Israeli Jewish youth the most right-wing ever


December 7, 2016
Sarah Benton

Analysis of the April 2016 poll results by Times of Israel (1 and 3) and Haaretz (2)


Aren’t we the best? Naftali Bennet, Jewish Home leader and youthful fans from Ramat Gan high school on February 12, 2015. Photo by Tomer Neuberg/FLASH90

Why Israeli kids are so right-wing – an historical explanation

Israeli high-schoolers weren’t around when Palestinians, Israelis interacted more and peace hopes were widespread

By Ben Sales, JTA/ Times of Israel
April 14, 2016

American young people are rallying behind Jewish socialist Bernie Sanders. Their Israeli counterparts look more likely to back Jewish nationalist Naftali Bennett.

A poll of Jewish-Israeli teens released Wednesday by Israel Hayom, the free Israeli right-wing daily, portrays a generation that’s staunchly nationalist, pessimistic on peace and, in part, dismissive of Arab-Israeli civil liberties.

The survey’s full results will be published Friday. Israel Hayom didn’t provide the margin of error, the polling sample or dates.

According to the poll of 11th- and 12-graders, 59 percent of Jewish Israeli youths call themselves right-wing. Twenty-three percent self-define as centrist, while only 13 percent are left-wing. Eighty-two percent say there’s little to no chance of reaching a peace agreement with the Palestinians.

A majority says the Israel Defence Forces is the world’s most moral army. Nearly two-thirds agree with the traditional Israeli saying, “It is good to die for our land.”

Those numbers skew a bit to the right of Israeli Jews in general. The 2015 Israel Democracy Index, a yearly survey put out by the Israel Democracy Institute, finds that Israeli Jews self-define as 49 percent right, 27 percent centrist and about 16 percent left. Three-quarters, according to another IDI survey from March, doubt the chances for Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Such a generational shift reflects recent Israeli history. Israeli 18-year-olds, born in 1998, went through nursery school during a bloody intifada and had seen three wars in Gaza, and one in Lebanon, before graduating high school. Meanwhile, they’ve experienced repeated waves of terror and watched three rounds of failed peace talks.

Unlike their parents and grandparents, they can’t remember the 1980s, when ordinary Israelis and Palestinians had far more frequent contact, or the 1990s, when optimism about peace was widespread. They have no personal memory of Yitzhak Rabin, his assassination as prime minister, the incitement leading up to it or the Israeli social rifts that followed.

The Israel Hayom survey suggests young Israeli Jews have right-wing views on Arabs too. Nearly half say Israeli Arabs shouldn’t be allowed to vote or run for Knesset. Sixty percent say the soldier who shot dead a wounded Palestinian attacker in Hebron shouldn’t be put on trial.

In that sense, the youth agree with their elders. According to the 2015 IDI survey, Israeli Jews in general favor giving Jews more voting rights than Arabs. Sixty percent say only those who swear a loyalty oath to Israel and perform national service should be allowed to vote and run for Knesset — a requirement that would exclude most Israeli Arabs. Most Israeli Jews believe a Jewish majority should be required to make decisions regarding peace, security, economics, governance or society. Most oppose including Arab parties in the governing coalition.

Israel Hayom’s Boaz Bismuth sees his newspaper’s survey as mostly good news. “So what does all this say? That at the end of the day, our youths are similar to their parents,” he writes. “In our case, this is actually heartening: Our youths, most of all, are patriots. We have someone to rely on.”

Israeli Hayom put the best spin on one statistic: that 11 percent of Israeli youths don’t see their future in Israel. The Israel Hayom article called that finding, among others, as “very patriotic.” And while the relatively low number tracks with data suggesting that emigration rates have been declining in the last 20 years, fears that young people will depart for greener economic pastures has prompted much hand-wringing over the years; in 2011, the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption ran a controversial series of TV ads warning Israelis against moving abroad.



Nearly half of Israeli youth believe this woman should not have been allowed to vote. An Arab Israeli woman casts her vote at a polling station in the Arab village of Abu Ghosh, west of Jerusalem, on February 10, 2009. Photo by Nati Shohat/Flash90

Jews-only Poll Highlights Israeli Youths’ Drift to the Right

Poll commissioned by Sheldon Adelson-owned Israel Hayom conducted on 11th and 12th grade high school students exclusively from the Jewish sector, excluding the near-quarter of the country’s non-Jewish population.

By Allison Kaplan Sommer, Haaretz premium
April 13, 2016

Israeli Jewish youth in recent years have generally been perceived to lean further to the right than their parents and grandparents. But a new poll indicates that Israel’s rightist drift is even stronger than previously believed.

The wide-ranging poll assessed the views of Israeli Jews currently in high school, in the years immediately preceding their military service. It was commissioned by and published in Israel Hayom, the daily newspaper owned by Sheldon Adelson and politically supportive of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The poll paints a picture of a highly patriotic and nationalistic generation, and should trouble politicians on the left looking for future widespread support of an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal or even a vision of democratic Arab-Israeli coexistence within the country.

Among the findings of the poll, which was conducted on 11th and 12th grade high school students exclusively from the Jewish sector, excluding the near-quarter of the country’s population that is not Jewish:

– Nearly 60 percent of those questioned described themselves as being politically right-wing, with 23 percent saying that they were centrists and only 13 percent saying they were left-wing.

– An overwhelming majority, 82 percent, said that they believed there was “no chance” or “barely a chance” for peace deal with the Palestinians.

– 85 percent of those polled said they loved their country or loved it “very much” with 89 percent of them said they planned to live out their lives in Israel.

– 88 percent of the teenagers said they planned to do their compulsory military service. 65 percent of them agreed with the statement “It’s good to die for your country” (a quote attributed to Zionist activist and war hero Joseph Trumpeldor). More than half of those polled said there was no more moral army in the world than the IDF.

The poll included views reflective of some of the burning controversies in Israel’s headlines over recent months:

– 60 percent of the teens said that the soldier who shot and killed the disarmed terrorist in Hebron should not be tried for his actions, with just 30 percent saying that his actions justified a criminal trial.

– Only 52 percent of those polled said that Arabs should be permitted to represent their communities in the Knesset with 48 percent saying that they should not. The issue of the loyalty of Arab Knesset members has been in the news since three Arab Knesset members were suspended for meeting with the families of slain terrorists.

The statistics published by Israel Hayom on Wednesday were just some of the findings of the poll, which was conducted by New Wave Research in conjunction with the newspaper between March 27th and 30th on a sample of 308 Israeli teenagers. According to the newspaper, additional findings will be published on the weekend.


Half of Jewish high schoolers say Arabs shouldn’t vote – poll

New survey finds 59% of high school students consider themselves right-wing, only 13% identify as left-wing

By Dov Lieber, Arab affairs correspondent, Times of Israel
April 13, 2016

A new poll published on Wednesday found nearly half of Jewish Israeli high school students saying they believe Arabs should not have the right to vote.

The poll, conducted by New Wave Research for the Israel Hayom daily, asked Jewish Israeli high school students in grades 11-12 a variety of questions intended to probe their opinions on current affairs and political identity, among other issues. Its full results will be published in the newspaper on Friday.

Nearly half (48%) of those polled answered “no” to the question: “Do you think Arab Israelis should be represented in the Knesset?”

The remainder, 52%, said Arab Israelis should have representation in the Knesset.

The figure comes amid an ongoing controversy over the suspension of Arab members of the Knesset who paid a condolence call to the families of terrorists who killed Israelis. That controversy has led to the proposal of a bill that would allow 90 Knesset members to suspend a fellow lawmaker who they believed undermined Israel’s existence “as a Jewish and democratic state,” incited racism or expressed support for a terror group or an enemy at war with Israel.

According to the CEO of pollster New Wave, Reuven Harari, most of the figures in the poll “were not surprising,” as they matched numbers pollsters have found for Israeli adults.

Only 13% of Israeli youth say they consider themselves left-wing.

Hariri told Army Radio that the research had two important and interconnected findings. First, youths in Israel are more right-wing than their parents. Second, according to Hariri, while “the trend around the world is for youth to be more left-wing than their parents, in Israel we are special in that our youth is more to the right of their parents.”

According to Israel Hayom, a right-leaning newspaper close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the poll also found that 59% of 11th- and 12th-graders identified as politically right-wing, 23% identified with the centre and only 13% said they considered themselves left-wing.

These percentages stayed nearly the same when the youths were asked about whether the soldier who recently shot and killed an incapacitated Palestinian attacker in Hebron should be prosecuted. Some 60% said the soldier should not be prosecuted, 30% said he should be prosecuted, while 10% said they had no opinion on the matter.

According to Hariri, 60% of those polled also said they believed medical treatment should not be given to an injured terrorist.

In general, the poll showed a high level of patriotic feeling among youth, with 85% saying they “love the country,” 89% saying they see their future in Israel, 88% saying they planned to enlist in the army (which is mandatory for most Jewish youth), and 65% saying they agreed with the adage attributed to Zionist hero Joseph Trumpeldor, who died in battle in 1920: “It is good to die for one’s country.”

According to the Israel Hayom report, the high levels of patriotism are linked in the poll to the belief among most respondents that the central challenge of their lives is the security threat to the country.

Asked what they loved most about Israel, the top answers were that the country felt like a family and that Israelis banded together in a time of crisis.

The respondents were also distinctly pessimistic about the chances for a peace deal with the Palestinians. A whopping 82% said there was no chance at all of achieving a peace deal, while just 18% said an agreement was possible.

Marissa Newman contributed to this report

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