Survey: 43% of youth may disobey army orders!

The title of this post is an actual, honest-to-goodness Jerusalem Post headline. Really!

According to the breathless article in today’s Post, a survey was conducted that found that, “43 percent of Israel’s youngsters support disobeying army orders because of personal ideology…”

Let’s look at that for a moment, shall we. What they are saying is that a group of teenagers (13-17 year olds) has expressed a predisposition to defy authority. Stop the presses!

Helloooo… News flash for the apparently childless editors over at the Jerusalem Post:

Teenagers would hold their breath and pass out if an adult ordered them to breathe!

Rebellion is their job…it’s what they're hardwired to do at this age. It’s basically why we don’t let them drink, vote, or carry weapons…they are not equipped to make adult decisions. Stop any teenager on the Tayelet in Tel Aviv and order them to do something…anything! Pretty fun, huh? The headline would have been more realistic if they simply reversed the equation: "57% of youth may follow orders!" Now that's newsworthy!

Don’t get me wrong… there is nothing magical about turning 18. Some kids carry adolescent rebellion into their 20s and others are mature beyond their years shortly after Bar Mitzvah. But since we are talking about a random sampling (the whole premise behind a survey’s accuracy), we can safely assume that typical teenage rebellion will be well represented in the responses.

I should be thanking the Almighty that the news cycle is empty enough today to allow this kind of 'man bites dog' story into the papers…but c’mon people, try the decaf!

Extra added bonus item: If you look closely at the photo that appears below the fold on the front page of today's Post (I apologize to those of you reading this from outside of Israel...the Post already took it down from their web site), it shows a couple of YU students marching in the Salute to Israel parade in NYC. Please take note that one of them is 'flipping the bird' to somebody (or everybody). Youthful rebellion? What youthful rebellion?