Surveillance soldiers say sexism a factor in their October 7 warnings being ignored

‘If the soldiers had been male, things would have looked different,’ one says in exposé by Haaretz; soldier says they were left to be slaughtered by terrorists like ‘sitting ducks’.

Senior commanders refused to heed the warnings of the young female surveillance soldiers tasked with watching the Gaza border in the weeks before the brutal Hamas massacre on October 7, and the soldiers believe sexism was a factor in their being ignored, according to a report on Friday.

Rather than hide its plans for the attack, the Hamas terror group was training in plain sight. Soldiers in the Border Defense Corps who raised the alarm told Haaretz they believe sexism played a part in the fact that they were not heeded.

“It’s a unit made up entirely of young girls and young female commanders,” an unnamed soldier said.

“There is no doubt that if there were men sitting at those screens, things would look different.”

Israel Defense Forces female surveillance soldiers, referred to in Hebrew as tatzpitaniyot, belong to the Border Defense Corps and operate along the country’s borders, as well as throughout the West Bank.

The surveillance soldiers are referred to by many as “the eyes of the army” as they provide real-time intelligence information to soldiers in the field, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

For weeks before Hamas’s October 7 onslaught — when thousands of terrorists streamed over the border, killed about 1200 people, the majority of them civilians, and kidnapping some 240 more — surveillance soldiers reported signs of activity along the tumultuous Gaza border, situated a kilometre from them.

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Surveillance soldiers say sexism a factor in their October 7 warnings being ignored (Times of Israel)

Full report (Haaretz Hebrew)

Photo: Soldiers monitor surveillance cameras at a command centre at the IDF's Re'im camp in southern Israel (Israel Defense Forces)