Israel's Central Elections Committee says more than half a million voters aged 18 to 22 have been added to the roll since the 2022 election, and that 80 percent of them intend to vote. The Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) found that a majority of young Jewish Israelis believe the ballot box can influence reality and shape the country's future.
The label "Generation Right" now describes Israel's Jewish youth, whose direction contrasts with the leftward tilt of young voters in many other countries. The term does not cover Palestinian citizens of Israel.
The election is contentious and polarising, and is widely seen as a verdict on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's longest-serving leader. Critics accuse him of empowering "far-right" politicians to stay in power, pointing to National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. In 2017, Smotrich set out a vision in which Israelis would be the only group with self-determination, with Palestinians expected to emigrate, live without political representation, or be treated as terrorists. Since 2022 he has held a defence ministry portfolio in which he has overseen the expansion of illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Ben-Gvir, who failed to clear the electoral threshold in 2020 but won a central coalition position in 2022, has built a following among first-time voters. He has been convicted of supporting "terror" organisations and other criminal offences, and regularly films himself visiting jails to threaten Palestinian prisoners, with the videos going viral. The IDI survey found young people increasingly get their political information through social media and messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Telegram, rather than through active searching.
The shift has alarmed some on the left. The activist and satirist Lior Schleien, who visits schools and speaks to young people before their army service, posted a video of a student who said he would kill Arabs. Asked how, the student replied: "Give me a knife and I will do it." Asked whether October 7 had changed his views, he answered: "I've always been racist." Schleien removed the video after a public backlash. In another exchange, when Schleien denied that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, a female student asked him whether he thought it should be done, assuring him the question was serious.
At a meeting of young supporters of the left-leaning Democrats party in Tel Aviv, 18-year-old Gili told the AFP news agency that Israeli society had abandoned the idea of peace, and that the scars of October 7 had made it hard to believe peace could ever be achievable. On the other side, 18-year-old Amihai, wearing a shirt with Ben-Gvir's photo at an event calling for the establishment of illegal settlements, said he plans to vote for Ben-Gvir's Otzma Yehudit party.