A few hours before the Sept. 17 elections results in Israel, one thing appears certain: The 22nd Knesset will star some senior military officers who traded in their uniforms for suits a few years ago. Four former commanders of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are running (three from Blue and White and one from the Democratic Camp), as are retired major generals and brigadier generals. They are not a homogeneous group, coming from varying social groups and parties. With the exception of Maj. Gen. (res.) Orna Barbivai (Blue and White) and Brig. Gen. (res.) Miri Regev (Likud), their only common denominator is gender. All of them are male.

A military presence in parliament has been a fact of life in Israel since its founding 71 years ago. Insignias and medals have always parachuted their wearers into the top echelons of the country’s leadership, for instance the late Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Ariel Sharon and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, to name but a few. Significant combat experience remains a prerequisite for reaching most top military ranks and positions, aside from a handful of professional roles.

Until the Supreme Court's landmark Alice Miller (1995) decision, which forced the IDF to admit women to its pilot training course, all combat roles were off limits to women. The restriction meant that women were also excluded from one of the main career paths into Israeli politics.

The ruling in favor of Miller, an IDF officer, set off a revolution with women being accepted into combat roles in the different branches of the military, among them the combat engineering corps and the border patrol. In 2004, the first mixed-gender combat unit, Caracal, was established, and subsequently more and more units were opened to the growing number of women in combat roles. In the 2018 officers training class, one in every 10 cadets was a woman, but that ratio plummets the higher the rank.