When an Israeli says “I shifted to the right,” he or she is sending us a message: I became more suspicious of peace processes, more skeptical of concessions, more demanding about security guarantees.
What happened to us Israelis in the war? A lot of things happened. Some will fade with time, some will stay for a while and some might be with us for a very long time. One way to trace the change is by listening to what Israelis say about themselves. Not what politicians claim about “the public,” not what commentators assume, but what real people report when someone calls and asks them to place themselves on a political map.
Last week we reported that Israel became more traditional. Today we look at ideology, where the story is slightly different. When it comes to ideology, there is no need for a familiar “on the one hand” (most Israelis became more traditional) and “on the other hand” (seculars became less traditional). On the question of left and right everybody is moving in the same direction. To the right.
We should be precise about what we measured. We asked people to tell us where they were politically before the war, and where they place themselves today. This is not a measure of concrete movement over time but a measure of felt movement. Israelis say: “I moved to the right.” Did they really? That will require other data sets. But the very fact that they feel they have moved is meaningful.
When an Israeli says “I shifted to the right,” he or she is sending us a message: I became more suspicious of peace processes, more skeptical of concessions, more demanding about security guarantees. “I moved right” is another way of saying: don’t expect from me the same positions I expressed before the war. My situation changed; my stance changed.
To capture this movement, we used an unusually detailed scale. Not the classic five definitions – left, center-left, center, center-right, right – but nine rungs, from “deep left” to “deep right.” Why? Because many people feel a slight shift that is not strong enough to justify jumping from “center” to “right.” On a coarser five-point scale they will stay where they are. On a nine-point scale, they can inch from “center” to “right close to center,” or from “right” to “deep right” — and we can see it.
And this is, in fact, what we see: not dramatic leaps from “left” to “right,” but small, consistent steps to the right. A notch here, a notch there. From “left close to center” to “center.” From “center-right” to “moderate right.” From “right” to “deep right.” In most cases, it’s one step on the ladder. But it happens almost everywhere, in almost every group.
Take one example from the table behind the survey (the table is on the right-hand column). Among Israelis who say that before the war they were “right close to center,” only a bit more than a third — 36% — say they are still “right close to center” today. The rest moved. Some of them moved left or to the center, but many more moved right: 29% now define themselves as “moderate right,” 17% as “right,” and 7% as “deep right.” Add these up, and you get a clear result: 53% of this group shifted to the right. A majority of those who were already somewhat right-wing moved further right.
Once you understand how the table works, it becomes easy to see the pattern. For most starting points on the ideological scale, there are more people moving right than left. In many groups the main move is just one step, but it is almost always in the same direction. The “deep right” has nowhere to go, so it mostly stays put. The center and the center-left still exist, but many within them report a gentle drift rightward. The “deep left” is so small in the sample that we cannot say anything statistically meaningful about it — which is, in itself, a kind of result.
This is similar to what happened to Israelis 25 years ago. A Palestinian campaign of violence – the Second Intifada – leads to a change in attitudes among those under attack. After the Second Intifada, Israel became significantly more right-wing on diplomatic issues and never truly swung back. The “peace camp” of the 1990s evaporated in the 2000s.
Of course, there is still an Israeli camp that calls itself “center” or “center-left,” but it is no longer defined primarily by its stance toward the Palestinians. On that front, much of this camp accepts what used to be called “right-wing positions”: deep suspicion of Palestinian intentions, insistence on strong security control, skepticism about a final-status agreement. A country that has lived through another round of trauma, and that now sees itself – and its political place on the map – somewhat further to the right than before. The coming campaigns are likely to be fought less over Oslo and more over the Supreme Court, over ultra-Orthodox conscription, over corruption and governance.