In 2016, Shaharit surveyed 1000 respondents were interviewed who either were born in the Middle East or North Africa, or with at least one parent or grandparent who was born there, regardless of the extent to which they defined themselves as “Mizrahim”.  In broad strokes, one sees a population that is committed to tradition, right-leaning politically relative to the larger population, aware of discrimination in the past but ambivalent about discrimination in the present, being Jewish and Israeli (but not necessarily Mizrahi) as central characteristics of their identity, open to changes in traditional gender roles, and experiencing social-economic mobility.

In January and February 2017, Shaharit surveyed a representative sample of 1,000 Arab Citizens of Israel. The findings of the survey bear witness to a wide-ranging desire among the Arab Citizens of Israel to integrate into the wider Israeli society, giving a much more nuanced, complicated picture of Arab-Israeli Society than is typically portrayed.

This is the first in a series of surveys that will be conducted on sectors within Israeli society; it was conducted on the Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) community in Israel which is seen, at least according to the stereotypes that are widespread in the non-Haredi community, as an extremely homogeneous community. The results show a far more diverse, complicated, and complex community.

Shaharit was founded in 2012 on the premonition that the polarized nature of the Israeli political debate was not the whole story of Israeli society, but that it was increasingly a self-fulfilling prophecy. Under the radar screen, we believed, there was a different reality, where, although radically different worlds of meaning offered different visions of Israel’s future, there was a real desire among many in each of Israel’s “tribes” to find common ground, and to build a future of living well, together. The Shaharit surveys are unique, designed to inform Shaharit’s work by digging deeper into Israeli society, mapping its contours, and exposing who and where can be found the partners for building common cause.