The October 7th massacre and the unprecedented war in Gaza compel Israel to rethink its conception of security. It cannot afford to do so without including a gender-based analysis.
After two years of missiles, hostages, and the catastrophic toll of hunger and mass casualties of civilians in Gaza, Israel’s society is exhausted. After the war and the high political polarization regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Netanyahu’s government’s steps against the rule of law, there is hope that this moment might mark a transitional time from war to post-war, and perhaps even with new paths for peace. What does gender have to do with any of this? While this question may seem academic in the face of hefty geopolitical issues and immense human suffering, it is anything but. Indeed, a gender-based analysis offers a crucial lens, exposing the deep-seated structures of our existing order. Without challenging it, we cannot hope to alter the recurring patterns of our reality.
Too Much Security, Too Narrowly Defined
In Israel, security discourse is predominantly framed by military metrics: casualties, thwarted attacks, strikes on enemy installations, and territorial conquest. When this narrow definition of security is threatened, public discourse shifts to endless streams of military and geopolitical analysis. Yet, a direct and fundamental connection exists between damage to this limited security and harm to broader forms of human security—housing, employment, emotional well-being within families and schools, social welfare, and what might be termed “citizenship security.” Crucially, all these dimensions have a gender-related perspective. Acknowledging the erosion of civilian security as integral to analyzing the consequences, costs, and coping strategies of war is an urgent strategic necessity.
The narrow military fixation obscures the profound cost of undermining the state’s fundamental obligation to its citizens’ prosperity. For example, it allowed the government to deflect attention from the agonizing reality of hostages in Gaza, by asserting that their families must refrain from too loudly protesting, so as not to impede the war’s primary objective: the total elimination of Hamas. The price of the many months of abandoning hostages extended beyond their immediate survival; it inflicted severe damage on Israel’s ethos of solidarity, a cornerstone of public trust in the state. This singular focus also conveniently silenced any meaningful discussion of the devastating toll on Gaza’s civilian population.
The pervasive military security discourse enables direct assaults on citizenship security. While the October 7th massacre and subsequent missile attacks from Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran profoundly shattered Israelis’ basic physical safety, an equally devastating injury arises from the erosion of citizen trust. This includes trust in decision-making processes to be objective and transparent and to serve public interests, alongside the ability to freely voice opinions. In contemporary Israel, mirroring trends in the United States, confidence has waned in the integrity of democratic processes and the capacity of institutional gatekeepers to uphold the rule of law against opportunistic governmental power.
The current government’s undermining of Israeli democracy directly correlates with its assault on a critical aspect of security: the assurance a liberal democratic state owes its citizens through an implicit social contract. This is the security of living in a just society where human dignity is preserved and all are equal before the law. Palestinian citizens of Israel have endured these violations for decades. Israeli women, too, have been disproportionately affected by democratic deficiencies since the state’s inception, particularly through the religious establishment’s monopoly over personal status and the pervasive militaristic culture. More recently, these infringements have become increasingly palpable for Jewish citizens, especially those vocalizing dissent against the occupation, the war, the judicial overhaul, religious coercion, or sexism and homophobia.
The Concept of “Life Itself” as a Method for Undermining Fundamental Rights
In 2015, following a State Comptroller’s report on Israel’s housing crisis, then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted: “When we talk about housing prices, about the cost of living, I don’t forget for a moment life itself. The greatest challenge to our lives now is Iran’s nuclear armament.” At first glance, the assertion that a leader’s primary duty is to protect “life itself” appears sensible. Yet, if we survive a government that sacrifices our welfare, freedoms, and future to preserve this narrow concept of “life itself,” will that life retain any meaning? If, under the guise of war, an oppressive and discriminatory society takes root, the very essence of our lives will be diminished.
Netanyahu’s rhetoric reverts to a narrow Hobbesian understanding of the ruler’s duty: solely to protect subjects’ lives. This discounts the broader Lockean and Rawlsian concepts of mutual contractual obligations between the state and the citizen. Under these more developed political theories, which have become the bedrock of contemporary democracies, the state is to ensure basic rights such as liberty and property (John Locke), and fairness and dignity (John Rawls). For its exclusive powers to be legitimate (such as sending citizens to war or to jail, or collecting taxes), it must obey the law and respect the checks and balances mechanisms embedded in the governmental structure.
As an expert in gender equality, I’ve grown accustomed to my analyses being relegated to the “lifestyle” sections of news outlets, deemed nice-to-have but non-essential. Countless times, my scheduled appearances were canceled or shortened due to seemingly more urgent political or security-related breaking news. This isn’t a complaint, but an illustration of a deeply misguided perception. The singular focus on “life itself” as the paramount security concern undermines our security as citizens with fundamental rights. The disproportionate price this concept extracts from women is rarely discussed, yet it profoundly erodes societal resilience.
Chauvinism Endangers Lives
U.N. Security Council Resolution 1325, adopted in 2000, was a landmark recognition of women’s crucial role in international conflict resolution. This pioneering resolution, which has since spurred extensive research and implementation programs, was grounded not only in principles of gender equality but also in practical efficacy. Experience from conflicts like those in Northern Ireland, Colombia, and Nigeria demonstrates that greater female participation in peace talks significantly increases the longevity of agreements.
In 2005, the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, integrated Resolution 1325 into Israeli law, mandating appropriate representation of women from diverse groups in national policy-shaping committees. Yet, successive governments have consistently failed to uphold this obligation. Israel has never included a woman in its war cabinet. Women were notably absent from the Corona cabinet and the committee investigating the events surrounding the 2010 Turkish flotilla to Gaza. Court petitions to include women in such bodies tend to be a game of cat and mouse, in which petitioners are deemed either too early or too late for asking the court to review the matter.
The benefits of gender and sectoral diversity in decision-making extend beyond politics to the business world. In 2020, Goldman Sachs announced it would cease investing in companies lacking women on their boards, citing a direct correlation between female board representation and corporate profits. When women are absent from decision-making centers, vital perspectives are often missed. President Donald Trump’s fierce attack on DEI policies of universities and corporations is telling. Hierarchical societies where one gender, race, or religion is superior to others are part of the autocratic playbook. Israel’s failure to anticipate, despite warnings, Hamas’s atrocious and lethal attack on October 7th tragically underscored this: women’s presence and professionalism alone are insufficient for sound decision-making; their voices must be taken seriously. In the days before the attack, female spotters and an intelligence NCO provided multiple early warnings about suspected preparations on the other side of the border, but these were disregarded systematically and sometimes harshly. This starkly illustrates how chauvinism endangers lives. When women are excluded from critical discussions or viewed because of stereotypes and stigmas against women, girls, and boys alike internalize that women’s voices hold less weight, and that their aspirations and life plans should be limited to their gender.
Wars have Core Gendered Dimensions—It’s Not a Bug, It’s a Feature
Resolution 1325 also crucially called for recognizing the distinct ways wars harm women. It paved the way for acknowledging systematic rape of enemy women—as seen in Kosovo, Rwanda, and on October 7th—not as incidental damage, but as a deliberate war strategy. This recognition spurred the development of legal mechanisms to prosecute rape as a war crime, which had previously been overlooked or minimized because, like many women’s issues, it was considered apolitical, a private crime between individuals.
Gazan women have been disproportionately impacted by the war. Little attention is paid to their heightened risk of sexual and domestic violence in evacuation zones, or the immense emotional, economic, and reproductive toll of conflict. The realities of giving birth under fire, acute shortages of hygienic supplies, raising children without adequate food or medicine, and the wholesale collapse of healthcare and education systems remain largely unaddressed.
Beyond direct conflict, women face additional wartime harms. Reservists’ wives, left to manage households, children, and elderly parents while struggling to maintain livelihoods, receive scant support. The strain on marital and parental relationships from prolonged absences is also overlooked. The Treasury Ministry’s refusal to compensate employees forced to stay home during the campaign against Iran disproportionately affects women. While high-tech and bank employees can often work remotely with supportive employers, essential service workers such as supermarket cashiers—predominantly women—must choose between income loss and leaving children unattended. (Although the Ministry did ultimately agree to compensation after union pressure, women at the time had no way of knowing this would be the outcome.) Leadership’s war calculus omits these profound societal damages, focusing solely on battlefield casualties, missiles, and territory.
Such examples merely scratch the surface of the inherent interconnectedness of gender and war. Internationally, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s allocation of $14 million for clean water taps in refugee camps, marking Resolution 1325’s tenth anniversary, highlights this. While water is a universal need, in many traditional societies, women are responsible for fetching it, exposing women in conflict zones to attacks when they leave their camps. Thus, clean water taps directly save women’s lives. Wars, by definition, have gender dimensions. The damage they inflict on women—to their lives, freedoms, and equality—cannot be dismissed as incidental.
Over a decade of “the campaigns between wars” (euphemistically termed “drizzles”) between Israel and Gaza has exacted visible costs on the local population. As former dean of Sapir College’s law school near the Gaza Strip, I heard countless heartbreaking accounts of children suffering bedwetting, tics, anxiety attacks, and sleep disorders due to frequent bombing and fires caused by weaponized balloons, and emergency runs to shelters. Do these profound injuries, adversely shaping civilians’ lives, register with Israel’s war policymakers, factored into their cost-benefit analyses? The answer, unequivocally, is no.
Public Attention, Narrative, and Ethos
In 2001, as a doctoral student at the University of Michigan, I attended legal philosopher Catharine MacKinnon’s renowned “Sex Equality” course. Classes were paused on the morning of 9/11. When they resumed after a few days, MacKinnon opened class with a statement she later profoundly conceptualized in an academic article, but that I reconstruct from memory here: “We experienced a terrible attack. Between 2,500 and 3,000 people were murdered. A similar number of women are murdered by their partners annually in the U.S. This too is war: war against women, but it doesn’t receive recognition as such because murder within the family is considered banal, routine, and private.” At the time, even with quite an advanced feminist consciousness, I was outraged, feeling that my admired professor might do damage to the feminist messages. What is the connection between domestic murder and a jihadist attack, I asked myself? Years later, I recognize the immense courage and striking conceptual clarity of her words, delivered so soon after such a devastating event.
Echoing MacKinnon’s observation, prior to October 7th, annual terror-related murder rates in Israel were comparable to those of women murdered by partners or family members. In both contexts, a specific ideology of masculinity—often cloaked in religious devotion—underpins both military (whether state or non-state) and gender-based violence. This same ideology fuels the Netanyahu government’s broader assault on women’s rights: from weakening electronic monitoring for violent partners and resisting Israel’s signing of the Istanbul Convention on violence against women, to empowering rabbinical courts in civil matters, promoting gender segregation in academia, and halting legislation of a law against financial violence, where one partner denies information or financial autonomy from the other.
Even initiatives ostensibly for “ultra-Orthodox and religious women” in the Knesset, focusing on preserving fertility or on “family purity,” have denied requests to participate in their events by women’s NGOs and liberal religious activists. Also on the record are incidents of women protesters against the government being strip-searched, as well as incidents of refusals to let women into public shelters during missile attacks because they were used as synagogues during routine times, citing “modesty concerns,” or declaring some shelters as reserved for men only. Israel, then, has eroded equal access to security—a fundamental resource whose availability should not hinge on economic status, worldview, or gender.
Imagine if the state invested even a fraction of its military security resources into protecting against domestic violence. Beyond the budget, consider the impact if just a sliver of the public attention and rhetoric devoted to narrow security were directed toward the security of women murdered in intimate relationships. Securitist discourse profoundly shapes national identity, perpetually reminding us of external threats. This narrative, in turn, legitimizes infringements on civil rights and well-being. Other forms of violence, particularly against women, are relegated to secondary status, despite being no less political than international conflicts.
This perpetual unrest stifles the development of thought and action patterns liberated from the security paradigm. As Virginia Woolf wrote in her 1940 “Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid,” “There are other tables besides officer tables and conference tables.”
Conclusion
Without a fundamental shift in perspective, we remain trapped in the same destructive script. We will know the world is safer for all, including women, when news editors prioritize women’s equality, security, and welfare. We will know that a government conducts war wisely and responsibly when it equally weighs the damage to the home front against battlefield achievements. And we will recognize sincere advocacy for “life itself” when it accounts for the unbearable murder rates within Israel’s Arab communities and the killings of women in their homes, not solely lives lost in combat or to terror attacks, and when it considers harm to civilian infrastructure, to trust and human security.
