Israel Matzav

The findings belong to the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) 2006 Israel Democracy Index and will be officially presented to President Moshe Katzav on Wednesday at the "President's Democracy Conference", whose title this year is "Israeli Democracy put to the Test".

Only 17 percent of Israelis believe that elected politicians keep their campaign promises after they are elected, and only 27% believe that they have the ability to influence government policy.

Only 25% agree or strongly agree that members of Knesset care about what the public thinks. Only 22% feel they trust political parties - less than any other public institution in Israel; 33% trust the Knesset, 44% trust the media, 68% trust the Supreme Court, and 79% trust the IDF. I'm not sure how trust is being defined here.

Sixty-two percent believe that Israel has a high rate of corruption, and about half of the participants think that a politician must be corrupt in order to be successful in Israel. That's an appalling percentage.

In an international study conducted by the Transparency International Institute on political corruption, Israel placed 20th out of 36 states, (number one being the least corrupted), a drop of 6 places since 2003. It was one of thirteen countries (out of 69) in which more than 50 percent of those responding feel that corruption increased a lot.