Ramallah - published by the Palestinian Forum for Israeli Studies - MADAR, Paper 60 of “Israeli Papers” series, titled “Generation Y or the Millennial Generation in Israel [researching the characteristics of the young Israeli generation and its needs]”, a groundbreaking academic research done by two social scientists Oz Almog and Tamar Almog.
Antoine Shalhat, the series editor, wrote in the introduction that the importance of this research paper lies in its being the first of its kind to attempt characterising what has been termed as “generation y” in Israel - the generation born at the onset of the third millennium - it descriptive more than anything else, which is due to the challenge of arriving at definitive conclusions. For though this generation has a significant impact on society, it is still undergoing transformation and lacks sufficient power to affect important political decisions.
The research notes that throughout the world as a whole, “generation y” has grown up at a time of accelerating technological development, especially in the domains of information technology and the internet. It is a generation that has high accessibility to very advanced tools and means of communication, and that could be considered, on many levels, the first globalised generation. It has been termed as such because it followed the generation termed as “generation x” – the generation born in between the end of the fifties and the seventies of the past century. It had no specific name then but was aware of itself as a continuously expanding social group that differed from others. Thus, the term “generation y” points at the biological and cultural successors of “generation x”.
The introduction also notes that the paper’s main presupposition is that the current Israeli generation has undergone a fundamental transformation from the main characteristics of the “cultural D.N.A” of the classic Sabra model; and that this phenomenon has unveiled some functional difficulties and disruptions in all of life’s configurations: starting from school, the military service, secondary education, and work and economy. However, none of that had shifted this generation’s worldview, which resembles that of its predecessors.
