Meanwhile, a young Israeli woman named Alice Miller took her country's air force to court for automatically barring her, a licensed commercial pilot and aeronautics student, from entering its prestigious Flight Academy. Faulkner and Miller both won. In 1995 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a state-supported institution cannot reject applicants on the basis of gender. Israel's Supreme Court ruled that the air force could no longer exclude qualified women from its pilots' training program. As a woman and a former instructor in the very academy that Miller sued, I took satisfaction in both rulings.
Many people mistakenly believe that Israeli women serve on the front lines of their armed forces.
Actually, while Israeli women are subject to the mandatory draft, they are kept well away from combat and, until Alice Miller sued the air force, could not fly military aircraft in any capacity. Many people are also surprised to learn that while Israeli women do train men to drive tanks and fire artillery, this kind of activity is usually restricted to the theoretical. I, for instance, explained to my soldiers how to use certain weapons that, as a woman, I was prohibited from firing even in practice or demonstration. The rationalization behind these rules is that the army must minimize exposure of its women soldiers to physical danger. Why female casualties should be harder to accept than male casualties is a question beyond the scope of this article, but the outcome surpasses absurdity.