Why 56% of Israeli Voters 18-22 Consider Themselves ‘Right Wing’

This survey is getting a lot of attention.

According to a recent Maariv poll published this past week conducted by Lazar Research, led by Dr. Menahem Lazar in collaboration with Panel4All, a majority of first-time voters in Israel’s upcoming Knesset elections-young people between the ages of 18 and 22-identify as right-wing.

The survey finds that 56% of this age group considers itself right-wing, compared with 44% of Israelis aged 23 and older.

Among younger Israelis, 22% describe themselves as center-right, 14% as centrist (compared with 27% of older Israelis), and 8% identify as center-left or left-wing.

The poll also found that the preferred prime ministerial candidate among young voters is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, garnering 35% support, followed by former prime minister Naftali Bennett at 19%. Other candidates received considerably lower levels of support.

More than half (57%) of respondents indicated that their sense or practice of religious faith has grown stronger since October 7, while 54% reported a heightened connection to Jewish tradition.

This surge in religious identification comes amid an overwhelming sense of pride in their Israeli identity. 68% of respondents expressed pride in being Israeli, with 46% calling Israel a “very good” place to live, and 36% labeling it a “good” place to live, culminating in a 79% overall satisfaction rate with life in Israel.

The survey also sheds light on Israel’s high military readiness, with 18% of young people having served in the reserves since October 7, 2023. Half of these reservists reported serving for several hundred days.

The Jerusalem Post story claims that this is a ‘major shift’. It’s a shift, but it’s not that major. Much of the commentary focuses on Oct 7. Sure, that was a game changer, but it’s also a simplistic cliche that makes Israel seem understandable to people from outside the country. A crisis that ‘radicalized’ Israelis.

The thing to understand about the impact of minorities and immigration on Israel’s political binary is that it works in the exact opposite way that America’s political system does.

In the U.S., immigration leads to more left-wing voters who are hostile to America and the GOP and can be enlisted in the various culture wars against the majority. In Israel, Jewish ‘minority’ immigrants, primarily Middle East ‘Mizrahi’ Jews and Russian Jews are far more right-wing than the older population, and extremely resentful of the Left for reasons that I’ve discussed in the past.

The people who tend to have kids are more religious and more ‘ethnic’ than the old leftist elites. They also have working class concerns and zero sympathy for leftist bleeding heart nonsense.

In the U.S. and Europe, leftists were able to convince immigrants that they had their interests at heart and to team up with them against the ‘establishment’. In Israel, the Left was and still is the widely loathed establishment. Despite losing every election in a long time, Israel’s Left clings to power in the least liked parts of the establishment, the bureaucracy, the justice system, and the cultural elites.

So yes, your average Mizrahi 18-year-old hates the Left and wants to see a crackdown on Islamic terrorism. He doesn’t even begin to speak the same language as the cringing leftists who show up on CNN or Tucker Carlson to explain that Israel is the bad guy and the Islamic terrorists have a point.

‘Ugly Israel’ is tried of promises and lies. It’s tired of being told to shut up when its children are killed, when its cars and livestock are stolen, and when rocks are thrown at it in the street. It’s tired of cities being overrun by illegal African migrants, by Muslim clans who move in and try to drive out their Jewish neighbors, of the theft, the fraud and the abuses by a corrupt bureaucracy. And ‘Ugly Israel’ votes.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is the subject of endless media rants and will be the subject of many more, is in the new government because while ‘Beautiful Israel’ couldn’t be bothered to listen to those people, he showed up waving a gun at Arab Muslims throwing rocks in Jerusalem.

‘Beautiful Israel’ condemned him as a “far-right fascist”, an “ultra-nationalist extremist” and a bunch of other media word salads, but that’s why he’s in the government and Lapid is partying. If ‘Beautiful Israel’ had felt impelled to do something about the everyday Muslim violence, instead of selling off the country’s energy assets to Hezbollah and France’s President Macron while posing for selfies in Dubai, Ben-Gvir wouldn’t have a chance to show what he can do.

Young Israelis are split between a narrowing percentage of wealthy lefty elites, who are going to vote for leftists, and the much higher birth rates of third or fourth generation Iraqi, Egyptian, Yemeni Jews, not to mention more recent refugees from France or the Netherlands, second generation Russian Jews, some of whom find cheaper housing on the frontier where they have to be armed and ready. Then pile on the ‘Haredi’ who represent much of the next generation, and are not conventionally ‘right-wing’, but are also far from liberal, and the Religious Zionists kids who make up much of the military.

The surprising thing isn’t that 56% of that cohort identify as ‘right-wing’. The surprising thing is that only 56% do.

If you take away one thing, make it this. Everything you see about Israel in the media and on social media, pro or con, has as much to do with everyday life as a random Netflix drama series has to do with real life in America.

To best understand Israel, think of it as a reverse Europe, where the weaker liberal locals are being overtaken by immigration from the rest of the world. Now imagine that the immigrants are more Christian and more patriotic than the Europeans, view England, France and Germany as their own countries, and are far more determined to fight for them.

That is what’s been happening in Israel.

The Israeli Left’s response to that is a species of hysterical denial best captured in this classic Latma skit in which the media discovers the existence of the public