Attitudes of Israeli youth towards social activism: Between altruism and violence

Abstract

The study examines attitudes of Israeli youth towards three types of social activism: Aggressive (violent and illegal) protest, conventional political participation, and altruistic orientation. Social activism is considered here to consist of a range of possible activities, from violent and illegal protest activities, to altruistic behavior. All have in common two features—caring about a social issue, and willingness to sacrifice (time, effort, money, or jail-time) in order to achieve the social-goal. Israeli politics have been characterized as “The Politics of Provocation” (Wolfsfeld, 1988). Unruly, violent and illegal protest has become a norm for the last two decades. The study is a secondary analysis of a “political socialization of adolescents” survey of Israeli adolescents carried in summer 1998. Comparing aggressive participation attitudes to other forms of activism has immense implications for social policy and the future of democracy. The theoretical questions dealt with the nature of social activism, the practical dealt with determinants of different forms of activism. The results indicate that social activism attitudes exist as a multidimensional construct rather than an unidimensional factor. Overall, gender effects, and the influence of socialization agents were found to be the most influential in affecting youth\u27s attitudes towards social activism, while personal beliefs about the political system, personal efficacy, and levels of engagement in social activism had rather a minor effect, contrary to expectation. Furthermore, embeddedness in a reference group for the most part had a moderating or reversing rather than intensifying effect, when interacting with the attitudes of significant others. All those findings indicate the need for further research into the crossroads of political and moral socialization, social activism, and personal and social development. Judged in the Israeli context, the current study indicates a process of shift in the Israeli moral/political culture. A sense of idealism, social responsibility and interest in social activism, that hopefully will survive the following years of exposure to the social and political systems as they are being handled today by previous, more cynical generations