The Female-only Israeli Army Role Leading Too Many to Suicide
Haaretz
The Female-only Israeli Army Role Leading Too Many to Suicide
Chronic sleep deprivation, arbitrary punishment and disrespect: Female remote observers, who carefully watch live surveillance, describe their nightmarish service and role
Last month, a female solder serving as a “tatzpitanit” – a role now given only to women that entails hours of closely monitoring surveillance cameras – was hospitalized after attempting suicide.
The military said her suicide attempt had nothing to do with her work and that she was unknown to its mental heath services. It further said that the attempt had taken place while the soldier was home on a weekend leave.
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But it was not an unusual case. Soldiers and commanders working in the military’s monitoring apparatus describe grueling conditions for soldiers in this role, leading to a considerable number of suicide attempts. The conditions, they said, result in part from sleep deprivation, shortages of food and services on their base, disrespectful treatment, and arbitrary, harsh punishment.
“Not many people know about the attempted suicide attempts among these observers,” says one female soldier who served in the role before being demobilized recently. “The military stifles this, arguing that these are attempts to get transferred, but where I was there were quite a few attempts over a very short period.”
The distress is apparent in social media posts written by these observers. “I had very high motivation, but I lost that day by day,” wrote one. “I suffer every day, I cry all the time, don’t sleep and don’t eat. I reached a point where I was given mental health leave.”
The nature of the job and the working conditions have led to a situation in which many draftees have no interest. Military figures obtained by Haaretz show that last year, 1,400 candidates were found suitable for the job, but over 900 were already uninterested before their conscription, ignoring it when it was presented to them as an option based on their skills.
An observer near the Lebanese border.Credit: Yaron Kaminsky
Just this year, 180 female soldiers refused to serve as surveillance observers, with half of them sent into detention as a result. In the last round of draftees, 45 female soldiers refused to go to the relevant base and begin their training. Most of them were sent to a detention facility.
“This is the only role where we have problems in filling the ranks,” acknowledges a military source familiar with the process. “The skills needed for this role are high, and many draftees prefer other jobs, such as infantry instructors, military intelligence or working as instructors for air force flight simulations.
“I believe the military has not succeeded in branding this role correctly, not transmitting the idea of how the information gathered is important and interesting,” the source says. “There are some marginal successes, and some change can be observed, but it’s not enough. We’re aware of the problem and are trying to solve it.”
Not all observers suffer during their military service. Several of them testify as to the importance of the job, while others say that after leaving the military, they realized how much they’d enjoyed doing what they did. A commander in the monitoring apparatus says that “it is an important job, but one with rapid burnout, the way it’s done now. Even soldiers who enjoy it burn out.”
A female soldier who left the monitoring service a few months ago says that “in retrospect, I can say that it was also interesting. There was a lot of action.” However, she says, “the problem wasn’t the job, but the working conditions and the attitude toward those carrying it out; we were like the military’s stepchildren.”
Commanders on the ground are the ones who have to deal with the situation. “A third of the soldiers at the induction center would not get on the bus taking them to the training base; very few conscripts accept the fact that they were selected for this job,” says one of the system’s commanders. “Many soldiers quickly try to leave for commander courses so as to leave the control rooms. Toward the end of their service, they are at a breaking point.”
High standards
The role of these spotters is to observe the separation barrier along the border and activate technological systems meant to prevent attempts to enter Israel and attack civilians and soldiers. Even though it is not explicitly stated, the military has decided to give these jobs to female soldiers, with no men placed in them in recent years. This is possible through the setting of relatively high standards for being accepted. Men with similar skills are placed in combat units.
The high standards set by the military means that candidates for the role are also eligible for more desirable and prestigious roles such as pilots, naval officers and various roles in Military Intelligence. According to women about to be drafted who spoke with Haaretz, then they usually are told they have failed the tests for those roles and find themselves being placed as observers. Appealing this is almost impossible, they say.
An observer works in a control room.Credit: Israel Defense Forces
“I had one test for a pilot's course and later for a classified intelligence unit that deals with designing and developing intelligence systems,” says one draftee. She is scheduled to join the military next month. “I didn’t really want the pilot’s course and I didn’t pass the test for the intelligence unit, like most people who took those tests,” she continues. “I then received a message on my phone informing me that I was given a role as an observer. I have a hard time understanding how I ended up there after testing for the other roles.”
Like for other imminent draftees, it was difficult to locate an address for lodging an appeal. “There’s no one to talk to,” she says. “I tried sending letters, explaining that I have an extended high school matriculation certificate with high marks in math and computer science, that I was an instructor in a youth movement and that I play sports; I asked them to consider my capabilities in instruction, education, services, but it doesn’t interest them. I don’t intend to go there, even if it means going to jail.”
Eternal shadowing
Right after conscription, the soldiers slated for this job take a three-month course at a base in the Negev, at the end of which they are placed in the different bases and outposts where they will serve. At these bases, they have to shadow and train with veteran observers, a process that has become fertile ground for the exploitation of the young female soldiers. Many observers told Haaretz that a custom has developed whereby the more experienced soldiers don’t give the new ones all the information they need so that the shadowing is extended.
“Every observer has to spend one month shadowing an experienced one,” says one longtime observer. “It’s terrible, since the older ones teach the younger ones only what they want to, and they don’t want to do it, because it’s a bother. The new ones end up sitting around for days and hours in the control room, just passing time. Friends of mine wasted over a month without doing the training. The experienced ones aren’t bad, it’s just the norm that’s developed, and they’re only doing what was done to them.”
The working conditions of the younger observers improve at the end of this period, during which they get three days off at the end of every 11 days on base. Afterward, they get five days after every nine on duty.
An IDF video depicting 'a day in the life' of an observer.
But the ones who determine if the young ones enjoy these conditions are the more veteran ones, who are in no rush to end the training period. In several cases, observers said they were put on trial and kept on base for extended periods because they did not finish the overlap period, even though the veteran observers were responsible for this.
The military is aware of the problem, but nothing is being done to help the new conscripts. “The issue is known, but it’s different from one outpost to another,” a commander in the department says. “There is a culture of this, I won’t say there isn’t. Sometimes, the solution lies in sending the new observer to study some reference material. Ultimately, we’re a small group that has to live together on the same outpost or base, in the same control room. Something can be done about it, but it has to come from above. Everyone is aware of the problem.”
‘Your brain becomes mush’
At the end of the training stage, the observers join the shift schedule, which entails four-hour shifts during which they are forbidden from taking their eyes off the screen in front of them. They are not allowed to talk, eat or do anything that could distract them from watching the area they have been assigned to.
After the end of the four hours, they have to be on standby for eight hours, during which they’re not allowed to shower or sleep. They return for another four-hour shift, after which they’re given eight hours to sleep. This process doesn’t change over the course of their service.
“We get eight hours of sleep, but since we work in shifts, this could be between noon and 8 P.M.,” says one observer. “You can’t really sleep during those hours, both because you’re not used to it and because there is a lot of noise on the base.”
Some soldiers say the constant lack of sleep leads to observers falling asleep during their shifts, which means punishment. “We had a case where I told my commander that I hadn’t slept for two days, only here and there for a few hours,” recalls one. “In one case, a vehicle approached the [border] fence and I didn’t see it because I had fallen asleep. In the end, it wasn’t a security breach, but I should have seen and reported it. The fact that I’d told my commander that I hadn’t slept didn’t help, and I was kept on base without leave for 21 days.”
Another observer says that on one occasion, she hadn’t reported seeing people walking in the area she watched. “The crazy thing is that I saw them, knowing I should report it, but sometimes the brain turns to mush after so much peering at a screen,” she says.
“I don’t even know why I didn’t report it, maybe it was because of lack of sleep. In those situations, shifts are much more difficult. In terms of discipline, even the smallest infringement means a court martial. The commanders’ fingers are light on the trigger when it comes to punishment; they make almost no use of their judgment.”
Conversations with soldiers and commanders show that they are negatively affected by their standing in the base hierarchy, where they are always at the bottom. Most observers serve close to the country’s borders, with a new combat unit arriving every four months and its commanders setting their own rules.
Observers say that while they are placed at the same outpost or base for their entire term of service, the different units alter the rules without consideration. “Soldiers are always getting replaced and the observers have no say in the way things are done, even though it’s our home,” says one.
An induction center in Tel Hashomer, 2019.Credit: Avishag Shaar-Yashuv
“When new units arrive, they set the procedures that suit them,” she adds. “We constantly get new regulations, like ‘Don’t go to the dining hall at certain hours.’ Sometimes they yell at us that there isn’t enough food for everyone and that we should wait until the other soldiers return from their training.
"They set three times a day when the canteen is open, but they don’t take into account observers who finish their shifts at odd hours. So, we remain without food or we make something in a kitchenette with a sandwich toaster and microwave, but sometimes there aren’t even ingredients to make a toasted sandwich.”
The military recently decided that the observers should take a physical fitness test, and soldiers not meeting the required standard face disciplinary action or being stuck on base without furlough.
“Someone decided that if they don’t meet the requirement, they lose their benefit of five days at home, reducing it to three,” says a commander of such soldiers who is unhappy with the decision. “I understand the need for fitness in the military, but some of these soldiers will never pass the test. They don’t actually have to have these requirements. It’s pointless. You exchange it for gym classes or jogging.”
Lack of food
In addition to being scorned by the more veteran soldiers, the constant fatigue and the arbitrary punishment, the observers say they also have to deal with lack of food. This is reflected on social media, where many of them ask for help. “We are observers on the Lebanese border, doing shifts and manning the control room 24 hours a day for four days at a stretch,” reads one post.
An IDF soldier cleans her weapon.Credit: Michal Fattal
“This means we’re not always free when meals are served in the canteen. We have some gas ranges for cooking some food for ourselves, instead of not eating for two weeks until we go home. Two weeks ago, the ranges broke down and we have no way of cooking. The unit knows about this, but like everything else, it takes a lot of time and bureaucracy, and in the meantime, female soldiers here aren’t eating. If anyone has an electric range they could donate, we’d be very happy, and it would really help us. We can come and collect it in Kiryat Shmona.”
Many of the observers Haaretz interviewed say they needed the assistance of their families or the public’s charity to get food. “We’re supposed to get food twice a week at our posting, on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” says one.
“Sometimes it doesn’t arrive, or there isn’t enough of some items such as milk and cheeses, or items with which to make something decent to eat. In such situations, we go buy stuff at a supermarket, but we can’t always take a military vehicle and soldiers at the outpost don’t always want to drive on non-combat missions. Sometimes, we just wait for the next delivery.”
Observers’ parents commented on the lack of food, too. “My daughter is an observer and they receive a meager and shocking supply of food, because the shifts don’t always give them the chance to go to the canteen on the base,” writes one parent. “They complain about it but nothing has been done. They bring things from home so they’ll have something to eat, but why does it have to be like this?”
Another parent says his daughter was forced to prepare food for herself for two weeks because the unit doesn’t provide food for the women soldiers who are on night shifts. “She and her friends are forced to search for food or cook for food they brought from home themselves ,” he says.
A view of Lebanon from the Israeli side.Credit: Gil Eliyahu
Yet another parent says he tried to protest the way the observers are treated in general. “I have never encountered such treatment of women soldiers, which comes from the high ranks of the military and trickles down from there, like drops of poison,” he says.
“Why do so many drop out? The work is hard, monotonous, exhausting, [and] the way they are treated could hardly be worse. … Her department was given the news that their single field trip, planned for today, was canceled because the transportation was canceled. So insulting, such disrespect. And I’m not even talking about the pots of food we bring our daughter and her friends. I will do what I can to help her get out of this disgrace.”
The military said after a request for comment that it “invests great effort in the service conditions of the observers, the method of recruitment for the role has been changed, and so has the training.” It said that in the past year, renovations have begun on the observers’ housing, and that the quality of food and access to medical services have been improved.
It further said that in recent years, there has been a decrease in the number of people refusing to take the position and that it has been “carrying out numerous activities to encourage enlistment in order to explain and transmit to the recruits the importance and advantage of the position.”
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