Middle East Press On: Funding Genocide, Liberated Palestine, Peace: New Age Islam's Selection, 4 December 2025
By New Age Islam Edit Desk
4 December 2025
Calculated Amnesia: Funding Genocide In Gaza While Policing Truth
From The River To The Sea: Imagining A Liberated Palestine
Germany Knows That Erasing Israel From Various Platforms Does Nothing For Peace
Pardoning Netanyahu Would Weaken Israel, Empower Trump's Interference
For Gaza Border Communities To Rebuild, Israel Must Stop Eroding Resilience, Support
Will Young Israelis' Rightward, Traditional Shift Impact The Country's Future?
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Calculated Amnesia: Funding Genocide in Gaza While Policing Truth
By Ramzy Baroud
December 4, 2025
First, let’s dissect this puzzle.
On February 29, 2024, US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin sent shockwaves when he informed lawmakers in the House Armed Services Committee that over 25,000 Palestinian women and children had been killed by Israel in Gaza up to that date. Austin, the military chief of the Biden Administration, delivered a fact that immediately subverted his own government’s rhetoric.
The announcement was shocking for two main reasons. First, Austin himself had orchestrated the relentless flow of US arms to Israel, directly enabling the very campaign that liquidated those innocent people. Second, the figure provided was noticeably higher than the casualty tally reported by the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza for the same period — 22,000 women and children in the first 146 days of the war.
The crux of the contradiction, however, is that Austin’s detailed account of the US-funded Israeli atrocities in Gaza directly subverted the official narrative regularly disseminated by the White House.
In fact, as early as October 25, 2023 — barely two weeks into the war — President Joe Biden himself began doubting the Palestinian Ministry of Health’s death toll estimates. “(I have) no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using,” he flatly declared.
Naturally, Austin’s declaration neither eroded his unwavering endorsement of Israel nor softened Biden’s patronizing attitude toward the Palestinians. To the contrary, US military and political backing for Israel surged exponentially after that congressional hearing. US military and financial support for the Israeli genocide during the Biden administration in the first year of the war is estimated to be at least $17.9 billion.
These apparent contradictions, however, are not inconsistencies at all, but a perfectly calibrated, deliberate policy. Historically, this approach grants the US license to consistently flout its own declared principles. Iraq was invaded, at a horrific cost of life and societal destruction, under the banner of ‘good intentions’: democracy, human rights, and the like. Afghanistan’s protracted agony of war and instability endured for two decades in the name of fighting terror, exporting democracy, and women’s rights.
The operational part of the equation satisfies military and political strategists. Meanwhile, the hollow rhetoric of democracy and human rights keeps intellectuals, both on the right and the left, mired in a protracted, perpetually unproductive debate that serves to conceal rather than influence policy.
While the US government may have perfected the craft of deliberate contradictions, it is not the original architect. In modern history, this phenomenon has been owned almost entirely by the West: colonialism was advanced as a solution to slavery, and forced conversions were brazenly justified as civilizing missions.
The West’s stance on the Israeli genocide in Gaza, however, offers the most blatant and current example of this deliberate contradiction. A concise examination of Germany’s conduct in the last two years suffices to illustrate the point.
Germany is the world’s second-largest supplier of weapons to Israel, after the US. Not only did it refuse to accept the genocide definition recognized by many countries, and eventually by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), but it also fought ferociously to shield Israel from the mere accusation.
Domestically, it brutally suppressed pro-Palestinian protests, detained countless activists, and outlawed the use of the Palestinian flag, among numerous other draconian measures. Yet, in the same breath, Germany continued to champion freedom of speech and democracy, and criticize Global South nations that allegedly curtailed these same values.
Predictably, Germany continued to arm Israel, concocting every conceivable justification for its support of Tel Aviv, even after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for top Israeli leaders for the crime of extermination in Gaza. Only under immense pressure did Berlin finally yield and agree to stop approving weapons exports to Israel.
Fast forward to recent days. The BBC, among other outlets, reported on November 17 that Germany would reinstate its weapons exports to Israel, rationalizing the decision with the October 10 announcement of a Gaza ceasefire—one that Israel has flagrantly violated hundreds of times.
“Germany’s decision to lift its partial suspension of weapons shipments to Israel is reckless, unlawful and sends entirely the wrong message to Israel,” Amnesty International declared in a press release—a condemnation that, naturally, was utterly ignored.
A week later, new research conducted by two top, highly regarded academic institutions showed that the number of Palestinians killed as a result of the Israeli genocide is substantially higher than the Gaza Ministry of Health figures. Worse, life expectancy in Gaza has plummeted by nearly half because of the Israeli war.
Of the two institutions, the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) is German. The globally leading research organization is largely funded by public money coming directly from the federal government—the very entity that ships the weapons that, along with US support, have fueled Gaza’s escalating death toll.
In all these scenarios, the West serves as the simultaneous judge and executioner, the honest researcher and the weapons manufacturer, the violator and the self-appointed defender of human rights.
But the rest of us in the Global South must not simply yield to the role of the victim, whose lives are taken but precisely counted. To reclaim our collective agency, however, we must begin with a unified realization that the West’s calculated contradictions are specifically engineered to perpetuate the iniquitous relationship between Western powers and the rest of us for as long as possible.
Only by rigorously exposing and forcefully rejecting this hypocrisy can we finally liberate ourselves from the historic delusion that the solution to our problem is a Western one.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/calculated-amnesia-funding-genocide-in-gaza-while-policing-truth/
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From the River to the Sea: Imagining a Liberated Palestine
By Uri Davis
December 3, 2025
This contribution is cognizant of more than a century of a continuing genocidal, apartheid, Zionist invasion of historical Palestine, beginning with the Balfour Declaration of 1917.
Despite the subsequent establishment of the genocidal apartheid State of Israel in 1948 and the elimination of a highly developed Palestinian civilization cultivated on the land of historical Palestine, the land itself remains. Palestinian ownership of the land is evidenced in both Ottoman and British Mandate registration.
The theses summarized below assert the possibility of Palestinian liberation from the river to the sea, in conformity with the implementation of UN resolutions on the question of Palestine, notably the UNGA 181(ii) of 1947 and UNGA 194(iii) of 1948. I take as points of departure the texts The Statehood of Palestine by John Quigley, my own Views on a Future Opposition to Zionism, and Ilan Pappe’s Israel on the Brink.
Theses on a Liberated Palestine
The embedded racism of a genocidal Zionist invasion of historic Palestine and of apartheid Israel blinds its academic, political, social and military establishments as well as its mainstream civil society from comprehending the specificity of the indigenous Palestinian Arab people and their staying power, known commonly as sumud (steadfastness).
Given that the core of this invasion of historic Palestine is predicated upon the pillage of indigenous Palestinian Arab land and the looting of Palestinian-Arab possessions, a regime of escalating corruption is endemic to its established academic, political, social and military systems and cannot be repaired.
Assuming the above, assisted by the escalating success of the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, this thesis suggests the implementation of the right of return of all displaced Palestinians. This includes the families of all Palestinian-made refugees in 1948 and 1967, and during the ongoing genocide. The property rights of these families are recorded in the Ottoman and British Mandate registration, representing all localities from which they have been ethnically cleansed.
That the PLO amends its constitutional definition of “Palestinians” in Article 5 of the Palestine National Covenant, from those with “a Palestinian father,” to those born to “a Palestinian father or mother.”
Amending Clause (e) of the definition in Article 7 of the 1995 Palestinian Authority Elections Law, which enfranchises those born in Palestine but not those with “Israeli citizenship,” for the latter to share the right to vote.
Accepting further that as an inalienable necessary condition for eligibility in respect of participation in national and/or regional and/or local elections, every adult Palestinian citizen to sign a declaration in good faith, opposing collaboration with Zionist institutions.
Under these conditions, the racist concept of Jewish “return” defined under genocidal apartheid Israel Law of Return of 1950 (1970 Amendment) will be abolished. The framework outlined above may serve as a starting point for a democratic socialist state of Palestine, where all citizens and returnees share equal rights, free from settler-colonialism and racial discrimination.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/from-the-river-to-the-sea-imagining-a-liberated-palestine/
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Germany Knows That Erasing Israel From Various Platforms Does Nothing For Peace
By Jpost Editorial
December 4, 2025
Germany knows a thing or two about boycotting Jews and where that leads, making its principled stand against banning Israel from this year’s Eurovision contest especially significant.
Ahead of an expected Thursday decision by the European Broadcasting Union on whether Israel should be allowed to participate in the song contest – one it has been a part of since 1973 – Reuters reported that Berlin made it clear: if Israel is barred, Germany will stay away.
Moreover, and perhaps even more noteworthy, the report added that Germany’s national broadcaster will not air the contest to its 83.5 million citizens if Israel is excluded. Austria, scheduled to host the competition, has taken a similar stand.
Berlin’s position should surprise no one. Back in September, Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that excluding Israel would be “scandalous,” adding that if Israel were pushed out, “I would support not taking part.”
On the other side of the fence are the countries pushing for Israel’s exclusion – ostensibly over the war in Gaza, even though that war is now over: Spain, Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia, and Iceland. These countries, with a combined population of 74.5 million, have warned they may withdraw if Israel is allowed to participate.
This lineup is unsurprising. Spain and Ireland have long led efforts – predating October 7, 2023 – to delegitimize Israel and place it beyond the pale.
A real-time example emerged again this week when Dublin’s city council considered – but for the time being set aside – a motion to rename a park named after one of its famous sons, Chaim Herzog. Herzog, Israel’s sixth president, was born in Belfast and raised in Dublin.
The council debate on Monday made clear this move was not about the Gaza war; it was about Israel, and its very legitimacy as a country. One councilman drew a direct line between Herzog and Israel’s fight for independence – a fight he framed as a cardinal sin.
And therein lies the crux of the matter.
Wider effort to delegitimize the Jewish state
Moves such as these – like the apparent jaw-dropping decision by the Guinness Book of World Records not to include Israel in its records – are part of a broader effort to delegitimize the Jewish state.
Matnat Chaim, an organization that facilitates voluntary kidney donations, contacted Guinness about an event next month that will bring together 2,000 Israeli kidney donors, in the hopes that it might qualify as a world record.
Guinness’s reply, according to the NGO, was that it was not accepting submissions from Israel or the Palestinian territories. If you live in China, Sudan, Venezuela, Iran, Saudi Arabia, or any number of repressive regimes, you can grill the world’s largest hamburger and have it recorded. But if you live in Israel, apparently not.
To those who insist this is not antisemitism but merely a protest against Israeli policies, consider this: for the overwhelming majority of Jews around the world, Israel is a core pillar of their identity. By saying that Israel cannot appear in a song contest or a record book, they are declaring that a foundational part of Jewish identity is illegitimate, unacceptable, outside the bounds of civilized society.
In effect, these moves are trying to police which expressions of Jewish identity are allowed and which are to be shamed, silenced, or erased.
Herzog’s son, President Isaac Herzog, warned of the dangers of this dynamic back in September.
“The delegitimization of Israel and the attempt to exclude us from every possible arena are moves designed to weaken us. It starts with Eurovision but reaches matters that are vital to us,” he said. “I have seen dangerous processes that begin with Eurovision and end in other places.”
While reasonable people can debate policies, seeking to bar Israel outright from cultural, civic, or symbolic arenas crosses from criticism into something far more corrosive – an attempt to stigmatize a core component of Jewish identity.
Excluding Israel from various platforms does nothing to advance peace. It merely signals that Jewish identity, in its modern national form, is unwelcome.
Germany recognizes this, which is why it has taken such a firm and commendable stance. Its position is a reminder that this type of exclusion should never be normalized, and that attempts to delegitimize an entire people never end well. The Germans, speaking from painful experience, know what they are talking about. The rest of the world should listen.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-879118
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Pardoning Netanyahu Would Weaken Israel, Empower Trump's Interference
By Douglas Bloomfield
December 4, 2025
The risky business of pardons
Granting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a pardon Opens link in new window. and dropping all criminal charges against him would dangerously embolden one president and weaken another.
In his 111-page plea to President Isaac Herzog, the nation’s longest serving and most divisive prime minister claims ending his trial would “greatly help lower the flames and promote broad reconciliation” and “I can work” with (or for?) President Donald Trump to better serve the “shared interest of Israel and the United States.”
As proof, he cites Trump’s letter to Herzog urging him to “fully pardon” Netanyahu and calling his case “political, unjustified prosecution.” Bibi was indicted in 2019 on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust in three separate criminal cases. He has adopted the Trump-Roy Cohn dictum: Admit nothing and deny everything.
Granting a pardon without a public admission of guilt, a strong expression of remorse and immediate retirement from politics would damage public confidence in Israel’s democracy, its presidency, and its justice system – a system under unprecedented attack by the pardon seeker and his extremist government.
We’ve seen an explosion of pardons here. In less than a year, Trump, himself a convicted felon, has turned presidential pardons from acts of mercy and justice to symbols of abuse and corruption. Other president have misused the power to pardon but those were largely exceptions; for Trump, it has been the norm since Day One when he absolved the January 6 insurrectionists who tried to overturn an election – and possibly lynch a vice president who did not support their coup.
This week, he freed the former president of Honduras , who was sentenced by a US court last year to 45 years in prison for allegedly creating “a cocaine superhighway into the United States.” Meanwhile, Trump is waging a drug war on Venezuela and killing people without benefit of legal proceedings.
Herzog’s pardon would similarly be seen by many as political favoritism superseding the law. Trump will take full credit for the pardon and exploit it to bolster support from right-wing Jews and pro-Israel Evangelicals.
A pardoned Netanyahu is a weak Netanyahu
AS TRUMP’S poodle, a pardoned Netanyahu would be less free to speak up when he feels America’s actions go against Israel’s interests. A pardon would weaken Israel’s independence and democracy by sanctioning Trump’s blatant interference. For the American president it will be one more “victory” in his endless quest to be hailed as the world’s #1 leader.
Netanyahu came to office determined to end Israel’s independent judiciary, harness the free press, and stay out of jail – not necessarily in that order. In his desperation to keep his job and survive the Gaza debacle, he is making a bargain with the transactional Trump.
At the same time that Netanyahu sent his plea to Herzog, he was invited to the White House for his fifth visit this year. Trump is likely to tell him some version of “I own you, and you owe me big time.” It will reduce Israel to a client state.
Trump already has begun giving orders. In June he ordered Netanyahu to “bring your pilots home, now!” and don’t bomb Iran after the president made a deal with Tehran; in October he ordered Israel to “immediately stop bombing of Gaza,” and lately to not “interfere” in Syria, where he’s taken a liking to its new president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, and he wants to build an air base there.
Netanyahu is looking for a long-term commitment to an enlarged defense aid package, and Trump is looking at a long-term realignment of US Middle East policy no longer centered on IsraelOpens link in new window..
Trump wants to cut a nuclear deal with Iran – remember, this is a guy for whom having a “deal” can be more important than what’s in it – and this time, Bibi will have to go along unquestioningly, unlike what he did when he led the opposition’s lobbying against a sitting president: Barack Obama.
How will Bibi respond when Trump opens a military relationship with the new Syrian regime and tells Israel to stop bombing and withdraw from that country? Or maybe even give back the Golan Heights? Or when he decides to push Palestinian statehood as the Saudis and his other Arab allies insist? Or makes weapons deals that may threaten Israel’s qualitative military advantage?
Netanyahu says a pardon would speed national reconciliation, but it is more likely to have the opposite effect. Polls show a plurality of Israelis oppose dropping his corruption case. Reconciliation means replacing the most extreme government in the nation’s history with new leadership, not handing out a get-out-of-jail-free card.
Netanyahu's divisiveness helped turn Jews away from Israel
RECONCILIATION MUST also reach beyond Israel’s borders. Netanyahu has been a highly divisive figure not only in Israel but in the United States and elsewhere as well.
Support for Israel has been shrinking in America, with some polls showing greater sympathy for the Palestinian cause than for the Jewish state in the wake of the Gaza war. Rightly or not, many hold Netanyahu responsible for that erosion. Even before the war, his attempts to end judicial independence in Israel were seen as a dangerous assault on democracy.
For many years, Netanyahu cultivated the Republican Party, particularly Evangelicals and religious conservatives, at the expense of the Democratic Party, the traditional home of American Jewry. With Trump in the White House, he’s been gushing adoration of the president like a love-sick adolescent, which further turns away Jewish voters.
As Israel under Netanyahu moved away from its historic base and farther to the right, it has begun encountering serious problems in that direction as well. Young Evangelicals don’t share the love of Israel that their parents’ generation has. More troubling are growing isolationism in the MAGA movement and the rising tide of right-wing antisemitism, as seen in the followers of conservative influencers Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes.
From an American political perspective, Israel has a lot of rebuilding ahead, and a presidential pardon would be viewed by many as a move in the wrong direction – sanctioning Netanyahu’s corruption, divisiveness, anti-democracy extremism, hostility toward Palestinians, and subservience to Trump. Those two would-be autocrats may go together, but the American and Israeli people deserve much better.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-879108
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For Gaza Border Communities To Rebuild, Israel Must Stop Eroding Resilience, Support
By Noam Bedein
December 3, 2025
It began with an emergency letter that should never have needed to be written.
Addressed to the prime minister, the finance, health, and welfare ministers, and senior decision makers, it arrived on December 1.
“We, the directors of the resilience centres in the Gaza border and its surrounding communities, issue an urgent call to stop a dangerous and immediate move that threatens to collapse the mental health safety net of the residents.
“The planned cut and the failure to transfer the 2025 budget are not a technical change or a bureaucratic disagreement. This is a severe blow that will lead to a dramatic regression in therapeutic care and will endanger the ability of the entire region to recover.”
For anyone living in the Gaza border communities, this was not a bureaucratic notice. It was a distress signal from regions that have endured over 20 years of rockets, infiltrations, and sleepless nights, followed by the profound trauma left in the wake of October 7
I entered this landscape during my first week as director of international relations for the Sha’ar HaNegev Regional Council. I was on my way to my first major philanthropic meeting, where we were scheduled to present one of the most forward-looking initiatives to emerge from the past year. The Community Resilience Village is an innovative campus that will integrate therapeutic care, community life, and advanced research and training. It is designed to serve the Western Negev and become a national and global model for addressing continuous trauma.
Just minutes before the meeting began, I overheard Nadav Peretz, the director of our Resilience Centre, speaking quietly with Deputy Mayor Adam Azran.
“They just told us from the Health Ministry. They plan to cut our budget by up to 50%.”
The timing felt unreal. As we prepared to present a long-term vision meant to support the next generation, the state was simultaneously cutting the operational funding that keeps trauma therapists, social workers, and mental health teams functioning each day.
This contrast has become a defining feature of life in the Gaza border area.
Local leadership plans decades ahead, focused on rebuilding communities and strengthening civic resilience. National politics, by contrast, often moves according to short cycles, driven by immediate pressures and the temporary illusion of quiet that preceded the catastrophe of October 7.
Our mayor, Ori Epstein, embodies a different kind of leadership. On October 7, he lost five members of his family, including his eldest son, his mother, a nephew, and two brothers-in-law, one of them Ofir Libstein, who served as head of the Sha’ar HaNegev Regional Council. Out of this devastation, he chose to lead.
Speaking in the Knesset on December 1, he said:
“October 7 is the greatest disaster the State of Israel has ever known. Some call it the destruction of the first Zionist home. I personally lost five family members. And I chose this place to rise up. To rehabilitate the Gaza border area, knowing that our ability to recover has an impact that far exceeds the boundaries of this region. It affects the entire nation, both those residing in Zion and the Diaspora.”
Addressing the planned cuts, he continued:
“Our resilience centers are not a privilege and they are not supplementary. They are the basis that allows people to breathe and to try to return to a normal life cycle. The idea that these centers might close is simply inconceivable. Our ability to rehabilitate and grow is based first and foremost on trust. Trust comes from stability. If we dismantle this stability, we dismantle hope itself.”
In his formal municipal statement, he added:
“Anyone who cuts resilience funding now harms our ability to bring life back to the Gaza border region. Our growth depends on the resilience of our residents. Do not cut the budget. Do not stop our growth.”
The importance of resilience in rebuilding the Gaza border area
These words reflect a deeper truth. In our region, resilience is not theoretical. It is the foundation of daily life. It is what enables a child to sleep again, a teacher to return to the classroom, a social worker to guide a family through crisis, a farmer to work the fields, and a bereaved parent to take the next step forward.
This is why Sha’ar HaNegev continues to build the future even as operational budgets shrink.
The Community Resilience Village is our answer. Spanning 60 dunams, it will include trauma therapy units, body mind clinics, animal-assisted treatment, complementary medicine, cultural spaces, green communal areas, and the world’s first research and training center dedicated to continuous trauma. It aims to transform the Gaza border region from a passive subject of study into an active global leader in resilience knowledge.
It is also important to acknowledge that the government, through the Tekuma Authority, is a significant partner in the physical construction of the Community Resilience Village. Tens of millions of shekels in dedicated Tekuma funding are enabling the building of the new Resilience Center, the social services complex, cultural structures, and other key components. These investments are essential.
Yet here lies the core contradiction.
Capital investment builds structures. Operational cuts risk emptying them. Without stable funding for therapeutic professionals, programming, and mental health services, the physical campus cannot serve its purpose. This is the gap residents feel most acutely.
At the same time, global Jewish leadership has stepped into the vacuum with a long-horizon view.
Jewish Federations across North America, KKL, JNF, Keren Hayesod, and leading Jewish organizations worldwide have become strategic partners. They understand that rebuilding the Gaza border communities is not a short-term undertaking. It is a generational imperative.
Their support already fuels multiyear therapeutic programs, clinics, the House for Bereaved Families, community infrastructure, and central components of the Community Resilience Village. They invest where political systems hesitate. They choose long-term stability over temporary solutions.
Their commitment sends a clear message. The frontier communities of Israel will not face their trauma alone.
That morning, after Nadav received the news of the cuts, we walked into the meeting anyway. We presented the vision with clarity. We chose responsibility over despair, long-term rebuilding over reactive crisis management. We demonstrated that although the challenges are immense, the possibilities for renewal are equally significant.
The question now is whether the state will join this partnership wholeheartedly.
If the resilience centers falter, the region falters. And if hope weakens in the Gaza border area, it weakens across the nation.
This region can become a symbol of collapse or a symbol of rebirth.
With committed local leadership and steadfast Jewish global partnership, Sha’ar HaNegev chooses rebirth.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-879084
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Will Young Israelis' Rightward, Traditional Shift Impact The Country's Future?
By Shuki Friedman
December 3, 2025
“Tamid Ohev Oti” (“Hashem Always Loves Me”) was selected song of the year on Israel’s leading radio station, Galgalatz. TikTok is flooded with clips of young people wearing tzitzit proudly studying Torah. Entire battalions prayed together before entering GazaOpens link in new window.. Are these just performative scenes, or signs of something deeper happening among Israeli youth?
The Jewish People Policy Institute’s (JPPI) November Israeli Society, which included a dedicated survey of 18–24-year-olds, examined this question in depth: Have young Israelis drawn closer to religion as a result of the war?
The short answer: yes. And if Israel wishes to remain both Jewish and liberal-democratic, the form of Judaism shaping the public sphere cannot be the ultra-Orthodox or extremist varieties, but rather a Judaism that is open, humane, and compatible with life in a modern, largely secular Western state.
Israel, at its core, is a Western, secular country. But in recent years, and even more so since the war, Israel’s public sphere has taken an increasingly traditional tone. This is not a mass religious revival, nor an “Iranization” of Israeli society. Rather, it reflects cultural, linguistic, musical, and religious practices that more Israelis are choosing to embrace. The trend is visible across large swathes of the population, but because Israel is a young country, it is especially pronounced among young Israelis.
A few basic facts about religiosity in Israel help frame the story. Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) divides Israelis into five identity categories: secular (42.7%); traditional, not religious (21.5%); traditional, religious (12%); religious (12%); and ultra-Orthodox (haredi) (11.4%). Among young adults, the picture shifts. CBS data shows that in the 20-24 age group, the secular share drops to around 38%. Meanwhile, the more religious groups grow, and above all, the share of young haredim rises sharply to18%. Of course, the new JPPI findings must be understood in the context of this broader demographic backdrop.
A clear trend emerges from the new JPPI Israeli Society Index survey: young Israelis are “strengthening in faith.” Thirty-five percent say they now believe in God more than before (only 10% say they believe less). About a third report that they observe more traditional practices than in the past – 38% pray more; 27% read the Bible more.
The pattern is strongest among young Israelis with any pre-existing degree of religious identity, from the traditional (non-religious) to the ultra-Orthodox. Among secular youth, the picture is more mixed: just 10% say they practice more tradition, while 15% say they practice less. Yet, when asked about their friends, young people across all groups overwhelmingly report that “many” – and among the traditionally affiliated, even “most” – have become more religious.
The political shifts are no less dramatic. Young Israelis have moved decisively to the Right. Across every ideological cohort – from the hard Left to moderate Right – nearly half of respondents say they have shifted rightward since the war began. Only about 12% report shifting toward the Left.
What does this mean for Israel’s future?
The demographic reality is well established: the more religious the group, the higher its fertility rate. This is no longer a projection but a long-observed pattern – a steady decline in the proportion of secular Israelis, alongside a dramatic increase in the share of haredim and a more moderate rise in other religious groups. When these long-term demographic trajectories combine with new data showing increased traditionalism among young Israelis, the direction is quite clear: Israel is on track to become more religious and more right-wing .
It is possible, of course, that some of these shifts may reflect a reaction to the trauma of war that may fade over time. But evidence from recent years suggests that the traditionalist turn is not a passing moment – it is becoming embedded in the body politic.
For Israelis who value a Jewish yet liberal, Western Israel, the struggle ahead is not only over democratic norms, but also over the character of Judaism in the public sphere. Will it be inspired by a Judaism that is open, inclusive, and capable of sustaining a liberal, pluralistic society – one that allows every Jew to choose his or her own path?
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-879086
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