When Captain Amit Busi gets a chance to sleep, she does so with her boots on – and in a shared tent in a makeshift Israeli military post in northern Gaza.
There, she commanded a company of 83 soldiers, almost half of whom were men. It is one of several mixed units fighting in Gaza, where female soldiers and officers are serving on the front lines for the first time since the war surrounding Israel’s creation in 1948.
Captain Busi is responsible not only for the lives of his subordinates – search and rescue engineers whose specialized training and tools help infantry troops penetrate damaged and trapped buildings that are in danger of collapsing – but also wounded soldiers whom they help evacuate from the battlefield. She and her soldiers also help scour the area for fighters, weapons, and rocket launchers and are tasked with guarding the camp.
It can be easy to forget that Captain Busi is only 23, given the respect she has clearly earned from her subordinates – among them Jews, Druses and Muslim Bedouins.
“The lines have become blurred,” Captain Busi said of decades-old limits on the role of women in combat troops in Israel. The military, she said, “needs us, so we’re here.”
Since Israeli ground forces entered Gaza in late October, women have been fighting there. Their inclusion helped boost the military’s image domestically after the intelligence and military failures of October 7, and in the context of global scrutiny of the heavy civilian toll caused by the campaign. More than 24,000 Palestinians, many of them women and children, have been killed since the start of the war, according to Gaza health authorities.
The integration of women into military combat units has been the subject of a long debate in Israel, a country which is home to one of the few armies in the world to enlist women at 18 for compulsory service. For years, the issue of women’s frontline service has pitted ultraconservative rabbis and religious soldiers against feminists, secularists and critics of the country’s traditionally macho culture.
Today, this debate is effectively over.
There is no point in pursuing such arguments, Army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said after female soldiers rushed to confront Hamas attackers on Oct. 7, because their “actions and struggles” speak louder than words.
Like other fundamentals of Israeli life, many prejudices about women in combat were upended on October 7, when hundreds of Hamas-led gunmen crossed the border from Gaza into southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli authorities and the kidnapping of 240 captives to Gaza.
In the months that followed, the military’s needs propelled societal change at breakneck speed. Same-sex partners of slain soldiers are now legally recognized as widows and widowers, and at least one transgender soldier fought on the front lines in Gaza.
Despite years of derision from conservative quarters of Israeli society, female combat soldiers have become symbols of progress and equality, appearing on magazine covers and on television news.
A recent survey by the Israel Democracy Institute found that among the secular public, about 70 percent of women and 67 percent of men indicated support for increasing the number of women in combat roles.
In recent years, women made up about 18 percent of the military’s combat forces.
“Everyone uses the phrase ‘The debate is over,'” said Idit Shafran Gittleman, director of the Military and Society program at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies. “Everyone saw what happened on October 7,” she said, adding that “women contribute to security, they do not diminish it.”
Israeli women were thrown into battle almost immediately on October 7. Two all-female tank crews, once the butt of sexist jokes, rushed into the desert that morning to help repel waves of armed infiltrators from Gaza.
The female commander of Caracal, a mixed infantry battalion, fought a 12-hour battle along the Gaza border with two companies equipped with Lau missiles and machine guns. Along with the tanks, they helped block Hamas’ advance, saving several communities from attacks.
“We stopped them, they did not overtake us,” said the commander, Lt. Col. Or Ben Yehuda, 34, a career officer and mother of three, speaking at the battalion’s base in the desert. , near the Egyptian border, where his unit is usually deployed.
Israel had a female prime minister, Golda Meir, from 1969 to 1974. The newly retired Chief Justice of Israel, Esther Hayut, was among the country’s most influential officials, recently dealing a blow to efforts of the government of Prime Minister Benjamin. Netanyahu wants to restrict the powers of the judiciary.
Despite these achievements, the war came at a low point for women’s representation in government, which is currently the most far-right in the country’s history. The war cabinet, formed after October 7, includes two former chiefs of staff and a general, but no women.
When military vigilantes raised the alarm before October 7 that they had spotted unusual activity along the border with Gaza, which they deemed consistent with planning a major terrorist attack, they said they were fired by their senior male officers, who suggested they were the eyes, not the brains, of the military.
Ultraconservative rabbis have denigrated women’s service in general and denounced Orthodox women, in particular, who waive religious exemptions in order to serve. And some conservative activists have discredited the success of female soldiers, saying women are blamed. easier standards and drag the army down.
Decades of petitions and Supreme Court rulings have challenged the military’s high command to balance operational needs with principles of equal rights and opportunity.
The military has gradually opened up 90 percent of its roles to women, but they are still excluded from frontline combat roles in major infantry units and some of the most elite commando units that traditionally operate across enemy lines in times of war.
Although some women serve in mixed units, tank crews remain segregated by gender. This policy was intended to accommodate religious sensitivities related to men and women being stuck together for days in a tank.
However, women at the front say attitudes are changing.
“It’s a process,” said Capt. Pnina Shechtman, a platoon commander in a mixed battalion, Bardelas, usually deployed along Israel’s southern border with Jordan. Captain Shechtman was speaking by telephone after a day of operations inside Gaza.
“It’s a battlefield,” she said. “You see, hear and smell a lot. All your senses are really heightened. I need to be focused; I have soldiers under my command. There is no time for emotions.
She said she had commanded practicing soldiers and it was all about mutual respect. “Ultimately,” she said, “we have the same mission. »
On a recent weekday, after sunset, a New York Times reporter and photographer traveled to northern Gaza with Captain Busi and his comrades, kicking up clouds of dust in a dark desert lit only by an almost full moon.
Buildings along the road parallel to the Mediterranean shore were flattened into layers of concrete. We didn’t see anyone, only a few dogs, until we stopped at a small, barely lit military post made up of tents and containers surrounded by sand berms. Escorted by Captain Busi, we were free to explore the post but without going beyond it.
The Times agreed to a military transport to secure rare access to wartime Gaza, which is usually barred to journalists. The Times did not allow the Israeli military to verify its media coverage before publication.
Captain Busi, whose hair is braided into a long braid, carries up to a third of his weight just walking around the base, between his ceramic body armor, his M4 assault rifle and other equipment. Like everyone else in the unit, she eats mostly canned food rations, dried sausages and energy bars, and showers in a container about once every two weeks.
The first care packages delivered to the camp contained extra-large T-shirts, boxer shorts and tzitzit, the ritual underwear worn by Orthodox Jewish men. Now they receive women’s toiletries.
At the Gaza base, flares lit up the sky. No one flinched at an occasional boom. Some of the male soldiers milling around said they slept well knowing that Captain Busi and his troops were guarding the base. One said he felt even safer around the female warriors because they had to prove themselves – not because they were women, but because it was their first time at Gaza.
The war has cost the lives of around 200 Israeli soldiers and thousands of Palestinians, most of them civilians.
Captain Busi said the army was “doing everything” to avoid civilian casualties and lamented the destruction of so many homes. But it was Hamas, she said, that turned Gaza into a war zone.
The front line in Gaza is never more than a few hours’ drive from soldiers’ homes – a reminder of how close the war is.
Captain Busi said she would stay in Gaza as long as necessary.
“I really hope that the fact that we’re here,” she said, “means that in 20 years my kids won’t have to be.”