Hundreds of thousands of Israeli children and teenagers attend youth movement branches every week, but a new State Comptroller report says those spaces are being run with serious and systemic neglect when it comes to personal safety. The report describes weak government oversight, missing basic regulations in major movements, and striking statistical gaps that raise suspicions of concealment and silence around sexual abuse and violence.
The comptroller says the Education Ministry has failed to extend to youth movements the kind of detailed, binding rules that already apply in schools. Although ministry funding criteria require some partial steps, such as appointing a sexual harassment officer and holding training sessions, the report says these measures are only a “partial and limited” framework and do not amount to full protection standards. Without a uniform state oversight mechanism, each movement sets its own rules.
To assess the problem, the audit team asked movements to disclose safety-related incidents handled between 2023 and 2025. The Scouts reported an average of 648 incidents a year, about 86 per 10,000 participants, through a dedicated unit called “Safe Space,” and also listed 45 sexual abuse cases that occurred outside the movement but were brought to it. By contrast, Noar HaOved VeHaLomed reported only six incidents a year, Bnei Akiva reported just two, and the Druze youth movement said it had no unusual incidents at all. The Young Guard, Arab Scouts, and Maccabi Tzair declined to provide data.
The report also says Ezra had no code of conduct, bylaws, or discipline procedures setting clear boundaries on sexual or general safety. In the Druze youth movement and Heichalei Inang, discipline rules exist but cover only sexual harassment, while Bnei Akiva, the Druze movement, Arab Scouts, and Heichalei Inang lacked any instruction requiring regular discussions with members about their sense of safety.
As an example of how failures can unfold, the report describes a case from one movement in which a sixth-grade girl disappeared during a camp or trip, was later found with a boy from another branch, and the pair were separated. Only by morning did staff realize they had engaged in significant sexual contact. Because of the case’s complexity and fear of informing the parents, the welfare department was notified later, and the parents were contacted only the next day, by which point the girl had told them she had been raped. The comptroller says attempts to run an educational process afterward at the branch failed. He calls on the Education Ministry to urgently lead a reform, together with the movements, to create a single binding code of conduct, regulations, and discipline procedures for all youth movements.
