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Good afternoon and welcome, everybody. I'm as always, delighted to present our speakers each time we meet.

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But this time again, it's a it's a genuine personal present to present also a friend and just a visiting speaker, Professor Ernest Levy,

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who served just until recently as the head of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Bar-Ilan University in Israel,

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and also an associate professor at the Program of Gender Studies at the University of Maine.

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Research focuses on the field of gender and militarism.

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Her most recent English publication is Women Soldiers and Citizenship in the Observer in Israel Gendered Encounter with the State,

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co-authored with an obscure father and just recently a Hebrew book published,

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MacDowell bases co-edited volume dealing with roughly the same topics but a completely different book.

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And the title of her talk today is Gender Citizenship The Case of Women Breaking the Silence.

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I want to thank you for coming back.

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Thank you for inviting me, Yaacov, and thank you for joining me this afternoon in Oxford.

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It's really exciting and it's a little honoured to speak at Oxford. My purpose today is a real articulation of the ideas proposed in this book,

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co-authored by Professor Edna Lansky Further than Myself, which explores the meanings of women's military service in Israel.

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In this book, we argue that mandatory military service for women becomes a major arena for processes of initiation into gendered citizenship.

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The military is one of the main arenas for civic participation,

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since it is the institution most closely associated with a state both on its allergies and its practices.

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Thus, we understand the military is a contact zone while the citizen and the state meet.

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The encounters with a state are always shaped by gender, ideologies and gendered interests,

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which are especially pronounced in the military, which is a hyper masculine organisation.

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Therefore, we analyse military service.

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Is it citizenship, conferring institution and focus and how it shapes the way women perceive the state and experience those citizenship.

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Although the initiation processes into citizenship welcoming to all Jewish women in Israel.

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Their perceptions and experiences of citizenship are not uniform and should be studied according to

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ethnic and class intersections and also according to the role that they fulfil in the military.

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In my lecture today, I want to explore one specific group of women those who have served in the occupied

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territories and testified to an anti-occupation movement called Breaking the Silence.

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My question will be why have these women come out and talk about violent experiences in the military

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when the common norm in Israel is to deny violence and to silence experiences of violence?

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I will open by introducing fully analytical concepts that we developed in the book that

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I believe can help us understand women's military experience beyond the Israeli case.

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And specifically, they can help us understand the minority of women who choose to speak up and talk.

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First, however, I want to present the larger context. Israel is a sewer.

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Most of you know it's still the only country in the world with mandatory conscription for women.

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60% of all Jewish women enlist, and they present a food of the regular military significantly, significantly more than any other Western military.

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Most Western militaries, women up to 15%, the most, usually around 10%.

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Interestingly, though, this has been so since the establishment of the state in 1948, women's military service did not become taken for granted.

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It is highly controversial during various groups into heated arguments again and again, and particularly with regard to women in combat.

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Indeed, since the mid-nineties, the military's gender regime has undergone significant changes, such as opening up combat roles for women,

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dismantling the women's codes and gender, integrating of most military courses from basic training to officers courses.

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Today, the military gender regime is no longer dichotomous in coherence to actual as it used to be.

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The men are the warriors and the women of the secretaries. Rather,

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it's a very dynamic field operating under the influence of conflicting pressures religious forces

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and conservative process and masculine forces press for maintaining a clearly segregated gender.

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Although within the military they will be aquatic forces, mainly the media.

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Human Powell and feminist and liberal forces are working to integrate women.

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These changes are not unique to the Israeli military. I want to remind you that in December 2015, former Defence Secretary in the US,

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Ashton Carter, declared that all combat was will be open to women in the US forces.

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And as you know, maybe few weeks ago on October 25, the British government made a very similar announcement about the British armed forces.

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In light of these dynamic forces, we seek to discard binary notions.

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When I say we mean my colleague who is not who,

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we seek to discard binary notions of gender power relations and examined the organisation as one comprised of multiple gender arrangements.

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Gendered analysis of women's military service used to assume a fairly binary perspective,

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arguing that military service is either a mechanism for social mobilisation and equal citizenship.

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And that's the liberal feminism.

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Of course, all of that ification of mass citizenship and a form of cooperation with a patriarchal, inviolate institution.

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This is the attitude of radical feminism will reject these two schemas as too simplistic,

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and we aim to problematise these assumptions and argue that the military's inequality regime both create valid opportunities and

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set various obstacles for different intersectional groups of women and thereby generating diverse encounters with the state.

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Against this backdrop, I will be search.

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Ask how women cope with an encounter with a state for their participation in the institution most closely associated with citizenship.

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We interviewed over 120 women and we got testimonies of 20 women who gave

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testimonies to Breaking the silence about a decade after the military service.

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Based on the analysis of the interviews.

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We contend that gendered encounters with the state can be understood through three interrelated concepts multilevel contracts,

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contrasting gendered experiences, and this acknowledging violence.

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And I will start with the first one. The experience of military service is shaped by differential social contract between the state and the citizen,

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which reflects both formal citizen duties and rights and informal expectations and obligations.

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The contract, which is a product of cost negotiations and power relations between the two sides uneven two sides,

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the military and the soldier derives its unique character from the cultural schema that shaped the women's expectations of service.

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The meaning of the women's service is shaped by the nature of the contract and by whether it was fulfilled or violated during the service.

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And I'll give you one example only. We have more in the book.

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We discovered that women who serve the secretaries present two very different narratives about the service.

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Lower class women who serve the secretaries describe the service is enriching and empowering experience.

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This very positive interpretation emerges from the informal contract which sees military service as a venue to achieve a sense of respectability.

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Respectability is the term of Beverly Scaggs, and according to Scaggs,

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respectability connects personal identity with national identity and national belonging.

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In contrast, middle class women enlist into in the military with a sense of entitlement to self-fulfilment and also to gender equality.

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They expect to serve in a prestigious role that will advance their social status and showcase their personal abilities.

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Service as a secretary, which pushes them back into the role that symbolises traditional femininity,

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is experienced as a gross violation of the contract, and they talk about the service in terms of dispel disappointment.

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To our mind, one of them even said holocaust about military service.

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That is so lower class women. Military service is perceived as a path to acquiring respectability.

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Inclusion in the political collective in the military fulfils its part of the contract for military force for middle class women.

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Military service is supposed to ensure their preferred status within the bodies of the collective service as a secretary is considered

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abrogation of the contract and they are deeply disappointed and it's also reflected in the way they talk about the citizenship in these lines.

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The second concept contrasting gendered experiences.

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Despite the military organisation being hypermasculine, it actually offers women.

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I'll do a range of gendered experiences. Then the civilian labour market.

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Military service pushes some women into traditional feminine walls, just like the secretaries that I just mentioned.

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But also many other women get a chance to experience bluelink of gender experiences.

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For example, if they serve in the intelligence wars and the intelligence is the biggest unit in the Israeli military,

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and the growing number of women get a chance to cross gender boundaries by solving injuries, combat instructors, all combat soldiers.

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These various wars could very different gendered experiences from the point of view of body, of sexuality, of emotional management.

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Through their embodied experiences, they learn the positions in the army.

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They learn the boundaries of the body, the boundaries of the military power,

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etc. These women's military experience provide concrete meaning to their participatory citizenship.

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It teaches them the position in the hyper masculine organisation, in the position vis a vis the state.

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I must also say that although the military offers a very wide range of experiences.

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His experience is always shaped and interpreted in light of the image of the combat soldier who embodies the nation state,

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embodies the ultimate citizen. This image demarcated the women's marginality and limits them.

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That is, the military open up into opportunities for a variety of gendered experiences,

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but at the same time clearly lays down the patriarchal boundaries in the less concept this acknowledging violence.

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How do women soldiers experience, discuss or deny militarised violence?

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The military, by definition, is the organisation authorised to use violence and behalf of the state.

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That's the sociological definition. It is saturated with violence,

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whether directed outside to those who are defined as enemies or directed inside

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towards women is sexual harassment and towards men very often in the form of hazing.

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These soldiers of both agents and victims of military militarised violence.

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Surprisingly, however, when we interview soldiers, mostly women, they do not discuss the violence of war and occupation.

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We heard a thunderous silence, so much so that you would think to talk about a different place in the woman in the labour market,

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just a regular civilian workplace, and that about service in a force that has been controlling a hostile civilian population for over 50 years.

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The very few women willing to break the silence were the ones who testified to the organisation Breaking the Silence.

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So it's their political voice and agency that I want to explore today.

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So this was the introduction and one more shot introduction about breaking the silence.

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Breaking the silence is an anti occupation protest movement, which started out in 2004,

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was an organisation of men who completed the service in the Occupied Territories.

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They documented and published testimonies of abuse of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip since 2010.

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They publish testimonies of their ongoing situation, publishes testimonies by women soldiers.

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So for the first time, women veterans publicly presented eyewitness testimonies to an anti-war movement for the first time in Israel.

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It doesn't happen in many other countries. Also today, the group is same.

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The target of a campaign of persecution and defamation lies by the government, together with extreme right wing NGOs.

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I want to give you just an example of what they do. Of a testimony by a woman.

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Can you claim escape? Okay.

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So this is one example. It has English subtitles of a woman giving a testimony which shows you that they're not staying anonymous anymore.

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They're giving testimonies with their face open. So naturally, Shelly will go on.

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Chilling images shot in the Gulf in Tennessee all of late last year will be hosting the skies above,

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ensuring Rudy and his counties are not able to leave the function of Qaddafi at the moment.

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Yeah, I know. It's, you know, kind of an event that is about yourself.

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She had a piece of me. The Lord condemned you and I.

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Adorable the whole thing. Honey, I am a child, he said. I know a lot of families should not be able to.

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That's a shame.

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Sure, I can call the team and talk about first things that can occur and look ahead to Shackleton and see that actually seeing to of itself.

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Havana, Cuba was the epicentre of the war. We can call on her emotional charm when it came out that I loved Man, that Moussa said.

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It wasn't so much who killed my will than my Yemeni.

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More Mohammad Mahamat came on my show as emotional instead of as anybody forget.

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He actually she meant the aftermath of the Somali girl.

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I think they now.

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No no majority party which I am majority minority try to show by design matching is

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that your membership of the humanity of your class not forgetting what is the key?

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They tell me shyama I have to tell you until MADDOW said kingdom as it in Somalia.

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And I thought, God, that was so funny because any man and all that seem to be to help so much more.

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And so I morpheme but mostly all I had a month before the and then with the old.

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Okay. Okay.

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So this was just an example, not a very lovely one.

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Based on the first 20 testimonies, we argued that the metanarrative that organises the women's testimonies is an

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ongoing tension between acknowledging and this acknowledging military violence.

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In the testimonies, the women declared that they had valuable knowledge on what occurred and they describe different behaviours.

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At the same time, however, they claimed that they did not know what really happened and frequently argued that they would rather not have known.

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So the question of knowing or unknowing and gender is what interests me today.

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Let's hear the false testimony. Neufeld served as a company clerk located in the occupied city of Cleveland.

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Well, hundred and 63,000 Palestinians bullied and intimidated by about a thousand Jewish settlers.

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Now, first interview will himself an ex-con but soldier and an activist ask so.

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Mm hmm. It's a grown man. Okay. It's not automatic.

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Okay. Oh, okay. It's okay. There was video, right?

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Wow. Okay, good. So he says, but you know, that they detain people.

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And she says, but I never saw the detainees know, did I know exactly.

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I didn't engage in operational activities. I think I pretty much didn't want to know, like it wasn't part of my job.

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But with all your political awareness. No, there wasn't any.

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No, I wasn't aware. Maybe I close my eyes to it.

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Maybe I didn't want to know that I was there. But you will really in the middle of action.

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That's right. But, you know, I sort of didn't see I don't know, I sort of closed my eyes.

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But that's because it was too hard for me. If I had really been engaged in it, then maybe.

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And he says, So what will you engage in? And she says, The soldiers and they.

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Social activity, social events, personal conversations.

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Yep. And he says, but the reality was two metres away.

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He's pushing her. And she says, and I didn't relate to it.

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I don't know regarding the Palestinians. I don't know. I didn't ask.

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They didn't tell me. As you can hear him, repeat it time and time again, the voices.

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I don't know if I could easily choose not to know because the job did not do.

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I had to leave the base and she did not directly encounter day to day reality of the occupation.

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Nonetheless, one event pierced a wall of not knowing the day she encountered the headscarf, handcuffed Palestinian detainee inside the base.

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This was her politicising moment. Well, she chose to know.

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Consequently, she wanted to hold discussions and ethics among the soldiers.

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But [INAUDIBLE], Commander would not allow it.

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The interviewer, from breaking the silence wide, wondered why no file did not insist on talking to soldiers.

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And she said, I think it was because of two reasons.

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One, because it was heavily involved in my social soldier's social life.

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And that was just to make things fun for them and take them out of the trenches.

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And also, I didn't want to be the leftist who raises these issues because I wanted to be the company cleared for everybody.

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A second soldier, Gilad, served as a lookout. She could not say to know what was going on.

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She was proud of her professional knowledge, which protected her from facing moral and emotional questions.

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How politicising a moment was when she reported and what appeared to be four Palestinian children preparing to throw a molotov cocktail.

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The military responded with live fire and later it emerged that one of the children was killed in the wake of this incident.

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I realised that despite the sophisticated knowledge and very clear rules of engagement, everyone was operating under a very high level of uncertainty.

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Furthermore, she learned that her professional knowledge was enlisted to construct a little active narrative used to justify the shooting.

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In testimony, she described her debriefing with an investigator from the Shabak, the Israeli and MI5.

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He asked me to give a written account of the incident as it occurred.

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That's it. Then you will have to sign it. And you'll done.

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And what did you write? What if seen? But then I wasn't certain of what I've seen.

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I wasn't certain. But it did happen. And he says, Why weren't you certain?

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Why wasn't I certain? Because it wasn't that bad with the boys.

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They didn't affect anything. And also because you start to ask yourself, so supposing they just put their hands up.

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I told the investigator what I recall happening and then I asked him What happens if it didn't in fact happen.

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He said that even if it didn't happen, they would confess. So the interviewer says, What does it mean they would confess?

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And she says, I didn't ask. I decided I do not know.

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So the stories of the Friday night demonstrate the movement between knowing and not knowing the violence of occupation.

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Of course, we can argue that they do not discuss the violence of occupation since they did not encounter directly.

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Yet it is clear that the silence is part of the denial and silencing mechanisms of the occupation that are very prevalent in Israeli society.

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In an attempt to preserve the image of the just society and morally, militarily,

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Israeli society activates various mechanisms to deny military violence,

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including emphasising the Jewish victimhood, especially the Holocaust,

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stressing the traumatic discourse and ignoring completely Palestinian suffering.

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In this context, any discussion of the world violence itself, which I experience when I talk about it when I give this lectures in Hebrew,

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is perceived as treason, making it very difficult not only to object to military violence, but even to acknowledge it and cope with it morally.

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Against this backdrop, the women who did manage to break the silence.

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And made the voice heard. Exceptional. A small minority.

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So I will now analyse the decision to break the silence, employing the analytical concepts that I mentioned before.

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The first one was multilevel contract. The women's decision to testify indicated the contract with a state includes a moral element.

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As the military's violence is so often silenced or denied, they expect to serve in a very mobile military force.

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Accordingly, they further the experiences they went through in and to pay territories violated the moral clause in their contract.

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They came to realise that the military employs violence and regular basis and that the boundaries of legitimate Powell are very often crossed.

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It was this disillusionment and even rage of the violation of the contract that drove them to testify.

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Ghali story is a case in point. Before enlisting, Ghali had right wing views and she supported the occupation.

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And she voted for right wing parties serving as a Border Patrol police officer and the Jordanian model.

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She was in charge of controlling Palestinians movement including by the soldiers

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help politicising moment which which was completely life changing eventful

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[INAUDIBLE] occurred when the young woman was detained because a woman soldier

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complained that she talked burqa to Ghali perceived interaction is floating.

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She said to us in the interview, Take two, two.

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In the testimony, the Palestinian was sure that it was all in good fun because we're talking here about young people all the same age.

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But the interaction turned out into militarised power relations and the young man was detained.

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Gali said the station commander was responsible for everything that happened then and it was he who took the boy into detention and I followed them.

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We got to the police station and they went into a closed woman. I remained outside the door.

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I didn't know why I stayed there. I didn't have to.

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I don't know. Something told me to stay. Now, looking back, I recall I heard through the closed door everything that was going on inside.

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It was then that Ghali became a direct witness to violence that went inside the home.

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And from that incident and world, she decided to know.

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She started asking everyone she met. What did you do in the army? What did you do yesterday?

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What do you do in the military? She started taking testimonies herself, and her political point of view completely changed.

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And she became an activist. So neither who served in Cologne is an education officer.

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The politicising moment was first arrived on the base, the first, then the base,

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and she goes to meet the soldiers in the base and she finds out the soldiers steal prayer beads from the Palestinians.

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Prayer beads, massive budget. And she says, is it no soldier?

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And this and the base.

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I went to a routine welcome interview with a brigade commander the following day, and you ask me, So what do you think of the brigade?

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So file? And I said, It's fine, except that I saw soldiers with my belt and Korans from Qalqilya that they took as souvenirs.

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The commander followed up on the report with the soldiers. They to Mendell, who said, I've never seen this girl.

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She's lying. She's making it up. What are you saying? My soldiers would never do a thing like that.

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And the confrontation between Iran and the commander continued over the phone.

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And that's what Neil said. I told him, look, it happened.

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And he said, Who are you anyway? You're pipsqueak. You don't understand anything.

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And from that moment on, I was banned from the company for four months.

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I was not allowed near them. Sunil I was caught here between a loyalty to her soldiers and her loyalty to her own moral code.

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The violation of the moral code made her speak up and she was willing to pay the price for it.

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The politicising moments we find out that she and her male colleagues experience tuned out to destroy everything, to ruin everything.

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After this politicising moment, they disrupt the process of initiation into the military's gender regime.

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They question the loyalty and belonging to the state, and they counteract compliance with a gendered citizenship.

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The second concept is gendered experiences. The testimonies indicate that not only the violation of an implied mobile contract,

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but also the women's gendered experiences had a part in pushing them to speak up.

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Often these women were the first among the first women in combat units,

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or the first to serve in support roles like the education wars in the Occupied Territories.

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The Army conveys to these women that they are crucially necessarily.

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But despite this, during the service, they have to cope with discrimination,

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exclusion and silencing those still active and distrust of the men soldiers will convey to the women through ongoing initiation rites,

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challenge them to exhibit more violence to all Palestinians to prove that they deserve to be in combat.

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Daphne Combatant described this like she said, five of us girls joined a new company.

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This was the first time girls served there. We had a difficult time.

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Everyone looking at us testing as it was a truly battle for survival, always having to prove ourselves and live in the shadow of force.

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Other women mentioned the loneliness of being only a few girls among dozens of men in a sexually charged atmosphere brimming with contempt for women,

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inferior, live in condition and devalued.

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Was this narrative attached to the women's feeling of being outsiders within excluded from the camaraderie of men?

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The outsiders position has a silencing effect.

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The women often felt that they could not voice criticism or cast doubt because of the very real fear of being ostracised.

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The very few who did so well marked as leftist or informers and had to pay a small initiation light to prove their loyalty.

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As the testimonies demonstrate that in addition to the general silencing mechanisms that I mentioned earlier,

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there were also specific gendered silencing mechanisms that are deployed specifically against women.

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The ambivalent position as women in a masculinist environment.

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The experience of outsiders within and especially the gendered hostility they experienced, pushed them to speak up.

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Moreover, these experiences made them interpret the military day to day life, form a gender experience.

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In the testimonies, they very often criticised the men, the soldiers who abuse Palestinians and describe them as infantile, macho bravery.

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In particular, they blamed the male soldiers for having fun, for enjoying the violence, for being overenthusiastic.

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These are the ones that repeated again and again overenthusiastic.

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Tell a combatant. Describe the men's soldiers behaviour during house searches, she said.

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The deputy company commander went out to map a Palestinian house.

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When he came back he said to me, we messed up the house. He was so enthusiastic about it and instead of thinking, Wow, we are such men.

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In my mind, I was thinking about those women who are now cleaning up the mess that the soldiers made and the feel of the children at home.

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So things like that happened. And then you surprised that the age of 18 they blow themselves up?

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Because criticism is directed at the man's behaviour characterised by enthusiasm and pleasure in violence.

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While the Commander demonstrated his masculinity by exhibiting his power over the occupied population,

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Taylor identified with the women victims of the suit by portraying the soldiers as immature.

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The women deconstruct the image of the demonic masculinity that is based on

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the emotional and physically self-controlled and disciplined combat soldier.

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Hence the women's ambivalent position in the military construct.

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How they know or do not know what takes place in the occupied territories.

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The patriarchal ideology very often trivialises women into the position of the ones who don't know or don't know enough.

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Especially in the security arena. At the same time, the women are so disappointed.

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By the violation of the moral contract, which, together with a gendered experience, says, and that makes them speak up.

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The decision to testify reflects a position of knowledge as well as the ethical position to break the silence and give the knowledge a public voice.

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Thus, the military's gender regime, which shapes the gendered experience, says, also shapes the political voice.

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And now we are coming towards the conclusion. Yes, living at home is the.

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First of all,

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I want to emphasise not all women soldiers who have served in the territories experience in mobile crisis and most of them do not choose to testify.

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It's this very small minority that chooses to testify and talk about the service.

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So what does the silence of the majority teaches us and what and what the testimonies what do the testimonies teach us about gender citizenship?

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The ignorance of most women of military violence teaches us that violence is not a part of the women's perceived contract with the military.

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Most women do not expect to be exposed to violence.

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They enlist because this is the law and they expect to serve the service to give them

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a sense of respectability or belonging or boost the future of professional career.

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They do not expect to encounter violence. Conversely, in the men's contract with the military, violence is very central.

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Of course, the combat soldier knows he will encounter violence, but also men, combat soldiers.

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Evaluate the service in comparison to the combat soldier.

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And they think about violence as violence is not part of women's contact with the military.

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We often see that when a woman soldier dies in action,

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the public outrage and anxiety are much more intense than when a woman civilian dies in a terrorist attack, for example.

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Hence, women combat participation challenges the perception that women need protection even when they are soldiers.

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And moreover, women in combat challenges, men's exclusiveness in the battlefield, and the resulting benefits that men get from the combat wars.

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This is why opening combat calls to women is declared on both sides of the Atlantic, raises such a powerful opposition, and especially so in Islam.

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Removing violence from women's contact with the military indicates the status as being a titans within.

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Of course they enlist, but they do not take part in the most tame central action of the military, which is participating in the violence.

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Thus, they are marked as incomplete, militarily subject and hence lacking in the citizenship.

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Hence, women in Israel are not excluded from the public sphere.

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They are not excluded from the security field. They are not excluded from being citizens.

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Bath is killed, Pateman said many, many years ago.

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They are incorporated into public life as women, as beings whose sexual embodiment prevents them from enjoying the same political standing as men.

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In other words, the military service establishes them as citizens, but not as equal citizens with a line separating them from full citizenship.

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Is participating in military violence, hence participation in violence as a constituting role in shaping full citizenship in Israel.

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It's one of the saddest conclusions that we live definitely must assume, since violence is not part of women's contact with the military.

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Most women come to accept the traditional view of women in need of men's protection, and they internalise the marginal place also in civilian life.

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Taking that marginality for granted has two major implications for women's citizenship in Israel.

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The first implication is that women untangle the Republican link between military service and claiming civilian lives.

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Men very often require from the state symbolic and material benefits in return for the violent contribution,

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while women feel that they are not entitled to that.

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Many women feel grateful for having received the opportunity to constitute their belonging to the nation through military service.

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And they see it as the exercise of the civil right and its own that they do not claim any additional civil benefits.

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When women in Israel do claim civil benefits or make claims in the state.

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They do it usually as mothers, always mothers for soldiers rather than as veterans.

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And thus they produce the gendered citizenship and gendered civilian hierarchies.

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Second, since women do not take part in violence, they do not assume they can leverage their military service to obtain political voice,

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and they do not consider themselves entitled to political criticism.

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So the testimonies are very unique in that sense.

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The testimonies of the women silence breakers indicate what can make a woman soldier decide to speak.

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Truth to power is for Cozad. After all, brutal violations of the moral contract and of the gendered expectations lead to political

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disillusionment and to the decision to be active in civil society organisations.

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We could say that is their politicising moments that captured the violation of the moral engendered contract and pushed them to speak up.

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Hence the case of the Silence Breakers show that military service can be a new source,

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an unexpected source for women's symbolic power in the political field.

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The hyper masculine organisation, which is very often marginalising women, can also be leveraged to justify political criticism and political agency.

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However, of course, leveraging military service to justify a political voice is also a source of its weakness, because when women do so,

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they usually affirm the male dominated Republican ethos, the great Sally that grants political superiority and power to male warriors.

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Thus, the testimonies that produce the role of the military is a citizenship conferring institution,

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and they produce masculine power within the state.

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But this criticism notwithstanding, still, I want to conclude and said that the women's testimony offered an alternative framing of soldiering,

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gender and anti-military discourse, though by challenging the demonic masculinity of the combat soldier who embodies the nation state.

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Though testimonies through Sally Field testimonies like the ones we've seen and heard today,

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these women untie the Gordian knot between military state and masculinity.

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Thank you.