A stark warning about deepening radicalization among young Israelis has been issued by former Israeli prime minister Yair Lapid, who recounted alarming conversations with youth that exposed dehumanizing views toward Palestinians in Gaza amid the ongoing military campaign in the enclave.
During a Wednesday interview, Lapid described a recent, emotionally charged meeting with a group of young Israelis, where he encountered extreme rhetoric that shocked even the veteran centrist politician. He told reporters that participants in the meeting openly embraced the idea that there are no innocent people in Gaza, and that all Palestinians there should be killed. When Lapid pushed back and asked whether this belief extended to infants, the group responded that even two-week-old babies should be killed, arguing the children would eventually grow up to become threatening to Israel, Lapid recounted.
In the wake of these revelations, Lapid drew a sharp line between the radical views he heard from the youth and the core values Israel claims to stand for. “So, Hamas won,” he stated, emphasizing that these extreme positions directly mirror the violent, dehumanizing standards of the militant group Hamas. “That’s what it wanted. For us to become like them.”
Lapid, who currently leads the centrist-right Together party alliance and held the prime ministership for five months before Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power in late 2022, placed much of the blame for this dangerous ideological shift on the current Israeli government. He argued that the administration has failed to condemn or discipline far-right ministers and officials who have openly called for the starvation of Palestinian children, creating a vacuum of moral leadership that allows extreme views to spread. This failure, he said, has caused deep internal damage to Israel, eroding the country’s long-stated commitment to upholding distinct values that separate it from the violent groups it fights.
The former prime maker also criticized the government for severely damaging Israel’s global standing over the past three years, a trend he said has accelerated sharply amid the Gaza war. While Lapid affirmed that he views Israel’s current military campaign in Gaza as a just war against Hamas and dismissed accusations of genocide as unfounded nonsense, he stressed an uncompromising moral principle: “children shouldn’t die in grown-ups’ wars, period.”
Lapid’s comments arrive against a backdrop of mounting data and polling that confirms a measurable rightward shift among younger generations of Jewish Israelis. A recent poll conducted by prominent Israeli outlet Channel 12 News found that 74% of Jewish Israelis between the ages of 18 and 22 identify as right-wing or center-right. Fifteen percent of these young respondents explicitly back far-right parties, including Itamar Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit and Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionist Party – two factions that openly advocate for the forced expulsion of all Palestinians from the occupied Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank.
Independent anecdotal evidence from last month echoed these polling findings. A student mock election held at a Ramat Gan high school saw the same three far-right groups – Otzma Yehudit, Religious Zionist Party, and the new far-right faction Amcha Yisrael – capture nearly 15% of the student vote. This represented a 10 percentage point jump in support for far-right candidates at the school compared to the last mock election held in 2022.
Another high-profile incident from last month also highlighted the spread of extreme anti-Palestinian sentiment among youth. Lior Schleien, a left-leaning Israeli comedian who has traveled across the country interviewing young people about their political views, was forced to delete a viral social media video featuring a young Jewish Israeli openly calling for the mass murder of all Arabs. In the clip, which was removed after the young man’s shocked parents requested its deletion, the youth told Schleien: “Give me a knife, I’ll murder them. Every Arab.” When questioned, he doubled down, claiming every Jewish Israeli should be armed to kill as many Arabs as possible.
While these extreme comments drew widespread attention online, data shows that the core belief that there are no innocent people in Gaza is already widely held across Israeli society. A poll conducted last year found that 64% of all Israeli adults agree with that statement. Academic research from 2024 further reinforces the trend of rising hawkishness among younger Israelis, concluding that the current generation of young Israelis “have increasingly displayed more hawkish attitudes than older generations, coupled with a stronger inclination towards right-wing identification”, alongside rising levels of religious observance compared to older cohorts.