An Israeli woman has taken her case to Israel’s High Court of Justice in an effort to gain entry into the Israeli Air Force’s combat pilot training course.
All previous efforts by Alice Miller, 23, to get into the course have been unsuccessful.
The South African-born Miller is a licensed civil pilot and recently completed a degree in aeronautical engineering, with honors, at Haifa’s Technion.
But like all female Israeli soldiers, Miller, who is currently in officers training school, is barred by military regulations from combat duty.
There are no women pilots, even in non-combat squadrons, in Israel’s air force. All pilots must first earn their combat wings, effectively keeping women out of the course.
When the court heard the petition brought by Miller on Wednesday, the arguments did not address questions surrounding women in combat, or the problems surrounding the possibility of their being taking prisoner of war.
Instead, the arguments focused on military regulations, which acknowledge the intrinsic difference between the sexes — that women have children and men do not.
A state official supporting the air force’s view argued that it was too expensive to put women through flight training, particularly when their careers could be cut short by pregnancy.
Military regulations require men to do reserve duty until the age of 54, while women are only required to do so until age 38, attorney Uzi Fogelman told the court. They are exempted from service altogether for pregnancy.
Miller’s attorneys argued that air force policy should be flexible in order to offer the same opportunities to men and women.
Furthermore, said attorney Neta Ziv Goldman, sex discrimination would limit Miller’s future, both during her army career and in civilian life.
The head of the air force’s manpower division, Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Amitai, told the justices that there was a failed effort in the 1970s to include women in the flight-training courses.
Miller’s attorney noted that women flew in the Israeli Air Force in its early years, citing transport pilot Lt. Yael Rom, who served in israel’s 1956 and 1967 wars.
“This is no provision (in the regulations) which prohibits women in combat duty,” said Naomi Hazan, a Meretz Knesset member who accompanied Miller at the hearing. “What we’re testing is exactly that.”
The five-justice panel will give its ruling at a later date.
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