Global connections
Research & archive
Historical material. Dates, proposals and invitations refer to the time of the original publication.
Social and political divisions
Summing up the results of the study, the main thing that we want to pay attention to is that this problem highlights a significant split in society, which takes place primarily on political and ethno-religious grounds (including the «secularity-religiosity» parameter) and to a certain extent — by age and country of birth. This is evidenced by the wide range of answers proportion to the same questions depending on respondents belonging to a particular group. However, of course, there are deeper contradictions behind this topic and these disagreements that cause the social and political destabilization risks, and more broadly, the political system crisis.
— The most serious risk, according to citizens opinion, is the increase of unrest (70% of respondents fully and partly share this position). Aggravation of political instability, strengthening of the split among people and even civil war, as well as the risk of damage to investment, business sector and economic sustainability are further in terms of the degree of importance decline. Risks of undermining the state security and the deterioration of Israel international relations are significant below. The majority of respondents consider the risk of an illegitimate change of power insignificant.
The lack of population majority confidence in the courts, plus its assessment as not effective or little effective, revealed by the study, is also an indicator of state judicial system crisis, and it is part of the state and political power system crisis.
Almost half of the respondents (49%) unequivocally declare the presence of a systemic crisis in Israel political system, and only 10% — about its absence. A third of respondents unequivocally agrees with the crisis presence, but do not consider it systemic, but one of the many political crises that have been successfully overcome, and another 16% are convinced that this crisis is the result of parliamentary democracies global crisis.
| Statement | Fully agree |
|---|---|
| One of many political crises overcome in the past | 33% |
| A deep systemic crisis | 49% |
| Part of the global crisis of parliamentary democracies | 16% |
| There is no political crisis at present | 10% |
Each statement was rated separately. These are full-agreement responses from four rows of the original table, not one distribution that should sum to 100%.
Original table of crisis assessments (Russian)Views among Israelis born in the former USSR
The second aspect that should be emphasized is the specificity of Israelis mentality of born in countries of the former USSR. They fewer than other respondents have complaints about judicial system, have the lowest level of reform topic interest, awareness of it, are less than others convinced of the judicial system reform need, and have the highest level of confidence in it. Also, those born in countries of the former USSR are fundamentally less than others consider mass actions an effective tool for influencing political decisions, and more than 2 times more often find it difficult to answer the question of mass actions effectiveness as a way of influencing power. True, they believe less often than others do that mass actions cause loss (21% versus 26-31% in other groups), which is a continuation of the influence lack topic.
Moreover, as our study showed, there is no significant difference in the sources of legal reform information between Israelis born in the USSR, Sabra and in other countries. The vast majority of the first, the second & the third categories receive such information from Israel media in Hebrew. Israel media in Russian use only 8% of respondents as a source of information, and Russian media — 1% (a value within the statistical error); 5% — media in Arabic.
Public response to reform
With regard to the actual problem of legal system reforming, we summarize the following. This problem has a wide public resonance: the share of people involved in this topic to varying degrees significantly exceeds the share of those who are interested in it to a small extent or not interested (53% versus 37%). 21% of respondents declared participation in demonstrations, of which 4% — about regular.
The wide public response caused by this reform advancing is due, among other things, to the following:
1) the fundamental need to judicial system reform (60% of population is convinced that Israel justice system is not effective or is not effective enough, 63% is convinced in need for legal reform, several more than a third of population trust the courts to varying degrees);
Three measures from separate questions
| Concern about growing unrest | 70% |
|---|---|
| Justice system ineffective or only slightly effective | 60% |
| Legal reform is needed | 63% |
2) the discrepancy between population understanding of the most significant problems of existing judicial system (excessive bureaucracy, procrastination and many delays) and the most voiced proposed reform tasks (restriction of Supreme Court powers and change in judges election system);
3) distrust to the reform initiators: the majority of respondents are convinced in selfish goals of the proposed reform: 46% in their capacity unequivocally approve the personal interests of some members of coalition, 43% — the Prime Minister’s desire to influence the course of the trial of him; a quarter of respondents consider the Prime Minister the main perpetrator of political and social situation deterioration after the reform was promoted.