Survey: 43% of Israeli teenagers support refusenik stance

Some 43 percent of the teens support either refusal to serve in the territories or refusal to eject settlers, compared with 25 percent of those aged 18 and older, according to the study.

The survey, entitled Democracy Index-Teenage Positions, is part of the institute's annual Democracy Index, and its findings are being published here for the first time. The complete survey, which comprised 1,200 adults and some 600 teens, will be presented to President Moshe Katsav next week.

"The teenagers' support for refusenik positions is a warning light that demands attention," said the surveyors, Prof. Asher Arian, Pazit Ben-Nun and Shlomit Barnea.

The survey found that teens are more supportive than adults of refusenik positions of all kinds. While 75 percent of adults said a soldier must not refuse an order to evacuate settlers, only 57 percent of teens agreed with that statement. A slightly smaller gap was found regarding the refusal to serve in the territories: 71 percent of adults compared to 57 percent of teens said soldiers cannot refuse on grounds that they object to Israel's policy toward Palestinians.

Age was also a substantial factor when it came to implementing these positions in practice: Only 8 percent of adults, but 13 percent of teens said they would act unlawfully were the Knesset and cabinet to pass a resolution contrary to their views on security matters.

The survey divided Jewish teens according to their political tendencies. Surprisingly, teens of all political stripes assented to the refusal to evacuate settlers at similar rates - around 40 percent. In general, the survey found that teens are largely tolerant of ideological refusal motivated by reasons that are contrary to their own views.

The survey's authors found another cause for concern in teenagers' longing for "a strong leader" to head the country "instead of all the debates and laws." A high degree of support for this statement indicates strong anti-democratic tendencies among teens, whose response rate was 60 percent, compared to 58 percent among adults.

Other survey topics that indicate the degree of contentment with Israeli democracy show teens as more optimistic than older citizens. Fewer teens than adults agreed to statements that politicians do not take public opinion to heart, that you have to be corrupt to make it to the top in politics, that it doesn't matter whom you vote for since nothing changes anyway and that speakers should be barred from expressing public criticism of the state.

Arab teens view the political system as less corrupt, and display less desire for "strong leadership."

It is possible that the reason for these positions is that teens are substantially less interested in political matters. Only 29 percent of teens demonstrated a reasonable level of political knowledge (i.e., were able to answer correctly two out of three relatively simple questions, such as who is the Knesset speaker), compared to 61 percent of adults. Only half of the teens surveyed expressed any interest in politics, compared with two-thirds of the adults.

Among teens, Israeli-born Jews displayed the greatest involvement in politics and the broadest knowledge compared to other groups. Arab teens indicated greater interest in politics (46 percent) than immigrant teens (32 percent), but their knowledge level was lower than among their Jewish peers.

Contrary to a commonly held notion that Israelis (including teens) are "news junkies," whose interest in current events is significantly higher than in Western countries, Israel does not top the bill in these matters. A comparison of an interest in politics among teens in various countries found that Israel trails behind Cyprus, Russia and Denmark, for example.

A temporal comparison reveals that the degree of interest among Israeli teens fell from 58 percent in 2000 to just 50 percent in 2004.

This may also explain why teens express weaker ties to the country than adults. Among teens, 27 percent do not think they will remain in Israel, compared to 13 percent of adults.

The situation is even more problematic when it comes to a sense of belonging: nearly half of the teens do not feel they are "part of the country and its problems," compared to a quarter of adults.

Nonetheless, there were no differences in the "Israeli pride" index, which recorded four out of every five respondees as proud to be Israeli.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/430727.html