An attorney representing an IDF male soldier, who demands equality in hairstyle on Thursday sent Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi a warning letter citing the agenda of the army’s Gender Affair Advisor to the Chief of Staff (Yohalam) agenda, according to which there are no masculine/feminine appearance and dress guidelines in the IDF, only “tailoring of a suit” to fit each soldier. So why did her client end up in military jail for demanding his suit preference? Is this a form of misogyny?
I looked it up––so you won’t have to––and found out there is such a thing as the Gender Advisor to the IDF Chief of Staff. It’s a female officer in charge of promoting conditions that allow for the optimal use of the capabilities of women serving in the IDF; promoting equal opportunities for women during their military service; and assimilating women into military leadership positions.
Since 2021, the position has belonged to Brigadier-General Ella Shado-Shechtman, 44, who spent the bulk of her military career in the army’s Bootcamp training system.
I went to the Yohalam website and discovered that issues about which the unit may be contacted include, among other things, sexual harassment, exclusion based on sex and gender, gender adjustments for women and men, women in combat units, religious female soldiers, gender infrastructure gaps, and transgendered individuals.
Can a straight male soldier rely on Yohalam (it sounds like a biblical name, doesn’t it?) to protect his hair-length rights?
His (female) attorney, Yael Tothani, wrote the Chief of Staff: “My client has never had a haircut and his long hair is part of his definition of self. My client views himself on the one hand as a man who is cisgendered (woke terminology for a person whose declared gender identity corresponds to his or her actual sex – DI), and also different gender-wise, meaning: he is a man who was born male and feels that his gender and sex match. Nevertheless, his appearance as a long-haired man does not necessarily match the IDF’s dark-age social expectations toward cisgender men and therefore should be viewed as a cisgender man who is gender-different.”
Tothani (whose last name actually means, more or less, gunner), also complained the officer who judged her client and threw him to jail referred to him as a “strange soldier.” One can imagine that had the same lieutenant colonel addressed a transgendered soldier as “strange,” it could mark the end of his military career – he would have been crucified in the media, and the Yohalam gals would have launched an investigation. But since this strange soldier is a privileged white man, the usual suspects are keeping mum.
The attorney also noted that the (female) physician at the IDF absorption center recommended that the soldier should keep his long hair until he undergoes a psychiatric examination. Therefore, the attorney demands that the officer who ignored the recommendation in the file be disciplined, and that her client be set free.
It should also be pointed out that the young man, age 20, wants to serve. He studied as part of the IDF’s academic track to become a technical specialist position on an IDF missile boat.
The entire affair was exposed by the Torat Lechima group that supports implementing halacha in decision-making in the IDF, which after all, as they say, is the army of the Jewish people. It provides a wonderful opportunity to test how much of the army’s recent gender and sex policies are a sincere effort to promote the rights of women in the military, and how much is just another progressive bullying campaign to effeminize the IDF.
And now, because it’s Friday and I prefer to end this week’s stories with a lovely song, here’s The ballad about the long hair and the short hair, lyrics by Yehuda Amichai, and music by Moni Amarilio. I translated only the first stanza because, you know, Friday.
His hair was shaved when he came to the camp,
Her hair remained long and untouched.
“I can’t hear you in the growing noise.”
Your long hair, girl, your short hair, (boy).
