Simply crazy

Jeff Barak’s March 13 Reality Check column “Women soldiers are a distraction,” your March 9 editorial “Women of valor” and comments by others, including MK Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, are harshly critical of the leader of the Bnei David Academy in Eli, Rabbi Yigal Levinstein, who delivered a lecture stating the inappropriateness of female combat soldiers for both themselves and the IDF.

Through distortions of history, litany (not even a hint of a combat role in the list of feminine attributes in the editorial), the Declaration of Independence and facts on the ground, the case is made to pull the plug on this educator and cease funding his academy although it has turned out top IDF commanders. In fact, Rabbi Levinstein was only doing his job. As a theologian and committed Jew, it is his duty to defend the immutable words of our Torah, even if it ruffles the feathers of the politically correct.

Yes, there have been exceptional instances of female combatants in our history, but the overwhelming portrayal of women has been that of kindness, gentleness and empathy. The argument that women are legally entitled to equality in social and political rights does not hold water – a woman’s capacity to stand up to the rigors of the battlefield is as factitious as my ability to give birth.

To encourage the recruitment of women into the IDF, the bar has been lowered, reducing our overall military effectiveness. I shudder to think of our young women crawling in the mud with their M16s, being taken captive by our truculent enemies or being intimidated and abused by male officers!

If we must engage in war, let us leave it to our young men. As Rabbi Levinstein so eloquently stated, the idea of a female combatant is simply “crazy.” ROBERT DUBLIN Jerusalem