Dikla Mimouni (21) never sleeps alone, as the stuffed animal lying beside her proves. Below her pillow lies her other bunkmate: her rifle. Her stuffed rabbit has no name, but her rifle does: Pikachu. Then again, her rifle never leaves her side during the day either. "I sleep with it, eat with it, and go out with it. My weapon protects me. I have never had such a long relationship,” Dikla said. Whenever she feels like sleeping on the bus, she embraces her rifle tightly. She wakes up in the middle of the night sometimes because she is lying on top of it.
Dikla is one of seven girls portrayed by Igor Kruter, an alumnus of the Arnhem art academy, in a series of photographs depicting the so called 'Karakal-girls'. The series won the 30-year old Israeli photographer the Tarbut art prize in Israel. Kruter’s work emphasise the absurdist combination of the girls’ beauty and the brutality of the arms they bear.
The Karakal is the only battle group in the Israeli armed forces in which boys and girls follow the same training and do the same jobs. Walking down the street in battle gear, Dikla is frequently met with approving comments. Conscription is a reality for both sexes in Israel, but women can only join battle groups by volunteering.
No depiction of reality
On duty, the girls would not be allowed to walk around the way Kruger has depicted them. Jewellery, for one, is not allowed. “The enemy might be able to see it shimmer on your face,” Dikla explained. Make up is also out. “It would be pointless anyway, because we put camouflage paint on our faces.” Hair must remain bundled up at all times, and even the rolled up sleeves some of Kruger’s models boast are forbidden.
“This is not reality,” the artist explained. “I try to draw on reality for the symbols and icons I want to portray. In my work, I try to study the female existence. She gives life, but can also take it away.”
Even though he has served in the Israeli forces himself, the photographer refused to discuss the hard times he experienced there. Yes, he carried a weapon, and no, “it was not all fun and games.”
Dikla enjoys serving in the military. She guards the Egyptian border, where smuggling is rife. She is at her best when out on patrol. “It is exiting to get out there with the dogs. It gives me a good feeling, and that is what I do it for,” she said. After two years, she doesn’t regret joining Karakal one bit: “After doing this, I know I can do anything.”
She thinks the military has not become softer under female influence. It just makes the girls that join it tougher. “You start talking like a man. You hide your feminine traits to fit in better,” one girl stated in a documentary entitled, To See if I’m Smiling, by Tamar Yarom, an Israeli filmmaker who interviewed women looking back on their tours in the Palestinian territories.
Dancing in uniform
Pictures from back then show smiling girls dancing in uniform and posing with the dead body of a prisoner. In the documentary, they share the horrors: torture, fear of dying, bearing responsibility for the lives of others. Horrible events that still haunt them years later. “Sometimes I feel a little bit crazy. I have all these memories that have so little to do with reality,” one former soldier said.
For the women, the question is not if they deal with these problems differently from men, but how to deal with them in the first place. One former soldier who is now a mother is interviewed as saying: “Every time my baby starts crying hysterically, it hits that one nerve. It takes me back in time. I am not a bad mother, except in those moments. Then I can be like the devil.”
The younger girls in the Karakal do not have these issues to cope with. They are not serving in the Palestinian territories, and are still caught up in the euphoria the army can generate. They are still lapping up the camaraderie, the tough image and the respect of their fellow citizens. What they enjoyed most of all was this photo shoot. “Every girl dreams of having her picture taken this nicely. I am a warrior and proud of it,” Dikla said.
Still untouched by cruelty
The idea for a series depicting soldiers was floating around Kruter’s head when he met Tania, one of the soldiers portrayed. “I asked her to pose like a soldier, but women in uniform stand differently then men do. These women have chosen to be a member of Karakal. You can see that pride in the pictures,” Kruter explained.
Through Tania, he got in touch with the other girls. He asked them to bring a personal item from their childhoods to the shoot. He took the pictures at various locations in Israel late in the afternoon. The soft light gives the pictures the look and feel of a fashion shoot.
The photographer hoped to show the contrast between the cruelty of war and the tenderness of a woman, and youth. Dikla has not yet been privy to that cruelty. She has only used her weapon once, to fire a warning shot during a chase. She has four months left before her time is up and she has to turn in her weapon.
