Intergroup hatred between Arab, religious-Jewish and Charedi youth is high and nearly half of religious-Jewish youth support denying Arabs the right to vote, according to the 2021 Index for Shared Society Progress in Youth (ISSPY) published by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Accord Center last week.
The ISSPY is based on a survey conducted from May to July of 2020 among 1,091 teenage boys and girls between the ages of 16 to 18 in the four education streams in Israel: secular-Jewish, religious-Jewish, Arab and Charedi. The Accord Center specializes in social psychology of intergroup relations.
The report examines perceptions, feelings, attitudes and behaviors of teenagers in the context of intergroup partnership and the effects of the coronavirus outbreak on relations between the four groups.
The survey found that 66% of Charedi youth expressed hatred against Arabs, while 42% of religious-Jewish youth expressed the same. Some 24% of secular Jewish youth expressed hatred against Arabs and 23% expressed hatred against Charedim.
Among Arab youth, 22% expressed hatred against Charedim, 22% expressed hatred against religious Jews and 12% expressed hatred against secular Jews.
The survey also found that many religious-Jewish (about 41%) and Charedi (about 58%) youth hold stereotypical and negative views of Arabs, while many Arab youth (50.5%) hold stereotypical and severely negative views of Charedim. About 35% of secular youth expressed negative views of Charedim.
The center expressed concern over findings that a relatively high percentage (49%) of religious-Jewish youth expressed support for denying Arabs the right to vote. The report additionally found that the less aware religious-Jewish youth were of anti-Arab discrimination, the more they supported denying Arabs the right to vote.
“It is possible that these phenomena reinforce each other – those who are unaware of discrimination against the Arab minority, even support its extremism,” wrote the researchers in the report.
Religious-Jewish and Charedi youth also expressed lower support for minority rights compared to other groups in the survey. The study also found that, amid the coronavirus outbreak, youth from all groups in Israeli society believed that resources should not be equally allocated between the groups and that groups more heavily affected by the outbreak should not receive more assistance. Religious-Jewish and Charedi youth supported allocating resources to the Arab sector considerably less than they supported allocating resources to Jewish groups, according to the report.
“It seems that the boys and girls of all groups are less supportive of providing assistance to groups that they perceive as the most threatening, perhaps as a kind of means of punishment,” wrote the researchers in the ISSPY.
The study additionally found that religious-Jewish and Charedi youth showed low willingness to be close with or improve relations with Arabs. The researchers described the desire and readiness of Charedi youth to meet or interact with Arabs as “almost non-existent.” Arab youth expressed a higher level of readiness for closeness with Jewish groups than the Jewish groups expressed towards them, but their desire for closeness with religious Jews and Charedim was still very low.
Despite the relatively severe findings of the survey, the study did find some signs of improvement compared to prior years. Secular and religious Jews and Arabs expressed a higher level of readiness for closeness between the groups compared to previous years and fewer secular and religious Jews and Arabs expressed negative and stereotypical views of other groups compared to previous years. The most impressive declines in reports of negative and stereotypical views of other groups was reported among Arab youth, especially concerning their views of religious Jews, according to the study.
“According to the research literature in the field of social psychology, isolated groups often work against other isolated groups to promote themselves and protect their image on their own,” wrote the researchers as a possible explanation for the tense relations between Arab and Charedi youth.
This is the first year that the report is being published for the general public. In the past, the report was presented to the president of Israel as part of the Israeli Hope in Education project of the President’s Office, the Education Ministry and the Lautman Forum.
The full ISSPY report will be published on Tuesday during a conference with President Reuven Rivlin at 10 a.m.
