Eyal Press has a fine piece of reporting up at the NY Review of Books on the rightward shift among Israeli youth. The point of view of the piece is firmly in line with Breaking the Silence and +972, progressive forces in Israel’s civil society. The piece is symptomatic of the late Jewish American awakening to Jim Crow in Israel/Palestine (half a century into the process). Some excerpts:
“For the last two or three years, we’ve been seeing a very consistent trend of younger Israelis becoming increasingly right-wing,” Dahlia Scheindlin, a public opinion analyst who also contributes to +972, told me. Last year, Scheindlin carried out a survey on behalf of the Kulanana Shared Citizenship Initiative that showed eroding support for democratic values among Israeli youth, at least insofar as the rights of non-Jews go. One question in the survey asked whether there should be “Equal access to state resources, equal opportunities [for] all citizens.” Among Jewish respondents between the ages of 16-29, a mere 43 percent agreed.
Young Israelis also tend to take a hard line on the Palestinian conflict. … In October, a poll conducted by New Wave Research asked, “If Palestinians and Israelis reach an agreement… and the Israeli government brings the agreement to a referendum, would you vote for or against?” Among voters over 55, 61 percent—nearly two out of three—said they would support a deal. Among those younger than 35, it was the opposite: only one in three (37 percent) would vote in favor of an agreement.
…One reason tolerance may be less widespread among young Israelis is that they rarely interact with Palestinians or Arab-Israelis. “You don’t see Palestinians on the streets of Israel,” notes Yehuda Shaul, a twenty-eight year-old activist who co-directs the organization Breaking the Silence. “You just don’t see them.” For many young Israelis, their first sustained, daily contact with Palestinians happens during their army service…
More recently, following the 2008-2009 Gaza War and the deadly raid on a humanitarian aid flotilla bound for the Gaza Strip in May, 2010, actions roundly condemned abroad, Israelis have increasingly emphasized the outside world’s knee-jerk criticism of their government’s conduct. “Young people have been hearing for the last three, four, five years: ‘Everybody hates Israel!’” says Dahlia Scheindlin. “Older people remember the years when people actually liked Israel. They’re more likely to view criticism from the outside as a possibly legitimate critique of Israel’s policies. Young people are basically being told, over and over again, that criticism of Israel is de-legitimization of Israel, because they’re anti-Semites.”..
“Maybe it’s not a surprise that the minority in any country is very supportive of democratic rights,” says Dahlia Scheindlin. “But it does seem ironic that in the Jewish State, which insists on defining itself as the Jewish democratic state and the only democracy in the Middle East, the Arabs are our most democratic citizens.”
