Israel is NOT a "democracy"

EuroYankee | Jan 14 2024

I grew up hearing a constant refrain when it came to Israel: namely that Israel is our ally because they are “the only democracy in the Middle East”. This was a universally accepted shibboleth. And yet Israel, by virtue of its own laws and its own demographic complexion, is anything BUT a real “democracy”.

The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Global Democracy Index for 2019, which ranked 167 countries by five democratic criteria, listed Israel as a “flawed democracy”. But even that description is far, far too forgiving — indeed downright misleading.

As Ben White wrote in The Independent:

Consider the following. Millions of Palestinians are subjected to a military regime which, for 52 years, has facilitated the establishment of illegal settlements. Settlers are Israeli citizens, and vote. The Palestinians they live among — whose land the settlers inhabit and colonize — are not.

But even the non-Jews who live in Israel proper are treated as second class citizens. Many do not realise that 1 in 4 Israeli citizens (26.5%) are “non-Jews”, e.g., Arab Muslims, Christians, etc.

Yet, as Ben White points out in his article, the 2018 Jewish Nation-State law defines Israel as “the national home of the Jewish people”, and asserts that “the right to exercise national self-determination in the state of Israel is unique to the Jewish people”.

But the legislation simply enshrined what was the de facto discrimination that had existed since the very foundation of the state of Israel. In fact, even mainstream Israeli news outlets like Haaretz acknowledge openly that Arab Israelis are “second class citizens”, and that the Nation-State law only “makes discrimination in Israel constitutional”.

Indeed, Fady Khoury, attorney for Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, quipped: “We don’t have to keep looking for policies that resemble Jim Crow,” adding that:

“The law itself does not mention the word democracy even once”.

Nadim N. Rouhana, a professor at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, wrote in Foreign Policy back in 2010:

“The United States should not be fooled by Israel’s claim that it can be both Jewish and democratic”.

Even general public opinion about Israel in recent years has changed, to where most people — as well as international NGOs such as Human Rights Watch (HRW)— regard Israel as “an apartheid state”.

Indeed, the 2021 report by HRW found that, in the wake of the 2018 Nation-State Law, a “threshold was crossed”, and “Israeli authorities are committing the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution” when it came to its non-Jewish population.

Their conclusion was based not just on the domination of Jewish Israelis over their Arab citizens, but also on the “grave abuses committed against Palestinians living in the occupied territory”.

Israel’s alliance with Apartheid South Africa — “birds of a feather”

The state of Israel was created in 1948, the same year that the National Party won elections in South Africa and began instituting its racist apartheid regime.

Israel and apartheid: a marriage of convenience and military might

[source: The Guardian, May 2010]

During the 1960s. the two racist countries formed a political and military alliance. This alliance between the two nations was a natural one, as the South African government’s yearbook described the two countries having one thing in common above all else: “They are both situated in a predominantly hostile world inhabited by dark peoples.”

The relationship and cooperation between the two countries became even deeper after Israel occupied the Palestinian West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, and the Syrian Golan Heights in the June 1967 War and needed to manage their own large population of disenfranchised “brown people”.

An Israel-South African “hasbara” alliance

It should not be surprising that Israel, in violation of UN resolutions and international laws, forged and maintained a strong “security alliance” with Apartheid South Africa.

In 1975, Israel and South Africa formed a “Joint Secretariate for Political and Psychological Warfare”, which included “propaganda and psychological warfare”. It was part of a $100 million South African propaganda campaign to rehabilitate the country’s image internationally. According to a report from NBC News:

“Under terms of the agreement, championed by Peres, then Defense Minister, and Yitzhak Rabin, the Prime Minister, Israel would help South Africa burnish its international reputation. South Africa would supply the money, with each country appointing a secretary to look after its interests.

Not surprisingly, Israel has denied such an alliance ever existed — despite all the evidence.

Bibi says the quiet part out loud

I have friends that still maintain that Israel is “technically” a democracy. Even the Economist’s Global Democracy Index says that Israel is a “flawed” democracy, but still a democracy.

But, as Anshel Pfeffer noted in Haaretz:

Essentially, Israel is the world’s only high-functioning illiberal democracy. Or as legislator Ahmad Tibi puts it, “democratic for Jews and Jewish for Arabs.”

But Bibi has taken off the gloves; there is no longer even an attempt to deny that Israel is an Apartheid state. He recently declared that not all Israeli citizens are equal:

Israel is “the nation state not of all its citizens, but only of the Jewish people” — Benjamin Netanyahu

[source]

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