National Service “girls” will no longer be allowed to work on approving gun permits following a meeting on the matter in the State Comptroller Committee on Monday.
The decision was made after the committee held two meetings on the subject after the resignation of Israel Avisar, former head of the Gun Permit Division in the National Security Ministry.
Despite the law requiring qualified people to manage gun permit applications, the ministry has been allowing young National Service women to handle interviews with applicants among other stages to keep up with the much higher demand since October 7.
The revelation that the ministry was allowing unqualified people to work on gun permits led to much criticism and concern that, as a result, permits were being given to people who should not have them.
Should national service girls be able to approve gun permits?
Members of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit Party, Limor Son Har-Melech, Zvi Succot and Yitzhak Kreuzer, defended the use of National Service women recruits during the meeting.
“You cannot have it both ways,” said Son Har-Melech. “On the one hand, it’s important to arm Israeli citizens, but on the other hand, [the committee is] holding a meeting like this and focusing on how to block the process. You cannot say one thing and act differently. I haven’t been given one answer as to why National Service girls cannot be gun permit clerks.”
Kreuzer said “We understand that, at the moment, because of this committee and the noise in the media, a soldier in the State of Israel will not be able to get a gun permit. It’s crazy; you’re blocking soldiers from getting weapons.”
Succot accused the Attorney-General’s Office of “objectifying women and telling National Service girls that they are incapable,” while notably, the objection is to using people who were not specifically trained in approving gun permits.
This isn’t the first time that the party’s MKs have used women to accuse the opposition of sabotaging its policy of gun distribution. Last week, Son Har-Melech accused the opposition of endangering women as she spoke out against a committee meeting on the prevention of guns being used in cases of domestic abuse.
Ben-Gvir has continued to defend his policy of distributing as many weapons to as many civilians as possible. In this vein, he lowered the requirements for gun permits and set up civil emergency response teams in most cities around the country despite such teams being intended for places where there is less police presence.
He continued to defend his position in the last few weeks as well after civilian Yuval Castleman was killed by soldiers during a Jerusalem terror attack when he shot at the terrorists and was mistaken by the soldiers for one of the terrorists.
Meanwhile, he continues to call for the death penalty for terrorists, saying during a faction meeting on Monday that Israel needs to be able to execute a Hamas terrorist a day for as long as the hostages remain in Gaza.