How to make Israel look like a country of religious nationalist fanatics, @Haaretzcom style ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Wednesday, January 29, 2025

How to make Israel look like a country of religious nationalist fanatics, @Haaretzcom style

Israel Has Bigger Share of 'Religious Nationalists' Than Any Other High-income Country

Judy Maltz Jan 28, 2025 7:00 pm IST

Religion plays a far more important role in national identity in Israel than it does in other developed countries, according to a global survey published on Tuesday by the Pew Research Center.

Israel was the only high-income country surveyed in which at least a third of the respondents said that following the predominant religion – Judaism, in this case – was a very important element of national identity. Fewer than a quarter of the respondents in the other high-income countries agreed with this statement.

Three dozen countries participated in the survey, which found that people who live in middle-income countries are more likely to be "religious nationalists" than people who live in high-income countries. Still, religious nationalists did not account for the majority of the population in any of the countries surveyed.

For the purpose of the survey, people were classified as religious nationalists if they identified with their country's historically predominant religion and took a strongly religious position on a number of questions related to the role of religion in national identity and government. The findings are based on nationally representative surveys of nearly 55,000 adults conducted between January and May of last year.

Everything Maltz writes is technically correct - and highly misleading.

First of all, Jews are both a people and a religion, so when Israelis say that being Jewish is a very important part of national identity, they interpret the question quite differently than people of most other religions.

But beyond that, the survey does not distinguish between countries that are officially associated with a religion and those where most citizens happen to belong to a religion. Israel is the only high income country surveyed that associates itself with a religion, but there are many other such countries that were not part of the survey: Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Brunei, Qatar and the UAE, and officially Christian countries like Liechtenstein, Monaco and Malta. Without including those countries, any conclusions about Israel is at best a half-truth.

Indeed, those polled in Muslim countries (including upper-middle income Muslim countries like Malaysia and Turkey) tended to be much more likely to say that Islam was a critical part of their national identity than Israelis did, and one can presume that this would be the case with high-income Muslim countries as well.

When you compare Israel to other countries that define themselves religiously, it has a much lower percentage of people who answer this question affirmatively.

Now, let's look at the headline. The first paragraphs of the article imply that more than one third of Israelis are "religious nationalists." But Pew's definition of that term is much more restrictive - something Haaretz buries further down - and the percentage of Israelis who fit that definition is only 9% (compared to 6% in the US.) This is hardly the country of religious fanatics that Haaretz wants its readers to believe.