Roni Zuckerman

Roni Zuckerman, the first female jet fighter pilot for the Israeli Air Force, received her wings in 2001. Zuckerman is the granddaughter of Zivia Lubetkin and Icchak Cukierman (also known as Yitzhak Zuckerman) whose nom de guerre was "Antek". Her grandparents were among the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising during World War II and among the 34 fighters who survived. They were founding members of Lohamei HaGeta'ot ("the Ghetto Fighters' kibbutz"), which was established near Haifa in the late 1940s by survivors of the ghettos, and it was there that Zuckerman was raised.

Although women had served as pilots during the Israeli War of Independence and a few years thereafter, the Israeli Defence Forces had, until 1995, denied women the opportunity to become pilots. After the prohibition was lifted, the first female graduate was F-16 navigator "Shari" in 1998, followed three years later by Zuckerman, the first female jet-fighter pilot in IAF history. Another Israeli woman who took the course at the same time as Lt Zuckerman, but failed to qualify, described to a reporter the training as "mentally and physically exhausting." She stated, "I did 100 push-ups a day, which is difficult for a woman. Of the women on the course, only Roni qualified."

See also

• Yael Rom
• Women in the Israel Defense Forces