Israel
Young Revolution
Israel's next generation has surprisingly stayed with
Labor months after the prime minister's murder.
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Day. They represent more than
10 percent of the electorate. Sec-
ond-time voters make up an-
other 10 percent. Even before
Mr. Peres officially called for ear-
ly elections, the candidates were
running hard after the youth
vote.
Bleich High School in Ramat
Gan, near Tel Aviv, entered Is-
raeli political folklore in 1977
when students gave an unex-
pected victory to Likud, fore-
shadowing the party's upset of
Labor in elections later that
year.
Since then, the election at Ble-
ich has been commonly called
"the New Hampshire primaries
of Israel." The students at Ble-
ich have a reputation for being
on target, which they last proved
in 1992 by picking Labor.
This year, for three weeks
prior to the mock vote, cabinet
ministers, party leaders — just
about every major politician ex-
cept Mr. Peres — spoke at Ble-
ich assemblies. On voting day,
Feb. 6, about a dozen Knesset
members were on campus ral-
lying support, and giving
progress reports by cellular
phone to political colleagues in
Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
The results: Peres 61 percent,
Netanyahu 39 percent. In the
party vote, Labor and Meretz
won a combined 56 percent, par-
ties of the right 38 percent, and
the centrist Third Way 6 per-
cent. Ha'aretz columnist Yoel
Marcus wrote: "The resources
that have been poured into the
mock elections being held in
some high schools show that the
campaign will focus on this new
force [the young]...The whole
country will be turned into one
big high school."
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rowsing through the CDs
in Tower Records, a 20-
year-old woman soldier
from Holon said: "I think
it's a foregone conclusion that
young people are going to be vot-
ing for Peres and Labor. A num-
ber of my friends who used to be
right-wing before the assassi-
nation have switched to the left."
Hanoch Smith, a leading Is-
raeli public opinion pollster since
the 1950s, says he can hardly re-
call a shift in public opinion so
strong as the one that's taken
place among young voters since
Mr. Rabin's murder. "Before the
assassination I was finding that
they favored Mr. Netanyahu
over Mr. Rabin by about 60 per-
cent to 40 percent.
Now Mr. Peres is getting over
60 percent, Mr. Smith said. Fur-
thermore, Mr. Smith's polls
didn't even include young Israeli
Arabs, who are expected to vote
— with their elders — almost
unanimously for Prime Minis-
ter Shimon Peres over Likud
leader Benyamin Netanyahu.
A new force in Israeli politics
was born in Tel Aviv's Rabi
Square and along the funeral
route in Jerusalem. The assas-
sination was the formative po-
litical experience for hundreds
of thousands of young people
singing and lighting memorial
candles.
Most of them gave their
hearts to Rabin and the peace
movement, and the way things
look, it is mainly on their shoul-
ders that Mr. Peres and Labor
will ride to victory in the May 28
elections.
Some 400,000 Israelis have
turned 18 since the 1992 elec-
tion, and will be eligible to vote
for the first time this Election
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Israeli youth joined in lighting candles at the announcement of Mr. Rabin's death.