To browse Academia. This paper wishes to discuss the connections between gender relations, war violence and its media exposure by focusing the attention on the case of women soldiers in Tzahal the Israeli Defence Force. Focusing on the case of Israeli women soldiers, this paper analyses the interplay between gender relations in the army, the representation of the enemy and war violence.
The investigation is based on testimonies and interviews with soldiers and ex-soldiers of the Israeli army, as well as on visual material. In order to explain the gender regime in the Israeli army, sociologist Dafna Izraeli pointed out how women in the army have frequently served as trophies for men.
In recent years, Israeli women soldiers have been increasingly involved in military roles where they have been confronted with the enemy especially in checkpoints or in detention areas. Challenging the notion of militarized femininity Sjoberg and Gentry , some sources attest that Israeli women soldiers made use of violence against Palestinians, thus being able to produce their own war trophies. This paper shows that social relations within the military and the construction of stereotypical images of women soldiers, as well as the reification of the enemy, can be generative of violence.
For the first time since , Israeli women soldiers took part in combat in Lebanon in the summer of and excelled in their jobs. However, images of women soldiers published in the press, during and after the war, objectify the soldiers in ways that belittle their violent agency.
The images tend to sexualize the women soldiers as well as their militarized skill and gear. In this article we examine the representation of combat soldiers in Israel through their media image.
