IDF appoints first female battalion commander

By YAAKOV LAPPIN for JPost

Maj. Oshrat Bachar will be promoted to rank of Lieut.-Col and will head Eitam battalion, tasked with monitoring terror in Sinai Peninsula

The IDF has appointed its first female battalion commander, Maj. Oshrat Bachar, who will head a Combat Intelligence unit in the Southern Command along the border with Egypt.

Maj. Bachar will be promoted to the rank of Lieut.-Col, and will take charge of a battalion named Eitam, tasked with monitoring hostile terrorist activity in the Sinai Peninsula. She began her military career as a lookout soldier in the Combat Intelligence Corps, and went on to become a company commander in the field. From there, she became an instructor at the IDFs Combat Intelligence School, before serving as a department head in the office of the advisor on to the chief of staff on womens' affairs.

Maj. Bachar is currently completing a course on command and special staff at Glilot, and will then go on to begin a battalion commander's couse.

Her husband, Maj. Ohad Bachar, told an army publication in recent days that they both shared the goal of becoming battalion commanders, and praised his wife for "realizing her ambitions and making a breakthrough as the first woman in the role."

During a conference for recruiting women to Combat Intelligence units in 2008, Bachar told young women that "this is your opportunity to be pioneers in the issue, and to build another brick in this new and powerful wall."