FES Israel in collaboration with the Macro Center for Political Economics has been conducting youth research since 1998 examining attitudes of young people in Israel on a variety of issues – social, demographic, economic, etc. The last survey was conducted in 2016. in parallel, in 2017, a similar study was first undertaken by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation among 9 major Arab countries – Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, Syrian refugees, Morocco, Yemen, Bahrain, and Tunisia.
Now, for the first time, a unique study is being launched comparing the attitudes of young people in Arab countries to the attitudes of young people in Israel, both in Jewish and Arab society.
One of the key findings is that the importance of democratic values such as freedom of speech and minority rights among Jews in Israel is low compared to Arab countries. In other words, young people in Arab countries claim that these values are more important than Jewish youth in Israel. In some cases, even in the Palestinian Authority, young people see these values as more important than Jews in Israel. In contrast, for young Arabs in Israel, these are particularly important values and are the ones that indicate that they are the most important values among the sampled populations.
Less than one-third of Israeli Jews rated as 10th (highest) importance to freedom of speech, compared to 81% of Israeli Arabs. On average, Arab countries account for 42%, significantly higher than the Jewish population in Israel.
It can also be seen that in Arab countries a feeling of insecurity and exposure to violence is mainly associated with men, and these are indeed countries where disputes in the past decade have been expressed in military violence. In Israel, the trend for both Jews and Arabs is the opposite – women feel less secure and more vulnerable to violence. This could indicate that in Israel there is more awareness of violence against women and can report it more.
The study examines other areas such as education, financial security, and future expectations.
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>> Click here to download the publication in Arabic
