Inbal Avnon
Posted on | November 13, 2008 | No Comments
Sergeant with Israeli Defense Force
To serve as a woman in a combat position is a big honor. Military service has always been important to me. Even at an early age I knew I wanted to join a combat unit. I had to cope with people asking, “Why?” and making fun of me because women weren’t in combat units then. But it is one of the most challenging things open to women in the army, and has given me a lot.
Tell us about yourself.
I’m a 21 years old soldier serving in a Nachal Gar’in unit. I began my service at Kibbutz Ketura. Afterward, I was a combat soldier in the Karakal unit, in which women serve together with men. We were stationed at and patrolling the southern Israeli border. I was an assistant to the Platoon Commander and was involved in all military actions and border incidents. Today, I’m in the Service portion of the program. We’re living as a commune in Haifa, where we volunteer in the community.
I have a mother, father, two older brothers, and a sister who’s a year younger than I am. I come from a family that’s very Zionist and very military. My father and uncles held prominent ranks in the army. But we’re also very liberal. Each member of the family has his or her corner for meditation and a multi-faceted circle of friends.
What is the life of an Israeli soldier?
Each soldier comes from a home with a mother and father who are scared to death each time he leaves the house. Life is love, emotion, friends—an entire world. The soldiers are children, ages 18 to 22, just graduated from high school, and they’re placed in situations that are impossible—a threat that a terrorist could enter the country, heaven forbid, or a bomb go off in Jerusalem, or a little boy approach you with a bomb attached to his body. That’s extreme, but it has happened.
You need to have a lot of respect for those soldiers. You need to remember that they’re children who only six months ago graduated from high school. It’s not like a teacher who is trained in how to handle a class of children, or a lawyer or doctor who learns the profession.
I’ve never seen weapons fired at civilians, never seen anyone killed before my eyes. But there were difficult moments—at checkpoints, for instance, little children, Arabs. The first time I was taken to a checkpoint, it was in Qalqilyah. I started to cry. It took time to compose myself and say “It’s better I do these things with some understanding of the situation than someone who does them in a negative way.”
You have to learn more than how to use a weapon, you must have emotional strength. That’s not something they teach you. You have to develop it. For some, it’s relatively easy—for others, less easy. Behind every soldier in uniform is a soul. Courage is encountering a situation that is difficult in every way—physically, emotionally—and doing what you need to do, and doing it the best you can.
Have you ever been afraid?
The truth is, fear depends on the stage you’re at in the army. In the beginning, I was afraid of my commanding officer. Later, at the front lines there are times when it’s the middle of the night, and you suspect something might happen. It’s not fear, but a sort of adrenaline that can be defined either as tension or excitement.
We’re such a small country that everyone has friends and relatives who’ve been killed in the army. Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers is powerful because these deaths are close to you and happening all the time.
Can women in the military or anywhere bring peace?
Women have an emotional intelligence that isn’t one hundred percent present in men. We need to use it more and get to where we can have influence. Women have the ability to see and cope, and to explain things in a slightly different way.
Is peace possible?
The truth is that I once thought it would be a lot easier. I would go to demonstrations calling for peace and protesting violence. But “peace” is a very big word. I think that co-existence is possible. As for the extremists on both sides, you hear about Hamas and the very extreme Jewish organizations. But then, the large majority of people just want their children to get to and from school safely, and grow up to a world of equal opportunity. And those are the people you can talk to. The problem is that it’s the extremist groups that draw the attention and keep people from reaching those goals.
Avnon was raised in a liberal Zionist family with a father and uncles holding prominent ranks in the army. She serves in the Nachal Gar’in unit. They began with eight months of kibbutz life, and then moved to combat duty where she served alongside men as a combat soldier in the Karakal unit patrolling Israeli’s southern border. Now, in the last stage, she lives with her unit in Haifa, where they do community service with youth.
