The Times of Israel reported Wednesday that of the more than 60,000 reservists called up by the IDF in recent week,s a higher percentage of them are women than in any previous IDF operation.

The article profiles a number of women and the challenges they overcome to serve in the reserves. One of the subjects of the article is Capt. (Res) Lee Betser, who serves “with search and rescue battalions of the IDF Home Front Command.”

A financial comptroller in a large company, the mother of two daughters ages four and 11, and stepmother to three older children, Betser feels an obligation to do whatever she can for her country. As a mother, she is technically exempt from military reserve duty, but she insists on volunteering.

“It’s not enough to sit at home at a time like this,” Betser, 36, says. “What I am doing is the most important thing I could be doing now, and I will continue to do it. I will continue to do reserve duty for as long as they let me.”

Betser considers “becoming an IDF officer and performing reserve duty for as long as possible to be an integral part of who she is.”

In an article published at the IDF website during Operation Pillar of Defense in late 2012, Brigadier General Rachel Tevet-Wiesel, Women’s Affairs Advisor to the IDF Chief of Staff, said that “[t]he motivation of the female reservists is off the charts. We see that they act out of a sense of purpose.”

[Photo: Israel Defense Forces / Flickr ]