Chair, Herzliya Conference; Head, Institute for Policy and Strategy

patriotism and national security in Israel

We are now moving on from the materialistic issues to the ethical and spiritual ones. These are aspects that are relevant to National Resilience, these are the corporeal topics.

Today we are going to address a theme that is not “politically correct”, causing others to refrain from dealing with it. However we will take this topic upon ourselves. Patriotism in Israel has been neglected and the report that we are about to present here contains a comparative description between us and other states. Today's discussion of this subject, which is tied to the National Resilience, is the first step of a future project that we have just launched in our institute.

I would like to present our approach to the project:

What is patriotism?

Alexis de Tocqueville defined patriotism as an affinity, to land that is free of  personal interest, an affinity of man to his native land and an admiration of his past.       

John Stewart defined it as a feeling of mutual interests that those who are ruled by the same government, living on the same lands and having the same history.

Classic philosophers knew how to tell the difference between Patriotism which is a more defensive and protective feeling, and Nationalism and its continuance to extreme Nationalism or even Chauvinism which is a feeling of hatred of the foreign that can even reach violence.

Understanding the measuring qualities – the charting was based on sociological polls done by well known institutions that are well known around the world and have been examining the Patriotism phenomenon in various countries for years, searching for the valid questions that will allow us to compare Israel to other countries and reach the level of the “test question”.

These are the dimensions that do with patriotism: If you love your country, how much are you willing to sacrifice for it? [the ultimate test] , what are you willing to die or kill for? And the question test that asks about the rootedness – we asked how connected people are to their land, and would they continue to live there even if another country would offer better conditions, such as financial benefits?

The dimension of pride is trivial but as much importance: “how proud are you of your country?”.

The final dimension is the symbolic one that rated the importance of symbols such as the flag, the Hebrew language Jerusalem and the national symbol of the state.

The first finding was the Israeli- Palestinian conflict is felt in the gaps between the Jews and Arabs as well. Both are Israeli citizens. It was interesting to survey them and see what they say about the patriotic question. The Arabs could define themselves as “Israeli Patriots or Palestinian Patriots”. For every two Arabs defining themselves as Palestinian Patriots there was one that defined himself as an Israeli one. These findings are not surprising but they map a truth that we must know even though it is a tragic truth.

The second finding tests the willingness to fight for the country that you are a citizen of. The Jewish–Israeli willingness was either “always willing to fight” and “almost always” while the majority of Arab- Israeli answers were “never” or “almost never”.

It is interesting to see the visual results. In the future we would like to examine them over a long period of time. The Ideal situation is that in the future everybody will like to defend their country. This will happen when the Israel's situation is normalized.

We will examine our place on the list as apposed to western democratic countries that we would like to imitate, with the topic of how Israeli’s define themselves and the source of their pride. It is interesting to see how both Jews and Arabs are equally very proud of Israel's technological achievements. The Arabs are three times prouder than the Israeli Jewish citizens of the welfare policy. Think about the explanation:

Israeli Arabs- compare Israel to other Arab countries and than they are proud due to the realities of other Arab countries.

Israeli Jews- compare themselves to other western countries and than they would like to see improvements.

What brought up our spirits was the answers to the question: “How much are you actually willing to sacrifice for your country?”, We were at the top of the list on that one, even when it was asked before the Intifada which surprised us because the Americans are well known for their strong patriotism and their willingness to fight.

The Jewish state does not like to fight. The fact that Israel is in the first place means that there is an indicator for the ultimate test. It is not because of pride as much as the feeling of threat.

The dimension of pride put us on the lower third of the western countries. Israeli pride is not blind. Even though there is a lot of national criticisms towards the state, people still love it very much.

I would like to ask Mr. Gal Alon to present more informative factors of this presentation:

When this poll reached the media, the headline was: “one of every four Israeli’s would like to leave this country”. This is how the media translated the question: “would you be willing to live in another country if it had better benefits to offer you?”. What needed to be changed was that one out of every three Americans would be willing to change their place of residence, as well as half of the Europeans.     

In this poll we tried to think of ways of charting the affinity of Israeli patriotism. We have used polls that have been done by international researches examining the different dimensions in order to map the affinity for patriotism. We have to mention that the research was done after the disengagement from Gaza and Professor Uman receiving the Nobel Prize.

As for the question of the willingness to fight:

Most of the Jewish Israelis are patriots. There is however a concerning matter of the younger generation’s approach of the ages between 18-29. That is a red light that we must relate to. One of every four Israelis defined themselves as patriots in a very strong way.

In the Arab-Israeli sector 3/4^ths are not willing to fight, although we can might prefer to see the glass half full; a fourth said that they would be willing to fight.

Is this Israeli patriotism?

Age as a factor– one out of every seven youths said that they would not fight. The age group of 40-49 were born onto the Yom Kippur war that fought the Lebanon war. They said that it was most likely that they would will to fight.

About the question of the willingness to be a citizen of another country- 80% of the Jews said that they would prefer to be citizens of their own country, and the Arab population was very similar in that.  It is important to mention that in some age groups the Arab sectors had a lead on the Israelis when they refused to be citizens of a different country.

When we asked the tempting question what if the “other country” offering benefits such as financial benefits, we found out that 2 out of every five Jews were willing to leave the country.

In conclusion the younger generation needs attention. When we talk about “weaving Zionism again” this is what it is all about. The new generation has to receive new contents on Zionism.