Good news! Bravo! Long overdue in the age of gender equality!
Unfortunately, this blog post by Times of Israel does not provide any details on how many female IDF Air Force pilots, navigators and so forth were participating in the “Operation Rising Lion.”.
P.S. I blogged here yesterday about this subject in German.
"An Israeli Air Force female combat navigator, Major “Shin” took part in this weekend’s unprecedented airstrikes on Iran in “Operation Rising Lion.” ...
In addition to combat (including F35) and transportation pilots, the IAF has female navigators, combat helicopter pilots and Saar helicopter pilots. Advanced Air Force training courses (of which around 600 cadets enter and only about thirty graduate) last three years and require soldiers to give an additional nine years of service. ...
More than 70 years have passed since a woman first completed the IAF’s pilot training course. Lieutenant Yael Rom marched amongst the 18 officers completing Pilot Training Course number 5 and was the first woman to pin on the IAF pilot wings to her uniform and served in combat in the 1956 war.
After this long hiatus women were once again granted permission to enter the air combat training school after a ruling by the Israeli Supreme Court in 1997, based on an appeal by Alice Miller, a South African immigrant with a civilian pilots license, to enter the prestigious course. Miller’s appeal was based on Israel’s Declaration of Independence, which states:
The State of Israel… will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex" ...
The first woman to qualify as a combat pilot after the Supreme Court ruling, Lt. R. in 2001, had to complete the rigorous course that is regarded as the toughest of its kind in the world. It cost almost three million dollars to train an IAF pilot and there is above a ninety percent drop-out rate. She not only completed the course but excelled: she finished sixth in her class of 70 and during dogfight training she is said to have “downed” even her squadron commander! Interestingly, she was raised in Kibbutz Lochamei Hagetaot (The Ghetto fighters Kibbutz) and her grandparents were both leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto revolt. ..."
Israel’s only female F-35 pilot named deputy commander of squadron (an article from October 2020) "The officer, whose name is classified, completed training on the stealth fighter jet in 2016 and has flown the plane ever since"
Female graduates of the IAF’s 163rd flight school course
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