RUTHFULLY YOURS

She fired her first missile during the Second Lebanon War. Maj. Maya, the first woman pilot of a helicopter gunship in the Israel Air Force, hovered over a suspect vehicle deep inside enemy territory, and when the identification was confirmed, she fired directly at him from her Cobra. “I was excited. There was no time to be scared. I was focused on the mission. To tell the truth, the most exciting thing was going back to base. The technicians from the technical department, who had been welcoming pilots back from missions for 20 years, welcomed me there. They looked at the helicopter and saw that a missile was missing; and they are the sort who know very well what it means to come back for the first time without a missile. They embraced me with warmth and compliments. I thought to myself that if they, who saw me grow up in the fleet like a baby, were pleased, I’d done my job.”

Did you know whether you had killed anyone there?

“I am happy to say that to this day, I do not know whether I have ever killed anyone. In my world, I know that I hit the target. Obviously, it matters whether the target in front of me is a human being or arms and ammunition, but the most important thing is the mission that I was given. I have to execute it, period. In that case, there was no one in the car.”

“I was brought up to believe in myself”

It is probably a cliché, but it is still very difficult to connect this beautiful 30-year-old woman, with her long blonde hair and refined features, to the cockpit of a Cobra helicopter gunship. But when Maya enters the cockpit of “her” Cobra – which she has been flying for ten years – and starts the ignition, it looks like the most natural thing in the world.

She speaks quickly. She expresses herself beautifully, but she is careful with every word. She is modest. It does not suit the image of the pilots who look down on the world. “I would rather help a friend change a flat tire in the middle of the night in the pouring rain than cry on somebody’s shoulder,” she says. Yes, it is better to be on her side. Anyone who is not will get it from her.

Last week, Maya was discharged from the Israel Defense Forces, and civilian life is still strange to her. No matter – the Air Force will make sure to keep her busy with one training session per week. This week, she did her first reserve stint with her Cobra, a training flight for a survival test with the temperature outside at five degrees centigrade. After having fought in the Second Lebanon War, Operation Cast Lead and several secret operations, after she has risked her life any number of times, a training flight is a walk in the park.

She was born in 1981 in Hadera, where she grew up. When she was 4 years old, her father Amihai died tragically when he fell into a pit. She and her mother were left with no other immediate family, with no father figure. “My mother decided that life must go on, and that there was no goal in the world that could not be achieved,” Maya says, and that is the motto that shaped her childhood and adolescence. “If she had not pulled herself together after my father died, you would not be talking to me as a pilot now. She brought me up to believe in myself and taught me that we must solve everything on our own, the two of us, by ourselves. That we have to dare in life and not be afraid of anything. She is a very courageous woman.”

Her mother, Tami, 65, recalls that it was clear from a young age that Maya was something else. She could read at three and a half. In elementary school, when she was 10 years old, she skipped from fourth to sixth grade. In high school, she got top marks in all the main subjects. Omer, who has been her friend since they both attended high school in Hadera, recalled that the other girls were jealous of her because she always had a throng of boys around her. “I sat next to her on the bus during our trip to Poland, and we have not been apart since. There was something about her that made me very curious, and I became interested in her along the way. We were also together in the Young Maccabees youth movement. On the one hand she was an analytical genius, and on the other, the total opposite of square. She looked wonderful, always came to parties, danced, chugged vodkas. We would fall down, but she would keep on dancing with no problem.”

She finished high school when she was 16 years and eight months old, and went to work in a shoe store until she joined the army. “I never dreamed of being a pilot. You have to remember that in the 1990s, girls in the pilots’ course were nothing but a dream. The first call-up order came, they started the sorting process, and asked me whether I wanted to go to the pilots’ course. Working with the machines, flying in the air, sounded interesting to me. I sent in an application. I said, ‘I will move ahead, stage by stage, and see what happens.’”

Her mother says that she signed the permission form allowing her daughter to enter the course with a great deal of fear and weeping. “I am the only child of parents who survived the Holocaust. Maya is also an only child. I could not sleep at night after I signed the form. During the course, I hoped that she would fail. That she would do everything she could to succeed, but that she would fail.”

Three hundred cadets started the course: 290 men and ten women. “I never believed I would graduate at any stage. It was a difficult two-year course, with physical and mental challenges. You have to be naive to think that you will be the one standing on the parade ground at the end, getting your wings. The right technique is to think about the next stage, not about the end.”

Most of the young women dropped out fairly early on, and there were also moments of crisis for Maya. “The marches were hard for me, pulling the weight. I thought during those moments that I was making things difficult for my group, and it was not easy. The most important thing in the world for me was that nobody would give me special treatment because I was a woman. In the beginning, I insisted on carrying the heavy equipment just so the boys would not end up carrying more. It was complicated. It took more energy, but with mental fitness you can do it. There was one guy who was extremely thin, and I said to myself: If he can do it, so can I. If he manages to run here, under this weight, then I can, too. It was very important to create legitimacy within my group, and the men helped me. I helped them study the theory, prepare for tests, and they helped me during the stretcher marches.”

And then, after a year of coursework on the ground, came her first solo flight. “It was only five minutes in a Bell-206 helicopter, but it was so exciting,” she remembers as her eyes gleam. After that she had a setback when she realized that she would not be flying a fighter jet. “Everybody sits in a large hangar, and they tell you, in alphabetical order, where you will be continuing. At least I knew that I would be going on with the helicopters. Some people failed, and that was really a drag.”

The second time she sat in the large hangar and heard her name, it was a much more significant moment. “I knew that I was going to be an attack-helicopter pilot. You cannot really be happy there, or shout for joy, because there are people near you who won’t be advancing, and it’s not nice to do that in front of them.” Incidentally, all the members of her cohort dropped out at one stage or another. One of them said, “We said to ourselves, ‘Wow, all the men are out, and Maya will be a pilot in the end.’ She did us proud.”

No mixing business with pleasure

She says that there was no sexual tension. “From the beginning, I set clear boundaries: no mixing business with pleasure. During the course, I slept in the same room with two other girls even though we were not on the same track. I was very clear about what lines I wouldn’t cross: No relationships at all, and no negotiations about it either. I knew that I could not get into that in my immediate environment. Otherwise, there was going to be tension, disappointment, tough problems. So nobody tried to hit on me. They treated me as a ‘fighting sister.’ But they also knew that it was fun to be my friend, to go out to a bar together on the weekends, to drink, hang out, talk. It was clear that there was something different about me. I was the one who walked around with a ponytail in the tent, but my appearance did not help me in the Air Force.

“Once, another soldier and I had to sleep on one of the bases, and they wanted to give us separate rooms. I said that it was not necessary, that we could sleep in the same room. That was because it was clear nothing would happen, and there was nothing to be scared of. I felt safe and secure in myself.”

Maya jokes a lot about being a woman pilot. “Sometimes, when I landed the helicopter a little slowly, I told them, ‘Hey, what do you want from me? I’m a woman,’” she recalls with a smile.

When she completed the course, there were two other women with her. One is a navigator on fighter jets, and the other is a Saar helicopter pilot. Maya became the first woman to pilot an attack helicopter. “I’m not jealous of the women who are pilots of fighter jets. I support them. In the end, it was more right for me to be with the helicopters than with the jets.”

She had a boyfriend then who “was proud of her,” she recalls. Her mother says that she was so excited on the parade ground that she could not pin Maya’s wings on. “My hands were shaking. I said to myself, ‘Wow, look, you’re embarrassing your daughter …”

Maya, who became the first woman to pilot an attack helicopter, was placed in the Palmahim attack helicopter fleet. That meant flying a Cobra instead of an Apache, which was considered more advanced and more “sexy.” “I didn’t care about the sexiness. I wouldn’t have said no if they had sent me to fly an Apache, but I found out pretty quickly that the Cobra is an excellent helicopter. I haven’t tried an Apache to this day. I don’t know how to fly an Apache. I’d like to try one out, see what it can do. It’s like if a Lamborghini passes you – wouldn’t you feel like taking it for a spin?”

The first operation

The Cobra (or Viper, as it is known in the IDF) is a sophisticated war machine with eight anti-tank missiles, a beehive of rockets and a three-barrel twenty-millimeter cannon. It has two pilots: One flies the helicopter, while the other is the commander, the one who decides in the air what will be done. He is also the one who shoots. The hierarchy is clear: The one who sits in the back is the one who flies the aircraft, and the one in front is the commander. Maya remembers very well the first time she was dispatched. How could she not? “They dispatched us for a mission in Gaza. There was a wounded soldier in the field, and they wanted to bring in a Black Hawk helicopter to evacuate him. They asked us to provide cover if he should be fired on. I’m sorry to say that he died from the terrorists’ gunfire. I remember that I tried not to be emotionally involved. It interferes with good judgment in the field. But after I got out of the helicopter, as I was walking around on the base, I felt frustrated that we had not been able to save him. I thought that maybe we could have gotten there quicker, that maybe next time we would be faster.”

The first operational activity in which she took part was an attack on a weapons depot in Gaza. But then, she was only flying the helicopter, and the helicopter’s commander pressed the button. During the Second Lebanon War she was the one who commanded the Cobra, so she also fired her first operational missile a week and a half after the battles broke out.

“During the war, I was in the air 12 hours a day. We would do shifts. We would fly out, attack, come down to refuel, get back into the air. There was a lot of fatigue, but there was also a lot of alertness and crazy energy and determination to succeed.”

You knew that you could be wounded or captured.

“Absolutely. That’s the risk of my profession. I’m afraid of death, but being inside a helicopter is no more than being on a motorcycle or in a jeep or anyplace else. During the war there was one aircraft that fired on us. We were over Bint Jbeil in a battle where the Golani [infantry] Brigade was fighting, and they lost quite a few troops. They fired tracers at us. You don’t have time to be scared there because you’re busy surviving, keeping your helicopter from crashing. We hovered over the village and didn’t return fire because that would have meant fire into the village. At those moments there is pressure from the mission, and sometimes there is also conflict between the helicopter commander, who wants to complete the mission, and the pilot, who wants to protect the helicopter. I was flying the helicopter then and I pushed to get out of there because we were being fired on so much, and the helicopter commander wanted to stay. In the end we stayed, accomplished the mission and left. I wasn’t afraid of dying or being captured. I don’t think about the whole matter of women in captivity. We are level-headed people. You train for that, prepare yourself for all situations.”

“I am anxious about her all the time,” her mother, Tami, says. “I was also anxious when she was 17 and took the car out on Friday evenings. I wouldn’t fall asleep until I heard her park the car, and then I would run quickly to bed, get under the covers and pretend to be asleep. Since she started flying, we have had an agreement that she sends me a text message every time she lands. During the war in Lebanon, I was terrified. She tried to update me every time, but she did not always have time. During Operation Cast Lead, she tried to trick me into thinking that she wasn’t flying, but I figured it out pretty quickly. There are sleepless nights, tense moments. This girl is the love of my life, but I am the one who brought her up to believe that nothing could stop her, so I cannot stop her. I have to solve my problems myself.”

“I do not cry much”

During the war, Maya lost a close friend. Tom Farkas of Caesarea, her good friend from the pilots’ course, was killed while flying his Apache. “He was an excellent pilot, or as we say, he was a ‘sticker.’ He loved the good life. We would go out to drink together, and a few times I went to his home in Caesarea and met his family. At the end of the course, he went to the Apaches and I went to the Cobras, but we stayed good friends. When I heard that a helicopter had been shot down, I was on a crazy operation in Lebanon. I thought to myself: That has got to be someone I know, but I never guessed that it was him. It just did not seem right that it was Tom because he was always a symbol of life. I cried a lot at his funeral. That does not happen to me often.”

As pilots, did you feel the failures of the war?

“No. For us, it was a job that we did successfully. Everyone gave more than anyone could ever have dreamed.”

In Operation Cast Lead, Maya filled an operational post in the Air Force’s control headquarters in Tel Aviv. “The big difference between the war and an operation has to do with traffic. Gaza is a much smaller territory than Lebanon, and the whole array of troops, jets and helicopters is arranged differently, more crowded. Behavior on the ground is different. Another difference is the cooperation between the troops in the air and on the ground. I saw that many lessons had been learned from the war and the work between the sky and the ground was amazing. The coordination, the productivity, the cooperation – everything was better. After the attacks we would sit and analyze the events together. For example, we would be working with the Paratroopers’ Brigade. Their commanders knew our helicopters, flew in them, worked very closely together. That produced better results.”

After the attacks in which she participated, she read the reports in the newspapers and smile to herself. “I would look and say to myself, ‘All right, I did that.’ Sometimes they wrote that a cell was eliminated, and I knew that no cell had been there at all. It was amusing. But I was glad that people knew how important my work was. It did not matter to me whether they knew which helicopter had done it. The army gave me an opportunity to be part of this work, and that is what is important to me.

I have no interest in the public knowing who I am. Not too many people even know that I’m a combat pilot. The people who know are my friends in the squadron, my good friends from Hadera, my mother and a few acquaintances.”

When she is in uniform, it is hard for her to hide the wings that she wears over the left pocket of her shirt. “Yes, people sometimes stop me on the street. A few months ago, a pilot’s mother stopped me on the street in Tel Aviv. She asked me, ‘What, you’re a pilot?’ I answered her, ‘Yes, I’m a pilot.’ She was very enthusiastic. It was very important for her to tell me that her son was a pilot, too. Even when I’m waiting at a traffic light on my motorcycle, people stop me. Their reactions are usually very supportive. At first, it is a kind of feeler, they look to see if my wings are for real, and then they say, ‘Well done,’ and off I go. The support is nice, but I actually prefer to be anonymous. When we go into a bar wearing civilian clothes, it is not written on our foreheads that we are pilots. I know from inside what it is like to be a pilot, and that pilots are perceived to be arrogant. It is not accurate at all. Behind every pilot is a human being with feelings, difficulties and misgivings. Each person has a different story. Some people are more extroverted, and there are introverted people too.”

A pointer, a motorcycle and a jeep

She lives on her own in a rented apartment in Tel Aviv, two minutes from the sea. Two rooms – a bedroom and a living room. She is raising Choco, her faithful pointer. She rides a motorcycle, but has a stylish jeep as well. She is studying for her bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering and management at Tel Aviv University. “I have two groups of friends: my group from Hadera, which includes myself and ten guys from high school, and a group of men and women pilots. I meet the group from Hadera at least once a week. I don’t mind that they’re all guys. It actually feels natural to me – it’s more spontaneous than it is with women. There are fewer emotions. I also have good women friends, but it’s just simpler for me with guys. They accept me for who I am. They’re more forgiving. If I go off somewhere, they have no problem with it. If I need something, all ten of them will show up right away to help me out. But it works the other way, too. We go out together a lot. We drink whiskey, beer, vodka. We also travel around the country a lot. Once a year we go to Maayan Zvi [in northern Israel], pitch a tent and have fun.”

In her free time at home, she enjoys cooking. “I love my mother’s recipe for chicken soup, and cook amazing fish. For me, it’s all about working with my hands, keeping them busy. I love to be inventive with food. I’m a bookworm, read almost everything. I choose my books by author. I love Hemingway and Marx, but I also liked “The Fountainhead” and Tommy Lapid’s biography, “Memories after My Death.”

Why did you leave the army? You could have stayed and continued your military career.

“I decided to move on, to develop in other directions. I want to manage civilian projects – I still don’t know exactly what. Wait a bit – it’s only been five minutes since I was discharged. I gave the army everything, and now it’s time to go out in a new direction. I’m 30 years old, and my mother is already saying that I should have a boyfriend, get married, give her grandchildren.

“During my army service, I had everything. I learned how to cope with danger and tough situations. I got to meet excellent commanders, wonderful people. My experiences strengthened me. The Air Force is not just about going out and bombarding stuff. It is also a way of life. It is guidance. It’s a connection for people. I was very connected to my path.”

Will you miss it?

“Even today, after a few weeks of not going up in a helicopter, I feel that I miss it. Now I need to do reserve duty once a week, and that is very important. There aren’t many men or women pilots in the Air Force, and coming to the squadron once a week for the next 20 years is a necessity. True, it is not always convenient, and sometimes I have to give up a date with friends because I’m stuck on some training flight, but I know how important it is.”

If all goes well, in three weeks another five women pilots will be standing on the parade ground. Maya says, “The most important thing is that they be decent people. The squadron that they will be going to is a place where they will be for a long time. They will have to make their way wisely, be very clear, set boundaries with the male pilots, and then everything will be easier. They will have to learn and listen to others, and know at every stage that the point they have gotten to is not necessarily the one where they will be in the future. I felt improvement all the time. After that first missile, after various tasks that I performed. I learned my weak points from them, what I was capable of doing. That shaped my world view. I believe that it will happen to them too. The most important thing is that they remember to be modest and keep things in proportion. Being a pilot may be a status symbol, but there are many people who never did a pilots’ course who are amazing and admirable. My mother, for example.”

She also has some advice for women who are considering going into the pilots’ course. “The first thing: dare. Try. Do not be afraid. Follow your dreams. Nothing is impossible. The second thing: Do what is good for you. Do not do things that are good for other people, because that will not work.”

Her mother, Tami, says, “When she was little, I thought that she might grow up to be a chemist or a physicist. I thought that she might invent some unique cure. But Maya played a musical instrument and played soccer and went on to become a pilot, and that is wonderful. The moment that she made her choice, I knew that she would succeed. Now it is time to move on. Let her bring someone home and get married. I want as many babies as possible crawling around my living room.”