This is the Forward’s coverage of the Israel Defense Forces, the combined military forces of Israel.
IDF
The Latest
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Opinion Connect the Dots: IDF vs. Rabbis, Silencing the 99%
Sometimes the biggest news isn’t found in a hot new scoop, but in a recapitulation of a string of things you knew about but hadn’t put together already—or in little details that flesh out a trend you’d heard about, showing you how fast it’s building up. An example of the first: Former labor secretary Robert…
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Life Rabbi: Choose Death Over Hearing Women Sing
Listen to a woman soldier sing in a military ceremony or face a firing squad? Tough decision, eh? One Orthodox rabbi has declared that male religious soldiers who are true to their faith should choose the latter. In a radio interview quoted in Ha’aretz, Rabbi Elyakim Levanon, rabbi of the West Bank settlement of Elon…
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Life Female Soldiers Forced Away From Torah Dancing
Simchat Torah wasn’t much of a celebration this year for a group of angry female Israeli soldiers who were furious over being segregated far from their male counterparts, and completely out of their sight line when it came time for the traditional round of dancing with the Torah that ends the holiday, known as Hakafot…
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Life Gilad Shalit Inspires My Daughter To Join the IDF
My daughter was the first person to tell me that an agreement had been reached for Gilad Shalit’s release. Her voice was joyous in a “shouting-from-the-rooftop” kind of way. Shalit’s captivity has been very much on my teenage daughter’s mind since she saw the halting video of Gilad as a prisoner of war two years…
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Opinion New Year’s Greetings From the IDF Chief of Staff
Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, offers a 2-1/2 minute video new year’s greeting to “Jewish people in Israel and around the world.” Here’s the Hebrew version, in which he says mostly the same things but sounds a lot better, if you can follow it. He’s got a nice…
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The Schmooze Orthodox IDF Men Boycott Women Singing
Where are the limits to Israeli multiculturalism? This is the question that the Israeli military woke up to today, after a seminar focused on the Gaza War last night turned controversial. Cadets who will soon become officers were seated in the audience at the event, when two female soldiers got up to sing. Orthodox Jewish…
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The Schmooze ‘Israel’s Best Friend’ Dogs Trained To Attack
Just as we are getting word that the IDF is training West Bank Settlers to handle possible confrontations with Palestinians following the expected vote in the U.N. General Assembly in favor of Palestinian statehood, a rather disturbing video has surfaced about another defense force, the IBF. IBF stands for Israel’s Best Friend, a non-profit organization…
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The Schmooze Female IDF Soldiers Suffer More Stress Fractures
A study of women soldiers in Israel has found that for the IDF to attract more women to combat roles, it is going to have to make changes to more than just the design of military gear. The IDF thought that it had eliminated the problem of women soldiers getting stress fractures by designing a…
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