Female IDF soldiers required to wear long pants at Jerusalem Marathon during heat wave

Female soldiers were required to wear long pants during a five-kilometer run in Jerusalem on Friday despite a heat wave, while male soldiers were not given such an order and wore shorts, Hebrew media reported Saturday.

The run was held under the umbrella of the Jerusalem Marathon. Organizers had decided that due to a forecast of a heatwave and high air pollution, the day’s events would not include a full marathon.

“They didn’t even think to be indignant and complain about being required to run in long clothes,” the mother of one of the female soldiers told Channel 12 news.

“Unfortunately, in the current reality, it is taken for granted that their rights are different from those of the male soldiers – ostensibly for reasons of modesty,” she added.

Yisrael Beytenu party chairman Avigdor Liberman condemned the order, saying that “anyone who thinks that a female soldier wearing shorts is a problem — is himself the problem. Yes to a Jewish state, no to Haredi coercion.”

According to Haaretz, the Israel Defense Forces claimed that “there is no difference between male and female soldiers in the required dress code,” and that if “any discrimination was committed in enforcing the procedures, the matter will be investigated.”

The incident came at a time of renewed criticism of religious coercion in the armed forces.

Last week, the IDF court-martialed female soldiers and docked a third of their salaries for wearing purportedly revealing clothes to base when they arrived to be discharged.

Soldiers typically show up to base in civilian clothing on the day of their discharge, when they often take celebratory photos of themselves cutting their military ID cards once they return their equipment and complete the requisite paperwork.

“We got home, with headlines in the background about funding for draft-dodging Haredim and about Holocaust Remembrance Day, and it hit me,” one of the mothers wrote about the immediate aftermath. “How upside-down everything is here. And what an incredible girl I have.”

Also last week, four Border Police combat medics were jailed after they were accused of “harming religion and Judaism” by barbecuing in a non-populated part of a base during the Jewish Sabbath.

The punishment was reportedly shortened to one week following an uproar from parents of the detained officers and from politicians.