AMONA: YOUNG LADIES AT WAR

News Item:

Were settler girls sexually assaulted?

Disturbing accounts: Settlers claim that police officers molested girls during outpost evacuation, Ynet receives additional testimonies from educators and rabbis regarding girls complaining of sexual abuse by police.

"Police officers rubbed up against us and touched our chest and intimate body parts. They used dirty words while doing it. One policeman said: 'Come, I'll screw you'…We felt like we were being raped." (The testimony of a girl in Amona.)

Such police behavior is disgusting and any cop who participated in it should receive a good thrashing in the nearest town square.

On the other hand, what did the girls and their parents expect? The same families who would never think of sending their girls to train as combat soldiers (and rightly so!) proudly sent their daughters out to war in Amona.

Truth be told, the "national-religious" camp has always had an ideological problem with proper separation of the sexes in public gatherings. Their youth group Benei `Aqiva has been grappling with this question for decades. Witness this week's rightist pep rally in Jerusalem. I wouldn't want to give anyone ideas, but a policeman who wanted to "cop a feel" from a "settler chick" could simply have stood in Zion Square on Monday night as throngs of teenaged girls pressed up against him. Our hareidi friends never would have allowed such a mixed gathering, and neither should we.

If we should be more careful about s'niuth (modesty) at our protests and youth rallies, we should be especially careful when we go out to engage in physical confrontation with the police and soldiers, for many of whom the concept of sexual modesty is a subject for sneers and dirty jokes. Young ladies and their parents should realize that physical confrontation enflames men's hormones -- in fact, among the the nations of the world, one of the most enticing fringe benefits of war is the number of young ladies available for rape.

So, the next time we go out to confront the state, let's leave the baby strollers at home. Leave our small children at home. And leave our wonderful, modest Jewish daughters at home. In my opinion, and I believe that halakha concurs, young ladies do not belong on the battle field.