Monthly Peace Index: IDF should Espouse Pluralistic and Open Value System

Plus: 72% say soldiers should obey a military order over a rabbinic order

Sixty-nine percent of Jewish Israelis believe it is good for the IDF to espouse a pluralist and open value system, including accepting “others,” such as members of the LGBT community.

Even when examined by level of religiosity, the majority of all types of respondents – secular (81%), nonreligious-traditional (76%), religious traditional (52%) and religious (57%) all agreed the army should be pluralistic and open. Only among Haredim (29%) do a minority believe the army should take a pluralistic approach.

This question was among a series asked this month by the Israel Democracy Institute and Tel Aviv University as part of their monthly Peace Index. The survey focused on the IDF’s relationships with the general public and with the political leadership, as well as how the public perceives the Second Lebanon War today, 10 since the conflict.

On the topic of the IDF, we asked, “What, in your opinion, should a religious soldier obey if there is a contradiction between a military order and a rabbinical ruling?” Some 72% of Jewish respondents say a soldier should obey the military order; only 12% say the soldier should consider obeying the rabbinic ruling.

Relatedly, we asked whether it seems that Israeli-Jewish society has grown closer or more distant from religion. Forty-two percent of respondents say society has grown moderately or strongly closer to religion. Some 36% say Israelis have grown more distant; 14% say it has remained the same.

The Second Lebanon War
Now that 10 years have passed since the war, we asked: “In retrospect, did Israel, in your opinion, conduct the war well or not well?” The response was primarily negative: 60% responded that the war was conducted not so well or not well at all; 23% thought the opposite.

Nonetheless, when it came to the war’s results – quiet on the Northern border – the majority of the Jewish public (54%) sees this as a sign that war was successful.

What if Hezbollah tries to attack again?

More than two-thirds (68%) of the Jewish public and nearly as many (62.5%) of the Arab public believes the IDF is now prepared to prevent Hezbollah from dealing Israel a heavy military blow.

The Peace Index is a project of the Evens Program for Mediation and Conflict Resolution at Tel Aviv University and the Guttman Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research of the Israel Democracy Institute. This month's survey was conducted by telephone on July 25-27, 2016, by the Midgam Research Institute. The survey included 600 respondents (500 Jews and 100 Arabs), who constitute a representative national sample of the entire adult population of Israel aged 18 and over. The maximum measurement error for the entire sample is ±4.1% at a confidence level of 95%.

View full index at www.peaceindex.org/english.