IDF court-martials female troops who showed up for discharge in tank tops, short skirt

The IDF court-martialed three female soldiers and docked a third of their salaries for wearing purportedly revealing clothes to base when they arrived to be discharged this week, two of the soldiers’ mothers said.

The military confirmed the incident on Friday, saying it “constitutes a departure from orders and was therefore handled by the deputy commander of the unit in accordance with the IDF’s disciplinary code of conduct.” The women had a right to appeal, the military added.

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.

On social media, one of the mothers shared the ID-cutting photo that her daughter, who had served as a commander in basic training for non-combat soldiers, took with some colleagues who were also finishing their service.

Three of the women in the photo wore a tank top, a short skirt and a crop top, respectively. Shortly after they cut their ID cards, the three were put on trial and fined for “dressing inappropriately,” she said, calling the incident “repulsive and humiliating.”

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

Another of the soldiers’ mothers suggested on Facebook that her daughter’s “show trial” was a case study in misogyny.

“What was the point? To educate? To make an example of them? To stop them from repeating the horrible act of wearing jeans and a tank top?” wrote the mother, an attorney, on Facebook. “I wonder if male soldiers being discharged while wearing a tank top would have also been court-martialed. For some reason, I think not.”

The incident came amid renewed criticism of religious coercion in the armed forces following the recent detention of four Border Police combat medics accused of “harming religion and Judaism” by barbecuing in a non-populated part of a base during the Jewish Sabbath.

MK Naama Lazimi, of the left-leaning Democrats party, slammed the punishment of the women as theocratic overreach.

“We have to protect the IDF from this insanity,” wrote Lazimi, adding that the women should “not only sue, but issue a sexual harassment complaint.”

“Fining a woman for her civilian clothing is to humiliate her, turn her into a sexual object and in practice sexually harass her by disparagement and comments about her clothing,” wrote Lazimi on Instagram.

Meanwhile, the military has promoted the expansion of gender-segregated frameworks to accommodate ultra-Orthodox soldiers, and a recent conservative campaign has called to remove women from the army outright.

Earlier this month, the IDF took down the music video of an original Passover song that was included in the army rabbinate’s Hagaddah, which critics said consigned women to the home and neglected their contributions in the military.

The furor over the Passover song came days after criticism within the Shin Bet over a letter from the spouse of the security agency’s chief, David Zini, to “the wives of security personnel,” which was seen to reinforce gender stereotypes.