This Israeli woman just made history.
Elsewhere in the Middle East, women ask for permission. In Israel, they command warships.
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This is a guest essay by Mitch Schneider, who writes from Israel.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
Recently, the Israeli Navy appointed its first-ever female missile boat commander to a Sa’ar 4.5-class missile boat.
Not a patrol boat. Not a training vessel. Not a symbolic posting. Not a diversity experiment. A warship. Armed with anti-ship missiles, deck guns, and advanced electronic warfare systems. The kind of vessel that protects Israel’s gas rigs, its commercial shipping lanes, and its maritime borders across open sea. The kind of vessel that has been to war. The kind of vessel that does not get handed to anyone.
Her name is Lieutenant Commander “Resh” — identified only by her rank and first initial in Hebrew. The IDF will not publish her full name. She does not need them to. She joined the Navy’s Captains Course in 2016, served as deputy commander, commanded a Devorah-class vessel, worked every step of the ladder without skipping a single rung, and today IDF Navy Chief Major General David Saar Salama said it plainly: She was chosen because she was the best person for the job.
Not the best woman, but the best person.
On December 9, 2024, the Israeli Navy destroyed 15 Syrian naval vessels in a single night at the ports of Latakia and Mina al-Bayda — 80 percent of Bashar al-Assad’s naval capabilities, gone, in one night. Throughout the war the Navy has struck Hezbollah maritime operatives, protected Israel’s coastline under continuous threat, and operated across one of the most contested stretches of water in the world.
That is the Navy she is now commanding for. And that is the boat they gave her.
Here is what a civilian needs to understand about what it means to command one. Israel is an island economy. Almost everything it imports arrives by sea. The gas rigs off its coast are at the top of Hezbollah’s target list for the next war. The Navy protects all of it with a small fleet operating across 44,000 square kilometers of water. Every commanding officer carries that weight. Every decision at sea is theirs alone.
The Sa’ar 4.5 has served the Israeli Navy for four decades. It is now being retired, replaced by the next generation of Israeli-built combat vessels. Lieutenant Commander “Resh” is taking the helm during the final chapter of the most battle-tested class of warship in Israeli naval history. That is the note on which this boat goes out. When Lieutenant Commander “Resh” stands on that bridge, she is not standing on a symbol. She is commanding a crew that has been to war. She earned every inch of it.
She did not get here alone. Nobody does.
In 1995, a young woman named Alice Miller walked into the Israeli Supreme Court and asked one question. Why can’t I take the entrance exam for the Israeli Air Force flight school? She had a civilian pilot’s license. She had the qualifications. The Israeli Air Force said no. She said that is not good enough. The Supreme Court of Israel agreed.
In 1997, the flight course opened to women. In 2001 the first woman qualified as a combat pilot. She finished sixth in a class of 70 in a course with a 90-percent dropout rate. During dogfight training she reportedly shot down her own squadron commander.
Alice Miller never became a combat pilot herself. She did not pass the medical examination. But she opened a door that has never closed. That is what one woman with a court case did. Now think about what seven women in a tank did.
And then came October 7th.
The female commander of the Caracal Battalion on October 7th was Lieutenant Colonel Or Ben-Yehuda. When Hamas launched its attack, she rushed her fighters to the Sufa military post and held the line against hundreds of terrorists for hours, repelling infiltrations into the outpost and the nearby kibbutz. For five hours that morning she was the most senior IDF officer on the ground. She did not wait to be relieved. She fought.
Elsewhere along the border, seven female soldiers from Caracal’s tank crew fought continuously for 18 hours. They killed an estimated 50 terrorists. They saved a kibbutz. They blocked a massive breach in the border fence. They were the first all-female tank crew to engage in active combat in the history of warfare. Not the history of Israel, but the history of warfare.
One of them, Tal-Sara, was modest when interviewed a year later. She did not call herself a hero. She said she did her job.
“I never expected to be a hero and to fight overwhelming amounts of terrorists,” she said. “Only after the event, when I thought of it, did I realize how we made history. We received hundreds of supportive messages from people we saved, and indeed from all over the world. We have been interviewed by mainstream media from many international outlets. I don’t believe we did anything extraordinary; we just did our duty to defend the State of Israel and its citizens.”1
Thirty-two female soldiers were killed on October 7th — women who woke up that morning and defended their country and did not come home. Their battalion commander said afterward: There are no more doubts about female combat soldiers. They fought bravely, saved lives, and emerged as heroes. Every one of those women paved the road that Lieutenant Commander “Resh” now walks.
The story does not end at the border fence or on the deck of a missile boat. Last summer during Operation Rising Lion (the 12-day, preemptive Israeli military campaign against Iran designed to neutralize existential threats to Israel), in the cockpit of one of those fighter jets was Major “Shin,” a female navigator. For the first time in Israeli Air Force history, an all-female crew flew a combat mission against an enemy target. She said afterward:
“I felt the responsibility in the cockpit to remove a real and existential threat to the State of Israel … We’re doing this for the peace of tomorrow. For our home. That is our mission.”
In the skies over Iran, the waters of the Mediterranean, and the borders of Egypt and Jordan, Israeli women are now commanding and fighting across all of it. Over 8,500 female soldiers serve in combat roles today. More than 21 percent of the IDF’s combat force is female.
The IDF has said it directly: This is driven by practical necessity and demonstrated capability, not because of quotas or politics. Women are volunteering for combat at a rate of 57 percent above the military’s own targets. The question in today’s IDF is not whether you are male or female. It is whether you are the best at what you do.
There is only one country in this region where any of this is possible.
Nearby, women need written permission from a male guardian to travel, to obtain a passport, to leave the house. In Gaza under Hamas, women have no political rights, no right to dress as they choose, no right to appear in public without a male escort. These are not ancient customs being slowly reformed; these are active realities in 2026. In Israel, a woman just took command of a missile boat in a navy that has struck Syria, Hamas, and Hezbollah.
From day one, the State of Israel’s Declaration of Independence promised equality irrespective of religion, race, or sex. That was not branding. It was a commitment. Proved in courtrooms by women like Alice Miller, on borders by Lieutenant Colonel Or Ben-Yehuda, in the skies over Iran by Major “Shin,” and today on the bridge of a missile boat by Lieutenant Commander “Resh.”
The IDF is not perfect. Integration has not always been linear. There have been debates, resistance, and setbacks. But the direction has never changed. Every year a little further, every year one more door. Today the door to the bridge of a missile boat opened and Lieutenant Commander “Resh” walked through it because she earned it.
Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, some 1,130 women from the Israel Defense Forces have fallen in action or during their service, 32 of them on October 7th.2 Somewhere in Israel today a little girl is going to hear what happened to them, and to Lieutenant Commander “Resh.” And something will shift inside her.
Elsewhere in the Middle East, women are asking for permission to leave the house. In Israel, they are commanding the ships that protect it. This is who we are.
“Tal-Sarah the ‘Tankistit’ and the Fighting Females of the IDF.” Times of Israel.
Israel’s Heroines
....my only regret is that I was not born sabra. My hat's off to you heroines.
What an amazing hero. Am Yisrael chai!!!