What happens to women soldiers in the Occupied Territories?

Israel drafts young women into its army for two years of service-and some are sent to Gaza or the West Bank.

Filmmaker Tamar Yarom was intrigued by the transformation that goes in among people-herself included-who are thrown into conflict. The title of her recent film, "To See if I'm Smiling" refers to a trophy photo with a corpse. 

THE SHOT

Photographing oneself with a dead body has long been a common war momento-after all, generating the most dead bodies is how wars are won.  The infamous Lyndie England case, as well as that of Sabrina Harman who took hundreds of photographs, may have been especially shocking since a corpse snapshot is even more un-ladylike than having your picture taken holding a cigarette or a drink.  In this film, one young medic tells the story of her goof around photo shoot with the dead enemy.         

"Who wants to deal with the evil within himself, the alienation?" she says. But then she explains she wanted to see the photo again because, "I wanted to see if I was smiling."  

THE CHANGE

Yarom herself served in the territories as sort of a social worker and says, "you see what happens to the soldiers, see what war does to beautiful sensitive people,who enjoy stories of things they've done."  Many women go through the same process, it just takes longer according to Yarom.

However, women soldiers have a greater emotional vocabulary that allows them to discuss what happens in war. Which makes for a very good film. Here are some stories:

THE MOUTHS OF BABE-SOLDIERS

"It's loads of power. There's an incident that's about to happen and it'll happen the way you make it happen. You hear soldiers panting over the radio, because you're making them run they're running because you saidso. The commander radios in and asks you what to do. You tell him where to go."No, on second thought, turn around." It's loads of power. Loads. And...you try to do what's right with it."

"Part of doing what you feel like was, for example, to stop our jeep next to a group of people, call them over with our finger, to approach... This power, that you just motion with your finger and the person comes."

Another woman recalls how a friend of hers had been shot, and the next day she was assigned to checkpointduty, "

I felt that every Arab I stopped that day.......... I felt as if HE had done that to her. During that 12-hour shift, I detained about 80 people. Arabs. I stood them in a line and decided they will stay the 12-14 hours of my shift, in the hot sun. I, like, decided to punish them.I made them stand there and do push-ups and all sorts of... I made them stand in threes, as if they were my soldiers, recruits. I also started screaming at them and.. for no reason, I started yelling: "Why did you do that to Hanny? She didn't deserve that!

"Do you know who Hanny is? She's my friend!"  Of course, they had no idea what I was talking about, but... There wasn't anyone else around, just my soldiers and they accepted it. I mean, what I did wasn't out of the ordinary."

THE CHANGES

One woman in the film, Libbi saw how soldiers were treating the Palestinians and vowed not to become likethat--vowed that there were other ways. But filmmaker Yarom says, "at the end of the day, she became just like them". Another woman who tried to remain moral, amidst immoral action, did the right thing, but still felt tainted and dirty by association.

Yarom says, "I think when women see what they have become it is more difficult because women are supposed to be kind and caring-so for a woman, you're distanced from yourself even further."  Whereas being a soldier doesn't contradict ideas of maleness and masculinity, "men can be tough and mean and say they're a good warrior."

This cultural notion of what women should be--can even make them less effective in these situations.  Yarom asked one female soldier (not in the film) why she didn't reprimand the other soldiers and she said the guys wouldn't have paid attention, but only ascribed her moral qualms to the big-heartedness typical of women who are supposed to be kind and gentle.  

We're not used to seeing women not be kind and gentle, says Yarom, "it's a hard mirror to look at."   

To see some clips of the film and to see aninterview with one of the subjects on CBC news go to: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq7K0zwWWls