- A reserve IDF major has forbidden his daughter from obeying
orders to report for duty in the violence-plagued Gaza settlement of Netzarim,
saying that since the army had failed to train her for the dangerous duty,
it was preferable that she serve a jail term rather than a stretch at Netzarim.
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- Two women soldiers were recently killed in their beds,
and a male soldier was shot dead nearby, when a Palestinian gunmen entered
Netzarim and opened fire in the soldiers' quarters.
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- An IDF battalion, accompanied by support personnel, guards
the few dozen families living in the isolated settlement.
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- The women recently ordered to serve there is Gali Ofek,
who was drafted only two months ago. According to an Israel Radio, after
a week of basic training, Ofek completed a course training non-commissioned
officers for the army's technical maintenance branch.
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- Last week she was assigned to duty in Netzarim. "My
daughter telephoned me and told me that she had been sent to Netzarim.
I told her, you're not going to Netzarim - give the assignment order back
to the assignment officer," her father, reserve major Moshe Ofek,
told the radio.
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- She was then told "Either you go to Netzarim, or
you go to jail," the father continued. When she replied that she was
afraid, the officer was quoted as telling her "Go to a Kaban [Mental
Health Officer]."
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- Moshe Ofek, who said he is "certainly not on the
political left," told the radio Thursday that he was "not preventing
her from going to Netzarim because of some [ideological] belief that she
shouldn't be there. It's simply because the training that she received
was approximately that of someone in Gadna [an introduction to he army
for Israeli high school pupils and foreign volunteers]."
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- Gali Ofek has now been Absent With-Out Leave for five
days, the radio said.
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- "She has fired a total of 12 bullets, six by day
and six by night, and that is her level of soldiering," Moshe Ofek
said. "In my view, if you send our children into the eye of the storm,
you must prepare them at least to the level that they can defend themselves."
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- "When I had the option to choose whether to send
her, at her level of readiness, to Netzarim, or the option that she'll
be in jail, I preferred the option of jail, because she may come back to
me from jail sad or somewhat hurt, but she will come back to me alive.
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- "From Netzarim, I'm not sure she'll come back at
all."
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- Asked for a response, the IDF Spokesman's Office told
the radio that Moshe Ofek had described the order given his daughter as
patently illegal. "After a thorough investigation, it was made clear
to the father that the assignment of women soldiers is not carried out
according to their rifle status [the ranking of soldiers according to their
levels of weapons training], and are assigned to all units of the army.
The assignment of the soldier was according to regulations."
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- http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/378526.html
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