A new poll by Israel Hayom has shown that most Israeli youths identify as right-wing and half of them considered the IOF to be the most moral military in the world. The daily disguised the conservative view as “strong patriotic sentiment.”
Yet patriotism is a word used to describe attachment to a homeland. In the case of the Israelis who live on occupied Palestinian land, the homeland is nothing but an invented notion that can only realize itself by trying to erase the presence of Palestinians and claim that they had never existed before them.
The poll was conducted by New Wave Research on behalf of Israel Hayom using a random representative sample of 308 Jewish students currently in grades 11 and 12.
Some 85% students said they loved the Israeli regime, and 89% said they saw their future there, according to the poll. The sample also showed the extent to which the youth have been indoctrinated into believing that it is their duty to join Israeli Occupation Force as 88% said they planned on enlisting.
Furthermore, more than 50% said they believed the IOF was the most moral military.
This view appears widespread despite Israeli violations of human rights and breach of international law. If half the Israeli youth believes the IOF to be the most moral military in the world, then they have probably not seen what this military does or they justify these atrocities with ethnocentric excuses.
How can 50% think of the IOF as the most moral? That also excludes those who think it has at least any kind of morality in its system?
“In the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Israeli forces committed unlawful killings of Palestinian civilians, including children, and detained thousands of Palestinians who protested against or otherwise opposed Israel’s continuing military occupation, holding hundreds in administrative detention. Torture and other ill-treatment remained rife and were committed with impunity,” briefs Amnesty International, a human rights group.
Amnesty further states: “The Gaza Strip remained under an Israeli military blockade that imposed collective punishment on its inhabitants.”
In the latest war on Gaza, at least 2,104 Palestinian were killed, including 495 were children and 253 women, according to the United Nations. Indiscriminate bombings as well as systematic targeting of residential areas were the main reasons of this high death toll. In addition, the so-called "knock on the roof" method was used by the Israelis in which warnings of impending airstrikes were given but most occurred less than a minute later, leaving civilians no time to escape.
In the West Bank, Israeli troops have repeatedly attacked Palestinians including minors. In 2014, Israeli forces killed at least five children with live ammunition one of whom was Yousef Shawamrah, 14. The boy had left his home to look for wild thistle along the separation barrier in the southern West Bank when he was shot in the back.
An Amnesty International report found that 41 Palestinians had been killed by live ammunition in the West Bank between 2011 and 2013 amid a “policy of impunity” that allowed Israeli troops to use excessive force knowing they would escape punishment.
More than 1,400 Palestinian children have been killed in the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 2000.
If this is morality in their opinion then the moral construct of the Israeli regime is severely impaired. But then again, these youths have been brought up ‘à la Zionism” which plants the notion that Jews are above all, even the law.
The Hilltop Youths and the so-called Price Tag Policy, which is regularly carried out by Israeli youths to punish Palestinians for their presence in the West Bank are examples of the results of such an upbringing. And who can ever forget the pictures of Israeli children writing messages of hate on Lebanon-bound missiles, the same missiles that probably killed hundreds of innocent children in July 2006?
“There is no singular ‘Jewish morality.’ There is no horror that Israelis were not involved in, even if to a lesser extent than others, in numbers and magnitude. Every religion and nation, of course, believes that its goal – but only its goal – justifies the means,” a Haaretz article read.
Nearly 60% stated that agree with right-wing views, 23% said they were centrists, and 13% considered themselves left-wing. Most acknowledged that the fragile security situation is the Israelis’ most pressing concern.
Regarding the prospects of establishing peace with the Palestinians, respondents were doubtful.
“When asked, "In your opinion, what are the chances of reaching an agreement with the Palestinians?" pessimism abounded: Some 82% said there was zero chance or a very slim chance of that happening,” Israel Hayom reported.
The results of the poll demonstrate that the Israeli upbringing is contingent to brainwashing. Teaching children to hate at a young age, it is only predictable for them to grow up with false convictions of morality, even to the extent of perceiving the IOF—recently condemned by the US for using excessive force— as the most ‘moral’ military in the world.
