Young, restless and not very democratic
By Ze'ev Segal
Haaretz, December 20, 2004
Earl Warren, who was chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and architect of the age of human rights in the 1950s, once said on a visit to Israel that human rights are not ensured and must be fought for each day anew. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the ruling he handed down in Brown vs. the Board of Education, which opened the way to the elimination of segregation between blacks and whites in American schools. This ruling led to riots in the states of the racist South and was enforced by the National Guard. President Dwight D. Eisenhower said that the most foolish thing he had done was to have appointed Warren as chief justice.
During the year of the 50th anniversary of that historic decision - an echo of which resonates in the recent ruling by Israel's Supreme Court, stating that there is to be no discrimination between Jews and Arabs in the allocation of lands by the Jewish Agency - a distressing and worrisome picture is revealed here. In a study conducted by Profs. Ephraim Yaar and Daniel Bar-Tal of Tel Aviv University, at the initiative of the Institute for Economic and Social Research and with the support of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, it emerges that Israeli democracy does not have a high rating among teenagers and young adults.
The study, published yesterday, examined the values of 1,750 young people between the ages of the 15 and 18 and between the ages of 21 and 24. It found that 67 percent of these Israelis believe that strong leaders can be more beneficial to the country than laws and public debate. Fifty-one percent of the Jewish subjects said that Israeli Arabs should not be allowed to be elected to the Knesset; about 30 percent of the subjects approve of nonviolent forms of civil revolt like demonstrations without a permit and refusal to serve in the territories, actions that involve disobeying the law; 24 percent support violent revolt, as compared to 9 percent who approved of this in a study that was conducted a number of years ago. The good news in the results: Young people care about what happens in the country and there is an absence of alienation from the political realm, as commonly exists in many countries.
These figures are published at a time when violent clashes between Israelis and Palestinians have become routine. They come on the backdrop of disclosures of deviant behavior by Israel Defense Forces soldiers in the territories. In the nature of things, they are influenced by the move toward extremism among Israeli Arabs and the harsh statements about them that are made by elected officials. The reality that is revealed in the study could be characterized as a natural disaster. It can be explained in the context of the terror attacks, on the one hand, and the control over another people, on the other.
When the cannons roar, democracy is weakened - according to one approach that is common in studies of this issue. The prolonged conflict, which is exacting Israeli and Palestinian victims, by its very nature causes positions to become extreme among the young and restless. In such a reality, it can be argued, nothing that can be done will strengthen the foundations of democracy or will prevent views of a racist character.
When the overall social reality is one of violence and extremism, what can be expected of the young? It is impossible to dismiss the cumulative weight of these arguments, which are reinforced by facts on the ground: The events of October 2000 and the identification of a large segment of the Israeli Arab population with the Palestinians explain the views of the young Jews that are expressed in the study. The disappointment with Israeli democracy among the Arabs can be explained by a reality of continuing discrimination with respect to budgeting and their integration into the civil service and other sectors.
The Jews and the Arabs are united in not seeing freedom of speech and true debate as basic values. Apparently the lack of a written and detailed constitution, which includes the recognition of civil, political and social rights, makes it difficult to instill democratic values. And with all this, it appears that until now, little has been done to instill the values of democracy in young people.
In the schools, civics is a subject of secondary importance, that in many cases is taught by teachers who lack sufficient training. Most schools do not invest the appropriate resources in breathing life into a subject that could be fascinating if taught through open debates, mock trials, the screening of films that present dilemmas of democratic values, visits to the Independence Museum in Tel Aviv and to the Supreme Court in Jerusalem, and the like. If the matriculation exam in civics is indeed eliminated, it will be a death blow to the subject.
For its part, the Israel Defense Forces devotes a minimum amount of time to the inculcation of the values of democracy, while it could be doing quite a lot more under the guidance of the military advocate general; in the universities, time has not been found to teach a subject like "Israeli democracy," which would examine the institutions of government and civil rights, outside of the faculties of social sciences and law, which deal with this directly.
The presentation of the study yesterday at the Presidents' Residence is not enough. Such a study must spur fresh activity at the Ministry of Education, which for now is far from creating a significant change in the way civics is learned. The Knesset Education Committee must discuss this study and formulate recommendations for modes of action to deal with the dangerous phenomena that are revealed in it. Israeli democracy, as it emerges from the Declaration of Independence, Knesset legislation as a whole and court rulings, is sometimes a democracy on paper. It is not ensured without a constant struggle for its existence - in practice as well as in theory.
