"ALL CAPS IN DEFENSE OF LIBERTY IS NO VICE."

Friday, April 12, 2019

Why younger Israelis lean more right-wing

Here's an article explaining why younger generations of Israelis are supporting conservatives more than in countries like the US and/or UK:
According to the 2018 Israeli Democracy Index (an annual study by the Israeli Democracy Institute, a nonpartisan Israeli think tank), approximately 64 percent of Israeli Jews aged 18-34 identify as right wing, compared to 47 percent of those 35 and older. An Israeli Democracy Institute survey conducted just one week before Tuesday’s election likewise found a direct correlation between age and support for Prime Minister Netanyahu: 65 percent of Israeli Jews aged 18-24, and 53 percent of those 25-34, favored Netanyahu winning re-election, while 17 percent and 33 percent, respectively, preferred his more centrist rival, Benny Gantz.

“There are young people who like Netanyahu’s ideology,” Eli Hazan, a Likud campaign spokesman, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “They see the diplomatic achievements of Netanyahu and believe in him. Those are the facts and that’s the reality.”

[...] The trend might have to do with the events that shaped their formative years. An 18-year-old Israeli wasn’t alive during the heyday of the peace process in the 1990s, nor when the Israeli left last won an election, in 1999.

Young Israelis grew up during the second intifada, which saw hundreds of Israelis killed in suicide bombings. The aftermath of the 2005 disengagement from Gaza, which occurred when this group was between 4 to 20 years old, has led many young Jewish Israelis to resent any leader who is willing to cede any more land currently under Israeli control. Since some of this group has served in the army, successive wars in Gaza have only hardened that perception.

“They were born after the Oslo process started, they were exposed to the bloodshed during the second intifada, they are coming right after military service,” Hermann told JTA.

Hazan, the Likud spokesman, said that “people who grew up in the middle of the Al-Aqsa intifada don’t trust the Palestinians, don’t believe in peace. They really want there to be peace, but there is no partner.”

For younger religious Zionist voters in particular, the disengagement, which displaced some 8,000 Jewish settlers, “was considered an absolutely devastating moment that they’ve vowed never to return to,” Dahlia Scheindlin, an Israeli political analyst and a public opinion expert, told JTA.

“The general narrative is, we gave up this land, they sent rockets in return,” Scheindlin said. “The national religious have considered it a national trauma ever since then.”

[...] Right-wing parties have also attracted young voters because they prefer the same platform: social media. Netanyahu, who is famously averse to speaking with the Israeli press, is most comfortable tweeting and posting videos to Facebook. Those happen to also be networks popular with young Israelis.
And there you have it. These are some of the most valid reasons anybody in Israel today prefers the right to the left.

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