Israel's deepest divide
By Dahlia Scheindlin |Published March 20, 2016
The religious-secular chasm may be kept at a low boil beneath the unifying factor of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. But more likely, the polarization is one reason why Israel does not take more action to end the conflict.
A recent and vast survey of Israelis by the Pew Research Center showed deep divisions of attitudes within Israeli society. Much of the attention centered on the finding of highly opposed views “not only between Israeli Jews and the country’s Arab minority, but also among the religious subgroups that make up Israeli Jewry,” as Pew’s own Facebook description read.
The survey offers many valuable findings, but the fact that Jews hold profoundly different attitudes based on how observant they are is the least original among them. Among Jews, the level of religious observance (secular, traditional, Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox self-definition) has long explained the most enduring and irreconcilable differences in Israeli Jewish political opinions. It predicts whether an Israeli Jew holds left, center or right-wing attitudes more than any other demographic — this has been true during my own 17 years of polling and all earlier data I know of.
Continued : http://972mag.com/israels-deepest-divide/117987/
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