The Jewish youth is more right-wing and religious

Written by: Antoine Shalhat

The "Index of Boys and Youth in Israel" for the year 2022, which the political analyst for Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper revealed some of its data, provides some backgrounds behind what is happening in Israel, which is described as the extreme right-wing government's coup against the established system of government. It is a large-scale indicator that is prepared every six years. The previous one was published in 2016 and the one before that was published in 2010. It is funded by the German Friedrich Ebert Foundation Fund, in cooperation with the Israeli Macro Center for Political Economy. It includes generations from 15 to 24 years old.

Perhaps the first of these backgrounds, and perhaps the most important of them, is that Israeli society itself is qualified for the most part, politically, religiously and culturally, to accept the coup that we are talking about, mainly because of its compatibility, even from a structural point of view, with what it thinks about. It can even be said that it was this adaptation that opened the appetite of the Israeli extreme right, both national and religious, to push this coup to specific borders.

The index also includes Arab boys and youth from the Palestinians of 1948, but this commentary stops exclusively at what it says about Jewish boys and young men. The first thing that catches the eye is that they have become more religious. In the 2016 index, 40% of these boys and men defined themselves as secular (which is similar to those who defined themselves as secular in the 2010 index, while the percentage of those in the 2004 index was about 54%). As for the current indicator, the percentage of those who define themselves as secular is about 34%. The percentage of those who defined themselves as Orthodox Jews in the current index was 22.2% (10% in the 2016 index, 14% in the 2010 index, and 8.5% in the 2004 index). Regarding the percentage of those who defined themselves as national religious (followers of the religious Zionist movement), it reached 26.1% in the current index (15% in the 2016 index, 11% in the 2010 index, and 10.2% in the 2004 index).

With regard to political and party affiliation, the current index showed that 58% of Jewish boys and youth consider themselves to be from the right to extreme right (about 37% in the 2016 index), and that 6.2% consider themselves from left to extreme left (6.3% in the 2016 index). 27.3% consider themselves middle-to-center leaning towards the right (34.2% in the 2016 index), and 8.6% consider themselves middle-to-center leaning to the left (7.9% in the 2026 index).

According to what the index's compiler, Robby Natanzon, told the newspaper, the left no longer exists among the Israeli youth, and it is almost closer to the percentage of error in the index survey than to the actual existence. In addition, the so-called “middle” has declined a lot and is on the verge of extinction.

The index examined the issue of support for gender equality among Israeli society, in order to infer the extent of the penetration of the obscurantist approach based on religious justifications. It showed that the percentage of those who support it among Jewish boys and men is steadily decreasing, and has reached 72.6% in the 2022 index (80.5% in the 2022 index). the 2016 index, and 85% in the 2010 index).

The index also surveyed the extent of the Israeli youth's trust in the legislative (the Knesset) and the judiciary authorities, and showed that the percentage of trust in them deteriorated to less than 30%. On the other hand, there is a noticeable increase in the percentage of trust in the institutions of the religious system, which reflects the strengthening of the trend of religiosity more and more.

These data shed light, first of all, on the true roots of the issue of the rise of the Israeli right, and its continuation of power over decades, not to mention enabling us to foresee where Israel is going, and what is expected from this path, both internally and externally. About "The New Arab"