticism from that quarter.
The two key reasons given were:
– Male soldiers would take more risks out of a sense of concern for female comrades and expose the unit to more potential harm
– Their opponents in any sphere are basically incarnations of Satan whose treatment of female captured soldiers would likely be beyond imagination.
And of course our own benighted government is not prosecuting examples of such opposition who have been accused of raping children and is letting in tens of thousands of such beings per year.
Maybe Israel doesn’t have the problems we do?
I’ve seen other photos of these girls. Some are absolutely ravishing. I’d rather look at them than the tattooed munters one generally sees in uniform – any uniform – in the UK.
V_P, I think the Israelis learned a nasty lesson about how their female solders are treated by Muslim savages. It’ll take a while to sink into progressive and feminist thick heads who seem to think that moralistic shrieking will deter said Muslim savages, but it’s now well-established that if your soldier girls are captured by Muslim savages you know what’s going to happen to them, and that that particular front line is no place for females.
Best all round to admit the truth that simply by nature only a very few females have the physique and stamina to do what infantrymen must, and the cost on efficiency of accommodating those females isn’t worth paying. There are plenty of other important military jobs for them to do, that they can be proud of doing.
The Israelis have something to fight for (their own homeland) and a government that has their back. The Israeli government doesn’t hate Jews or want to erase their culture, religion and genetic phenotype.
Must be nice.
BTW, in WW2 the main reason Italy was useless was that Italians (sensibly) had very low morale, they weren’t interested in possibly dying for the regime. Now the whole of Europe is, militarily, Italy.
But politicians still think Britain or Germany can throw their weight around like it was 1939. It’s a minor miracle no foreign government has yet taken us up on this delusion, the collective West has been going around like Homer Simpson in that episode where he kept challenging people to duels (until someone accepted). If we didn’t have Uncle Sam to hide behind, London would already be glass.
As others have said it’s about the risk of capture in the sorts of environments in which the IDF expects to fight.
But no woman is capable of the levels of go-again fitness and strength required of an infantryman over the course of a day in the field.
They are all slower.
Not one of them can pick up an LMG that the bloke next to them has dropped after being shot and employ it as quickly or as effectively as the weakest male soldier (which is different from the weakest male).
That said they do have their uses as interpreters and for liaising with women in Muslim countries – as long as they’re not Israeli (because of the open Jew hatred in all those places).
They’ll still be fine for guarding static locations like checkpoints.
Our lot were big on “gender norming* where they would drop the standards until the women would meet them. Now they seem to have given up on that too: the US Army spent years designing fitness tests so that women could pass them, but eventually gave up; too many women would fail. We’ll see what Hegseth comes up with: he’s demanded single standards.
The fundamental issue isn’t physical fitness however, it’s the fact that mixed combat units will see large amounts of relationships and sex and that is poisonous when people can be ordered to die 🙁
Rupert – The fundamental issue isn’t physical fitness however
Yarp it’s not fitness (plenty of girls are aerobically fit), it’s robustness and strength.
Women are at significant risk of serious health problems if they try to do infantryman stuff. Microfractures in the spine and legs from the strain of carrying a ruck over 30 km hikes, dangerous weight loss that can fuck up their fertility, the obvious health issues of menstruation in a filthy trench.
Girls just aren’t made to be knocked around like boys are. The whole “female soldier” meme was a pathetic feminist attempt to ruin another male space, they don’t actually want to kill people and aren’t very good at it (unless the enemy is a baby).
Gal Gadot was a fitness instructor in the IDF. She’s definitely fit.
Jimmers, as Steve says it’s not about aerobic fitness so much as strength. The IDF currently are not engaged in long route marches, they’re moving deliberately from house to house, and up and down stairs, and occasionally sprinting. An M4 weighs about 3kg, 3.5 with a magazine. I think a lot of people don’t understand how hard it is to move a long 3.5kg left to right, up and down, and fire accurately, potentially for hours. Each soldier should be carrying eight more 30-round magazines, another 4kg. Plus (probably) a pistol. Then there’s kevlar body armour and helmet, lots of water, radios, grenades, day sacks etc etc. It’s a heavy load, even if you’re acclimatised to the heat and you’re only out for 12 hours at a time, and that’s the bare minimum. Someone has to carry the LMG, GPMG, breaching weapons etc etc. Gal Gadot would look stunning in the uniform but you wouldn’t want here anywhere near you.
The fundamental issue isn’t physical fitness however, it’s the fact that mixed combat units will see large amounts of relationships and sex and that is poisonous when people can be ordered to die
As the RN has been finding out for a while now.
The exception seems to be tankers – the Caracals stood out in their response to Oct 7th. Tankers tend to be small anyway, the Israeli women didn’t seem to have a problem moving around 120mm main gun rounds, and the capture problem is less likely when you’re in a tooled up Merkava. Obviously you still need big blokes on hand for track maintenance etc
In a real war the army gets realistic. Well I never.
Women may not have the physical strength to fight on the front line but that doesn’t stop them serving on the front line. Women served with distinction as combat medics in Afghanistan and by all accounts are doing so in Ukraine.
As to being captured by Islamists, they know the score when they volunteer for front line service and men don’t get off lightly either.
This is worth a read.
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/21968275-battleworn
Jimmers – she’s no Lynda Carter
BiND – As to being captured by Islamists, they know the score when they volunteer for front line service
No they don’t. Nobody knows the score until they’re in the shit. If they knew the score, they wouldn’t sign up in the first place. But armies depend on the fact 17 year olds are gullible and never think it’s going to be them, crippled and pissing into a bag for the rest of their miserable.
Oh Steve
Can you imagine an entire army consisting of Lynda Carters ?
I just need to go and have a cold shower.
Women served with distinction as combat medics in Afghanistan and by all accounts are doing so in Ukraine.
Not to downplay the bravery of individuals eg Michelle Norris MC (whom I have met), and if there’s no bloke there then a woman is definitely the next best thing, there is no sensible person in the world who wouldn’t rather have a male combat medic with them.
Mostly because he is going to be quicker to get to you, being able to move with and carry his kit better, and better able to defend you if you can’t defend yourself. He’s also very likely to perform better under stress.
‘By all accounts’ – yes, but accounts are odd things.
Johnson Beharry got the VC basically for reversing out of an ambush.
The above Michelle Norris got her MC for a bullet landing near her and helping to drag an injured sgt into a vehicle under fire; while she did a good job I would argue that that’s just doing your jobextreme acts of genuine up-close staring-death-in-the-eye-multiple-times terminating-loads-of-baddies physical courage on Op Barras.
Maybe I’m a cynic. As Sabbath might have put it, oh, don’t you ever, don’t ever say DEI.
Ooops I fucked up the HTML
Women served with distinction as combat medics in Afghanistan and by all accounts are doing so in Ukraine.
Not to downplay the bravery of individuals eg Michelle Norris MC (whom I have met), and if there’s no bloke there then a woman is definitely the next best thing, there is no sensible person in the world who wouldn’t rather have a male combat medic with them.
Mostly because he is going to be quicker to get to you, being able to move with and carry his kit better, and better able to defend you if you can’t defend yourself. He’s also very likely to perform better under stress.
‘By all accounts’ – yes, but accounts are odd things.
Johnson Beharry got the VC basically for reversing out of an ambush.
The above Michelle Norris got her MC for a bullet landing near her and helping to drag an injured sgt into a vehicle under fire; while she did a good job I would argue that that’s just doing your job, while also saving your own skin (and I’m emphatically not criticising her for that!). What else was she supposed to do?
Honest people can have differences of opinion, but I think a good rule of thumb is to ask, what was the alternative, and does the modern British Army have a slightly weird attitude to stuff like race and sex?
Risking your own life when you don’t absolutely have to is proper gallantry award winning stuff (though many prefer the closing-with-and-killing-the-enemy type of awards, and if you look at a lot of the citations in recent years they’re more for saving lives).
A mate of mine got the same award as Michelle for extreme acts of genuine up-close staring-death-in-the-eye-multiple-times terminating-loads-of-baddies physical courage on Op Barras.
Maybe I’m a cynic. As Sabbath might have put it, oh, don’t you ever, don’t ever say DEI.
Otto – Can you imagine an entire army consisting of Lynda Carters ?
I can now. (*Terry-Thomas mode activated*)
Ding dong.
A picture of ‘combat soldiers’ without guns . . . .
Alex, I’ll take “What’s wrong with this picture?” for $400.
Tankers tend to be small anyway, the Israeli women didn’t seem to have a problem
Until they have to parallel park.
@Interested,
If enough men volunteered and they were as good or better than the women at preventing death before you got medevaced then yes, a male would be better. Just like I’d always want a 6’ copper walking round the corner if I was being attacked, but in his absence I’d settle for a well trained competent woman.
As it happened Chantelle got her award for up close killing, it really is worth a read.
I’d also argue that dragging someone to safety while under fire does take a lot of bravery. Resisting the urge to take cover or turn round and fire back takes a lot of self control and I don’t think it’s fair to compare acts especially given the process that is applied before bravery awards are approved. Maybe your mate deserved a higher award, but that’s not her fault.
BiND – was it heroic to go to Afghanistan and shoot the locals? Should we be impressed?
There’s no doubt about her courage, it’s a shame it was in the service of nothing good. Dicking around in Afghanistan for all these years was absolutely pointless. My government went to war and all I got were these fucking refugees.
No doubt many Russian soldiers in Ukraine are also brave, but the war isn’t a good thing, right?
“Gal Gadot would look stunning in the uniform but you wouldn’t want here anywhere near you.”
I can think of circumstances where I would.
As Steve said, it’s not fitness it is sheer physical strength that is the problem: fit squaddies have to be bloody strong as well as bloody tough. The first time I ran the Robin Hood marathon I was overtaken by a squaddie in full kit carrying a backpack; I didn’t ask him how much it weighed but some years later I was chatting to the newly-appointed CEO and for some reason Brecon Beacons came up: I had taken my (then) five-year-old up to the peak, he had yomped over it as a subaltern carrying a backpack that weighed more than I did! Most women are not heavy enough, let alone muscular enough, to run with that heavy a pack.
The other reason is, of course, that Israel remembers the vileness of Arabs to captured Jewesses and would rather have a hundred Israeli soldiers die than one woman be captured.
@rupert – “mixed combat units will see large amounts of relationships and sex”
You might like to look up the word “homosexual”. It looks like you’d find it very enlightening.
A point of interest is that the Royal Navy have recently changed their fitness test from an anodyne “run 2.4km in less than a set age- and gender-dependent time” (or equivalents doing shuttle runs, or a Rockport Walk for the old and creaky) to a standardised Physical Employment Standard of multiple different exercises (lifting, carrying, dragging… sometimes wearing a 20kg weight vest) to be completed, within a fixed time limit.
Currently no variations for age or gender: the weight vest, the powerbags to lift and shift, the simulated “casualty” you have to drag, weigh the same whether you’re a 6′ 2″ man or a 5′ 0″ woman, whatever you weigh, however old you are. (Because there isn’t a “men’s drum of AFFF” or a “these air bottles are only for the over-50s to carry”)
Young folk – or at least the ones I know – are smashing it out and saying “that was easy, I can ease off on the gym sessions.”
I passed it with some effort because I’m old and a bit broken (but I did pass it).
I will admit I approve, even if it’s harder work than it used to be when I just had to stumble through a Rockport: two drums of AFFF or two air bottles for the attack party’s breathing apparatus weigh the same whoever’s hauling them, and as a reservist about the only shipboard job I’m qualified for in a fire or flood is to muster with the spare hands to be told “pick this up and take it to Three Foxtrot”.
Wombers old chap, I’m afraid Gal Gadot would probably be wasted on us at our age. Or vice versa. Or something. Anyway, it’s strictly nostalgia nowadays. She’s a fine looker, mind.
@Charles… Yeeeesss… Famously so… the Spartans come to mind. And for a fact, variations of the “Spartan Approach” were used before and after them.
From the Egyptian/Assyrian scuffles all the way through history. including the Muslems… And the “Vikings”, and… All not really famed for their tolerance of the Bum Squad ( for differing reasons, but still..)
Then again… the attitudes towards homosexuality were quite different in those days as well.
There was a strong this-is-this and that-is-that, and an acknowledgement that a certain matter of intimacy between shieldmates under difficult and dangerous circumstances was “only natural”.
The more famous units actually built on that principle… Lovers fight harder to protect each other..
Of course… that only works if those couples are thrown in battle together and stand or die together…
Something modern military doctrine has transformed into the Squad. Except that there the “intimacy” has been replaced with “Camaraderie”.
Which doesn’t work if you don’t have a Release Valve for some very basic human needs.
And I have to admit… since the Puritans the UKie armed forces has been the most insanely strict about those needs.
Then again … someone has to be the trailblazer in how not to do things, and the UK armed forces have form in that. Ith almoth Thradhithional…
@ Grikath
You mean Thebans
Spartans were required to sire children before reaching higher status in the army. Thebans had lovers fighting side-by-side in pairs.
I recall the British Army chose the alternative option and lowered its standards in order to accept women, who’s training standard was described as ‘aggressive camping.’
Steve – the nice thing about driving a tank is being able to drive directly into your parking spot. Whether or not it’s already occupied.
Bagsie the geeky one at the front…
Grikath,
“Which doesn’t work if you don’t have a Release Valve for some very basic human needs.
And I have to admit… since the Puritans the UKie armed forces has been the most insanely strict about those needs.”
The state of the military reflects the actual needs. Which is almost none right now. There isn’t a bloke with a toothbrush moustache looking for a bit of Sudetenland. Or a Frenchman that wants Austerlitz. Or even some Chinese people looking to disrupt our profitable opium trade. We fight half-hearted wars like Afghanistan and Iraq which were instigated by boy scouts looking to do a good thing. Wars that it doesn’t matter if you lose. When that happens, you can pour money into shit aircraft carriers and bollocks like the F-35, making exceptions for trannies and girls, and rules against squaddies banging hookers. You can have a fairly useless military under those circumstances.
If the circumstances change, all the rules will be binned. The ridiculous landmine ban will be undone because we’ll want anyone invading Kent to be blown up and we’ll have to deal with the aftermath later. We’ll make cheap, easy-to-produce planes. Men will bang hookers all they want because no-one will care as long as they kill Johnny Foreigner.
It’s like you listen to people from their warm comfortable homes talking about Bomber Harris and Dresden. If you’d said that in 1945 in London or Coventry, people would have thought you were a traitor, or mental. The same people today would be calling for us to nuke Berlin if we were in the same situation.
G – Then again… the attitudes towards homosexuality were quite different in those days as well.
Yarp. “Gay” as we know it didn’t exist in the ancient world. Aggressive pederasty did exist, as did casual sex play between members of the same sex. But it was the social duty of a free Greek or Roman man to keep a wife for the purposes of teknopoioia. I don’t think they could get away with only bumming boys.
Hopper – the nice thing about driving a tank is being able to drive directly into your parking spot.
Unless you’re driving a Chieftain, in which case, candidly, it might not start.
WB – The state of the military reflects the actual needs.
God, no. This is almost Panglossian in its optimism. There’s no Wise Council of Elders to ensure the money we spaff on “defence” meets any of Britain’s “needs”.
Also, this isn’t even historically true. A famous counterpoint would be the German Naval Laws which committed them to wasting the modern equivalent of tens of billions of pounds* on a proud fleet of state-of-the-art battleships. A project that could be compared to the Moonshot in scale, which sucked in a lot of the finest strategic and engineering minds in the German Empire over a period of decades and ensured all their hard work would be irrelevant when their country was threatened.
The Kaiser’s navy was not only completely useless in WW1, the existence of the fleet actually had negative value for Germany, as it locked them into needless emnity and strategic defeat by the hands of Great Britain.
The same people today would be calling for us to nuke Berlin if we were in the same situation.
Maybe. But NB Britain had WMD in WW2. We had an enormous stockpile of poison gas and biological weapons.
We didn’t use them, which is why it’s one of the small ironies of history that one of the most recognisable images of the war is civvies toting gas masks they never, mercifully, needed.
To be fair, it’s not better to be incinerated alive in your home by the RAF, or blasted to meaty chunks by a Stuka. But while Britain and America scoured much of urban Germany clean of human life in the mass bombing campaign, it could have been much worse for the Germans in general.
*And NB – the capital cost of building a warship is usually only a tiny fraction of the actual cost of sustaining them. Big ships are money pits.
The South American dreadnought race was particularly foolish in this respect. The Brazilian Empire, Argentina and Chile could borrow enough money to build a few battleships, but as agrarian societies they didn’t have the money to maintain the continued investment the fleet would require. And they lacked a domestic industry capable of refitting or doing major repairs to their own ships.
Military hardware pendantry.
I think a military simply reflects the state of the society in which it is embedded. Since the end of the Cold War the “peace dividend” has enabled the growth of a soft, fractured, decadent and corrupt society obsessed with luxury beliefs. It’s not surprising our current military reflects this.
And we live in times in which our military is actually unnecessary. It can do nothing to defend us from immigration, cultural, and economic warfare. Anyone wishing to conquer us can simply fund the right NGOs, strike the right trade deals, buy or plant the right politicians, and watch us implode. “Cyber-warfare” can be, and is, fought by soft-handed civilians.
Actual military wars are still fought by actual strong men. We have several current examples of them.
Norman – Since the end of the Cold War the “peace dividend” has enabled the growth of a soft, fractured, decadent and corrupt society obsessed with luxury beliefs. It’s not surprising our current military reflects this.
Meh. What they’re trying to do to white nations is murder, not suicide. Nobody ever voted for any of this shit, including the bizarre CW spin offs into promoting eunuchs. A single, well timed Oreshnik strike on Davos would cure 95% of what ails Europe.
But you are right that the armed forces can’t be stronger than the society they’re drawn from. Military power, since the industrial revolution, is just a measure of the productive capacity of the nation. Courage, elan, l’audace are still important at the tactical level, but at the strategic level no amount of Bushido spirit was going to help Japan overcome the American military industrial complex. Zulu warriors were brave and fierce, but that’s not much use against the Maxim gun.
The West thinks it’s the morally enlightened natural leader of the planet, but that’s not going to help them when China can build over 300 new warships for every 1 the US Navy can.
Norman – To paraphrase the old Monty Python sketch, “I’d like to tax Gal Gadot: and I’ve a feeling she’d tax me.”
Is “emnity” a real word?
A story went around a generation ago that female sailors on aircraft carriers had big problems with storage. Their assigned lockers weren’t nearly big enough to hold all the money* they could make on a cruise. Not from doing the other sailors laundry.
*$500,000, reputedly.
According to an episode of NCIS each supercarrier has a police force and detectives on board. With 6,000 chaps who need servicing on a Prseident class, there are probably some busy girls on there.
I think it was an episode of Monk where the captain of a nuclear submarine says to a female detective.
“Be careful, these men haven’t seen a woman since we left port.”
“But we’ve only been at sea for 3 hours…”
“Think a little thing like that’ll stop them ?”
Steve,
“God, no. This is almost Panglossian in its optimism. There’s no Wise Council of Elders to ensure the money we spaff on “defence” meets any of Britain’s “needs”.”
I’m not saying that. I’m saying that right now, the public don’t care about defence. There was a time, until the 1970s when the defence secretary was someone with military experience, which reflects how important it used to be. Now, it’s just any old dickhead. Without looking, I couldn’t name more than 1 of the last 5.
Aircraft carriers and F-35s are just for show and a job creation/corruption scheme. Some people get nervous and all this stuff means they sleep soundly. Even though the F-35 struggles to fly in the rain, so hopefully, the Wehrmacht will only attack in July and August.
Norman,
“And we live in times in which our military is actually unnecessary. It can do nothing to defend us from immigration, cultural, and economic warfare. Anyone wishing to conquer us can simply fund the right NGOs, strike the right trade deals, buy or plant the right politicians, and watch us implode. “Cyber-warfare” can be, and is, fought by soft-handed civilians.”
Look at what happened with Germany. There was a time that Russia would have got a load of blokes from Asia and put them in T-34s and driven into Berlin. Now, they just bribe German politicians and fund green groups to shut down nuclear power and get more renewables. Precisely because renewables don’t work, will never be reliable, so then, you’re going to rely on Russian gas. And much cheaper than going to war.
Steve,
Israeli forces recruitment actually knock a point off if you are circumcised, despite that being kinda obviously 99% of applicants.
No idea why.
That’s a bit uncharitable, given the applicant has already had a point knocked off!