Let’s get this right. Israel is not a democracy

 

By Malcolm Spry

Dec 27, 2024

In defending Israel’s actions in Gaza, a common refrain from supporters and right- wing politicians is that Israel is the only democratic country in the Middle East. The notion a democratic country can be above criticism despite charges of war crimes and genocide, suggests this exclusive club of democratic states can never be subject to international law or global opprobrium. So, a rule for us and a different rule for others.

But how democratic is Israel in reality? The prominent Israeli historian Ilan Pappe explored this issue in his book “Ten Myths About Israel” and concluded there are several ways of labelling Israel, but the description democracy was not among them.

As Pappe says, the litmus test for any democracy is the level of tolerance it is willing to extend towards the minorities living in it. And in this respect Israel falls far short of being a true democracy.

Even before 1967 Israel could not have been depicted as a democracy as it subjected 20% of its citizenship to military rule based on emergency regulations that denied Palestinians any basic human or civil rights. Local military governors and even low-ranking soldiers in the IDF were allowed to rule and ruin their lives by demolishing homes, expelling them from their land or incarcerating them without trial.

Despite UN Resolution 194 in 1948 which recognised that expelled Palestinians have a right of return to their land, Israel refuses to allow Palestinian citizens to unite with their families and yet grants automatic citizenship to every Jew in the world regardless of where they were born. Denying people the right of return to their homeland and at the same time offering this right to others who have no connection to the land is clearly an undemocratic practice.

Today, almost every discrimination against the Palestinian citizens of Israel is justified by the fact that they do not serve in the army. This means your rights to government assistance as a worker, student or parent are severely restricted. This affects housing as well as employment where 70% of all Israeli industry is considered security sensitive and therefore closed to these citizens as a place to find work. But there is also discrimination practiced when it comes to land policies. Policies which restrict non- Jewish citizens’ right to live wherever he or she wishes to live or to acquire property.

These land policies also mean Palestinian councils and municipalities receive far less funding than their Jewish counterparts and Jewish settlements get prioritised over Palestinian ones. The shortage of land coupled with the scarcity of employment opportunities crates a socio-economic situation where average Jewish income is substantially higher than Arab income.

The situation in the occupied territories is even worse. While Israel might claim to be maintaining an enlightened occupation, its behaviour towards the millions of people who have lived under its rule since 1967 shows this to be a lie. According to Pappe the unquestioned absolute power of the military inside the West Bank and previously outside the Gaza strip reveals the so called only democracy in the Middle East behaves as a dictatorship of the worst kind.

As with every colonisation project, the primary need is land. And in the occupied territories this was achieved through the massive expropriation of land and confining the Palestinians in enclaves with difficult habitats. House demolition is a form of collective punishment and has been going on for decades. For minor violations of military rule, the Israelis send in bulldozers to wipe out not only buildings and homes but the way of life. And with the expansion of illegal Jewish settlements has come the daily harassment and humiliation of the Palestinians. The settlers have been allowed to form vigilante groups to destroy property and uproot their trees. Arrests without trial, the use of torture, the demolition of thousands of houses, the killing and wounding of the innocent, the drainage of water wells are all testimony to one of the harshest regimes in modern times.

https://johnmenadue.com/lets-get-this-right-israel-is-not-a-democracy/