Is Israel a Democracy ?

This is a repost from Quora ,

Lives in Palestine (1948–present)9mo

It’s virtually impossible to be involved in Palestine activism without being barraged by the mantra that “Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East“. This talking point is invoked whenever the need to justify Israeli behavior is needed, even if the topic under discussion is completely unrelated. Indeed, in the minds of those who utilize it, it confers an automatic moral superiority to Israel which further distinguishes it from its “backwards” neighbors, and ex post facto legitimizes its actions.

There are multiple issues with this talking point, and we could discuss it for hundreds of pages, but for the sake of expedience we will briefly focus on two major ones.

First, there is an erroneous assumption that being a democracy automatically confers an elevated moral position. The usual line of reasoning is that if a state is a democracy then it listens to the needs and wants of its citizens, who generally tend to want to steer clear of war, misery and repression. A further element of this is that democratic leaders are accountable to their people which makes them think twice before enacting any of these policies.

While this may sound good on paper, there is scant empirical evidence to support it. For example, when it comes to war and aggression against other countries, there is absolutely no evidence to support the claim that democratic countries differ from non-democratic countries, either in initiation or participation in wars.

But we needn’t go so far and talk about wars, let us think of the Jim Crow United States, which was classified as a democracy at the time. If a state practicing such untold injustice and repression against its own citizens -let alone people abroad- could maintain the moniker of democracy, then how could anyone seriously claim that being a democracy automatically makes a state good or just? Post WWII France waxed poetic about freedom and democracy domestically while it was committing genocide in its colonies. We see similar patterns in all the settler colonies which consider themselves democratic while dispossessing and brutally oppressing their native populations.

The simplistic and ideologically driven urge to divide the world into “good states” and “bad states” based on whether they are a democracy or not is based on a fictitious assumed morality of democratic states. When it comes to international politics, morality and altruism, while often invoked as pretexts for action, are mere window-dressing for political ambitions. This becomes exceedingly clear when we see the self-anointed “champions of democracy” sponsoring and supporting coups against democratic governments which posed a threat to the West’s regional interests, such as the 1953 coupagainst Mosaddeq in Iran. Meanwhile, these same “champions” would prop up and reinforce the most reactionary and tyrannical regimesimaginable if they were deemed beneficial to their interests in the region.

This bias has been inculcated by decades of propaganda, which paints warmongering from democratic states as noble, involuntary and for the greater good, while downplaying the frequency of said warmongering.

So now that we have established that being a democracy doesn’t inherently mean anything vis-à-vis morality, the second major issue with this talking point is perhaps the biggest flaw in it: Israel is not a democracy, at least not in the way people commonly understand it.

I can already hear you protest, but Israel has elections! There is separation of powers! How could you say such nonsense?

When discussing democracy many often fall into the trap of focusing on the formal trappings of democracy while ignoring its actual spirit. For instance, you can have regular elections, but if your system is designed so that it purposefully de facto excludes certain people then it is functionally no different than legally excluding them for whatever reason, be that race, gender or class.

One of the core aspects of democracy is equality. We cannot speak of a democratic system unless all of those participating in it are on equal legal and moral footing. There can be nosecond-class citizens in a democracy. In the case of Israel, however, it clearly distinguishesbetween citizenship and nationality.

What does this mean?

For example, you can be a citizen of Israel but be a Druze national, or a Jewish national. Your nationality is determined by your ethnicity and it cannot be changed or challenged. Many of the rights you are accorded in Israel stem from your nationality not your citizenship. Meaning an “Arab” Israeli citizen and a Jewish Israeli citizen, while both citizens, enjoy different rights and privileges determined by their “nationality”.

Palestine Today

6mo

Are all Israelis equal?

Whenever Israel is accused of being undemocratic or being an Apartheid state, one of the main counter-arguments used by its advocates is that everyone in Israel is politically equal. They’ll often cite examples of “Arab” judges or members of Knesset to reinforce their point. I have specifically discussed the issue of Apartheid more thoroughly in the answer below, and while they are connected, the goal of this answer is to inspect the narrower claim that every Israeli citizen is equal. Is Israel an Apartheid state? While such a claim is very attractive to defenders of Israel, how realistic is it? At first glance it does seem that all citizens in Israel enjoy the same rights, they can all vote, for example, among many other rights granted by citizenship. However, after a more thorough look it becomes clear that this talking point is only held together by the omission of one very important fact: Israel distinguishes between citizenship and nationality. What does this mean? For example, you can be a citizen of Israel but be a Druze national, or a Jewish national. Your nationality is determined by your ethnicity and it cannot be changed or challenged. But how is this relevant to the original question being discussed? It is relevant because many of the rights you are accorded in Israel stem from your nationality not your citizenship. Meaning an “Arab” Israeli citizen and a Jewish Israeli citizen, while both citizens, enjoy different rights and privileges determined by their “nationality”. Seeing how Israel is an ethnocracy it is not a mystery who this system privileges and who it discriminates against. Is Israel a democracy? This is not merely discrimination in practice, but discrimination by law. Adalah have composed a database of discriminatory laws in Israel that disfavor non-Jewish Israelis. For example, the Law of Return and Absentees’ Property Law are but two examples of flagrant racism and discrimination in the Israeli legal system. This is not some old, odd oversight, but a very deliberate part of the design of Israeli society. This is periodically reinforced whenever some Israelis petition the Supreme Court to recognize an Israeli nationality that does not discriminate based on ethnicity. A recent example of these petitions was in 2013, where the Supreme Court rejected such an idea on the grounds that it would “undermine Israel’s Jewishness“. It says quite a lot about Israel that a unifying egalitarian identity not based around ethnicity would “pose a danger to Israel’s founding principle: to be a Jewish state for the Jewish people“, as the court ruled. The fact that such discrimination is seen as a cornerstone of Israeli society only reinforces its colonial ethnocratic nature, and undermines any claims to equality among citizens. But this kind of discrimination is only the tip of the iceberg, as it only covers some aspects of de jure inequality among Israelis. Inspecting the de facto discrimination against non-Jewish Israelis shines an even brighter light on Israel’s ethnocratic hierarchy. Almost half of all Palestinian citizens of Israel live under the poverty line, with a considerable percentage close to the poverty line. They also have a considerably lower life expectancy, a higher infant mortality rate, less access to education and resources as well as less municipality and government funding. Should you be interested in delving into some of the more detailed aspects of this discrimination, you can read Adalah’s The Inequality Report. It is an excellent overview of many issues facing Palestinians within the green line. Another report shining the light on Israel’s discrimination is “Discrimination against Palestinian Citizens in the Budget of Jerusalem Municipality and Government Planning: Objectives, Forms, Consequences” by the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute. Additionally, you could read this report from the Adva center which illustrates quite clearly how this discrimination touches almost every aspect of life. Furthermore, most land inside the green line is off limits to Palestinian citizens of Israel. A large percentage of land in Israel is under the control of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), which has a: “specific mandate to develop land for and lease land only to Jews. Thus the 13 percent of land in Israel owned by the JNF is by definition off-limits to Palestinian Arab citizens, and when the ILA tenders leases for land owned by the JNF, it does so only to Jews—either Israeli citizens or Jews from the Diaspora. This arrangement makes the state directly complicit in overt discrimination against Arab citizens in land allocation and use…”. The JNF is not the only entity blocking Palestinian citizens of Israel from purchasing, leasing or renting land and property, but also the so-called regional and local councils, which account for the vast majority of land. These councils have the authority to block anyone from settling in these areas that do not seem like a “good fit” for the community there. For example, a religious community would not want to allow secular residents from moving in on the grounds that it would be against the spirit of their communities. In practice, this has translated into a virtual ban on non-Jewish Israelis moving into Jewish areas. In a Statement submitted by Habitat International Coalition and Adalah to the United Nations, it was estimated that almost 80% of the entire country is off limits to lease for Palestinian citizens of Israel. You can click here to read their full statement. No matter how you look at it, Israeli society is a heavily segregated and hierarchical one. Whether through the legal system or just the attitudes of average Jewish Israelis, the ethnocratic nature of Israel and its obsession with ethnic gerrymandering always rises to the surface. Some would deny it, citing standards of living or some random “Arab” judge as a refutation of this point, but again as discussed in the answer below, none of these claims dispute the extreme inequality -by design- of Israeli society. This denial is not unique to Israelis, we saw similar sentiments among white Americans who denied the existence of white supremacy, even though they reaped its benefits either directly or indirectly. Is Israel a democracy? Ultimately, the goal of this answer is not to advocate for a “more just” or equal settler-colonial state. As Audre Lorde observed, the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. A just society is the complete antithesis to an ethnocracy, which elevates one group of people over the rest by virtue of their blood. It falls on us, however, to advocate for decolonization and a new polity for everyone between the river and the sea, where justice is its cornerstone rather than ethnic supremacy. Sound utopian? Perhaps, but to quote Pliny the elder, how many things, too, are looked upon as quite impossible, until they have been actually effected? Further reading: * Adalah, The Inequality Report The Palestinian Arab Minority in Israel, March 2011. * Yiftachel, Oren. Ethnocracy: Land and identity politics in Israel/Palestine. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. * White, Ben, and Haneen Zoabi. Palestinians in Israel: Segregation, discrimination and democracy. London: Pluto Press, 2012. * Huneidi, Sahar S. Israel and its Palestinian citizens: Ethnic privileges in the Jewish State. Cambridge University Press, 2017. * Khamaisi, Rasim. Discrimination against Palestinian Citizens in the Budget of Jerusalem Municipality and Government Planning: Objectives, Forms, Consequences. Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute, April 8th, 2020.

This is not merely discrimination in practice, but discrimination by law. Adalah have composed a database of discriminatory laws in Israel that disfavor non-Jewish Israelis. For example, the Law of Return and Absentees’ Property Laware but two examples of flagrant racism and discrimination in the Israeli legal system.

This is not some old, odd oversight, but a very

deliberate part of the design of Israeli society. This is periodically reinforced whenever some Israelis petition the Supreme Court to recognize an Israeli nationality that does not discriminate based on ethnicity. A recent example of these petitions was in 2013, where the Supreme Court rejected such an idea on the grounds that it would “undermine Israel’s Jewishness“.

It says quite a lot about Israel that a unifying egalitarian identity not based around ethnicity would “pose a danger to Israel’s founding principle: to be a Jewish state for the Jewish people” as the court ruled. The fact that such discrimination is seen as a cornerstone of Israeli society only reinforces its colonial ethnocratic nature, and undermines any claims to equality among citizens.

But this kind of discrimination is only the tip of the iceberg, as it only covers some aspects of de jure inequality among Israelis. Inspecting the de facto discrimination against non-Jewish Israelis shines an even brighter light on Israel’s ethnocratic hierarchy.

Almost half of all Palestinian citizens of Israel live under the poverty line, with a considerable percentage close to the poverty line. They also have a considerably lower life expectancy, a higher infant mortality rate, less access to education and resources as well as lessmunicipality and government funding. Should you be interested in delving into some of the more detailed aspects of this discrimination, you can read Adalah’s The Inequality Report. It is an excellent overview of many issues. Another report shining the light on Israel’s discrimination is “Discrimination against Palestinian Citizens in the Budget of Jerusalem Municipality and Government Planning: Objectives, Forms, Consequences” by the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute, which you can find at this.

Additionally, you could read this report from the Adva center which illustrates quite clearly how this discrimination touches almost every aspect of life.

Furthermore, most land inside the green line is off limits to Palestinian citizens of Israel. A large percentage of land in Israel is under the control of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), which has a:

“specific mandate to develop land for and lease land only to Jews. Thus the 13 percent of land in Israel owned by the JNF is by definition off-limits to Palestinian Arab citizens, and when the ILA tenders leases for land owned by the JNF, it does so only to Jews—either Israeli citizens or Jews from the Diaspora. This arrangement makes the state directly complicit in overt discrimination against Arab citizens in land allocation and use..”.

The JNF is not the only entity blocking Palestinian citizens of Israel from purchasing, leasing or renting land and property, but also by so-called regional and local councils, which account for the vast majority of land. These councils have the authority to block anyone from settling in these areas that do not seem like a “good fit”, for example a religious community would not want to allow secular residents from moving in on the grounds that it would be against the spirit of their communities. In practice, this has translated into a virtual ban on non-Jewish Israelis moving into Jewish areas. In a Statement submitted by Habitat International Coalition and Adalah to the United Nations, it was estimated that almost 80%of the entire country is off limits to lease for Palestinian citizens of Israel. You can click here to read their full statement.

These features of Israeli “democracy” have not gone unnoticed. In its defense, Smooha suggests referring to Israel as an ethnic democracy, where he admits that the state institutions are built to privilege the majority group, but yet it maintains its democratic label.

Here we have entered the realm of qualified democracy: “Other than this one missing feature, the system would be a liberal democracy, therefore it’s just a different kind of democracy.” But what if this feature is a core aspect of democracy? How could one argue for the presence of democracy where the citizens are unequal in front of the law and the state?

This argument could also apply to other states, not just Israel, but while these states claim that the de facto inequality among citizens fostered by their systems are an unintended byproduct, doubtful as that is, Israel openly flaunts these features and doesn’t even attempt to hide them. It is an ethno-state, it will always privilege and support the dominance of one ethnicity.

Oren Yiftachel defines Israel as an ethnocracyrather than a democracy. According to Yiftachel ethnocratic regimes:

“…promote the expansion of the dominant group in contested territory and its domination of power structures while maintaining a democratic facade.”

Ethnocracies have several distinguishing characteristics:

Despite declaring the regime as democratic, ethnicity (and not territorial citizenship) is the main determinant of the allocation of rights, powers, and resources, and politics is characterized by constant democratic-ethnocratic tension.
State borders and political boundaries are fuzzy: there is no clear demos, mainly owing to the active role of ethnic diasporas and the bounded, unequal citizenship of ethnic minorities.
A dominant, “charter” ethnoclass appropriates the state apparatus and determines the outcome of most public policies.
Segregation and stratification occur on two main levels: ethnonations and ethnoclasses.
The socioeconomic sphere is marked by long-term ethnoclass stratification.
The logic of ethnic segregation is diffused into the social’ and political system, enhancing multidirectional processes of essentializing political ethnicization.
Significant (though partied) civil and political rights are extended, to members of the minority ethnonation, distinguishing -ethnocracies from Herrenvolk (apartheid) or authoritarian regimes.

Hrmm, sounds familiar.

But unfortunately, it doesn’t stop there. All of the above applies only to so called “Israel proper”, meaning we are completely neglecting the areas beyond the green line that Israel is expanding into and controlling. If we look at the entirety of the territory controlled by Israel, ethnocracy would be too toothless of a term to describe the complex system of IDs and tiered ethnicity-based rights employed by Israel. This system finally pushed B’Tselem, Israel’s largest human rights group to officially designate Israel as an Apartheid state.

Palestine Today

6mo

Is Israel an Apartheid state?

Associating Israel with the label of Apartheid has become ubiquitous as of late; annual events all over the globe such as Israeli Apartheid Week have done much to normalize this coupling. Naturally, advocates for Israel insist that it is all nonsense, indeed how could Israel practice Apartheid when there are “Arab” judges, or members of Knesset? How could anyone accuse Israel of such practices when every citizen is allowed to vote? Let us delve a little bit deeper into this question and try to come up with an answer. Firstly, it is important to establish what we mean with Apartheid. There is a widespread misconception that Apartheid refers solely to the case of South Africa. While it’s understandable that people think of South Africa when Apartheid is mentioned, it is critical to recognize that it was merely one manifestation of it, and that there were different regimes with different configurations which upheld the same system. According to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the crime of Apartheid is defined as follows: “The crime of apartheid” means inhumane acts of a character similar to those referred to in paragraph 1, committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime;” There are many inhumane acts listed under paragraph 1, but the most relevant to our case are: * Deportation or forcible transfer of population. * Imprisonment and severe deprivation of liberty. * Persecution based on ethnic, religious or national origins. * Other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health. It is indisputable that Israel practices these acts against Palestinians, inside and outside of the green line. It is also indisputable that as a state built on a colonial ideology that privileges one ethnic group over the rest, its actions are ultimately committed to maintain this system of supremacy. You will notice that nowhere in this description does it say that if you have a judge from the oppressed minority then it ceases being an Apartheid system. As a matter of fact, Nelson Mandela was a successful lawyer. The counter-argument that there are “Arab” judges or policemen ceases to be convincing when you realize that the system doesn’t need to be a complete carbon copy of South Africa to be counted as Apartheid. Mentioning that there are “Arab” members of Knesset is also not as powerful a gotcha moment as Israeli advocates believe it to be, simply because there is a precedent of an Apartheid state having parliament members of the oppressed indigenous group. That precedent is Southern Rhodesia. Despite allowing a certain number of black parliamentarians, it was still a racist entity ruled by a white minority, with the very honest declared goal of maintaining itself as a white state. As you have surely noticed I have been referring to “Arabs” in parenthesis, this is because most Palestinians living within the green line prefer to call themselves Palestinians, not merely Arab. Naturally, this is a threat to the Israeli narrative of the non-existence of Palestinians as a people, so even as they tokenize them in an attempt to prove their egalitarianism, they seek to simultaneously erase their actual identity. So now that we have established the meaning of Apartheid, and that having a few members of the oppressed group in high profile positions is irrelevant to the definition, we can move onto the next part of the answer. The argument that Israel does not practice apartheid hinges on one very crucial caveat: that we are distinguishing between Israel and the areas Israel rules. In practice, however, this distinction is functionally meaningless. (Even following this caveat, Israel itself is definitely not a democracy, at best it could be described as an ethnocracy. In practice, Israel rules everything from the river to the sea, it is the only sovereign power that runs the lives of all who inhabit this area. I know some of you will point to the Palestinian Authority, but in reality, the Palestinian Authority is relegated to the realm of administering occupied territories, without any real power, sovereignty or influence. For example, the Palestinian Authority can’t even determine who a Palestinian citizen is. The citizen registry for Palestinians is under de facto Israeli control. Meaning that if a Palestinian marries a non-Palestinian, their spouse will never be able to gain Palestinian citizenship as Israel’s demographic obsessions would not allow for any preventable increase in the Palestinian population. Even Abbas needs to coordinate with the Israeli military to be able to visit other Palestinian cities, cities of a “country” he is supposedly president of. In a watershed moment, B’Tselem, Israel’s largest human rights group recently released a report officially calling Israeli practices Apartheid, it argues that: “Although there is demographic parity between the two peoples living here, life is managed so that only one half enjoy the vast majority of political power, land resources, rights, freedoms and protections. It is quite a feat to maintain such disfranchisement. Even more so, to successfully market it as a democracy (inside the “green line” – the 1949 armistice line), one to which a temporary occupation is attached. In fact, one government rules everyone and everything between the river and the sea, following the same organising principle everywhere under its control, working to advance and perpetuate the supremacy of one group of people – Jews – over another – Palestinians. This is apartheid.” They continued: “There is not a single square inch in the territory Israel controls where a Palestinian and a Jew are equal. The only first-class people here are Jewish citizens such as myself, and we enjoy this status both inside the 1967 lines and beyond them, in the West Bank. Separated by the different personal statuses allotted to them, and by the many variations of inferiority Israel subjects them to, Palestinians living under Israel’s rule are united by all being unequal.” Indeed, the green line has long been invisible to Israelis, and Israel treats the settlements as parts of its own state. Why should we pretend otherwise? Why pretend that we’re talking about two governing bodies when the Palestinian Authority is a glorified bantustan administrator with no say about anything? This is by design, not by chance. Israel has been very conscious with how it approached its colonization project in the West Bank, in 1972 Ariel Sharon proclaimed that: “We’ll make a pastrami sandwich out of them. We’ll insert a strip of Jewish settlements in between the Palestinians, and then another strip of Jewish settlements right across the West Bank, so that in twenty five years’ time, neither the United Nations nor the United States, nobody, will be able to tear it apart.” Even more recently, Human Rights Watch also officially designated Israeli behavior as constituting Apartheid. I promise it won’t be the last human rights organization to do so. It is about time we stopped pretending that there ever was a hope for two states, or that we aren’t already living under a de facto one state from the river to the sea, with varying tiers of rights and privileges bestowed upon you based on where you come from and your ethnicity. When a Jewish settler attacks a Palestinian and is tried in a civil court, while those protesting the attack are tried in a military court, that practice is Apartheid, and no appeals to the contrary can change that. Pretending that this occupation is temporary has long been delusional, but has now crossed the line into intellectual dishonesty. If we are to have any hope for a way forward then we must call things as they are. We Palestinians do not have the privilege of wasting another 25 years pretending to live in an alternate reality. Finally, it should be stressed that calling Israeli policy Apartheid does not mean that the Palestinian question is not a settler-colonial context, nor does it imply that the solution lies in a civil rights movement for equality or the mere incorporation of the West Bank or Gaza Strip into the Israeli state. The Palestinian cause is a cause for decolonization and freedom, not for acquiring privileges in a colonial state. Consequently, it could be more useful to look into Apartheid as a crime committed by Israel, rather than a general descriptor as it is too inadequate a designation to account for every manifestation of Israeli settler colonialism. After all, even if Israel stopped practicing Apartheid, without true decolonization and the right of return, the Palestinian struggle for liberation would be incomplete. UPDATE: * In February 2022, Amnesty International designates Israel as an apartheid state. * In March 2022, Michael Lynk, a Canadian law professor appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council, said that the situation met the legal definition of apartheid, the first time that a U.N.-appointed rapporteur has made the accusation so unequivocally. He said the two-tier legal system Israel enforces: "enshrined a system of domination by Israelis over Palestinians that could no longer be explained as the unintended consequence of a temporary occupation." * His successor, Francesca Albanese, in her report of October 2022, called for the UN General Assembly to "develop a plan to end the Israeli settler-colonial occupation and apartheid regime". Following the release of its second report in October 2022, Permanent United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Israel Palestine conflict chair Navi Pillay told the Times of Israel in an interview that apartheid was "a manifestation of the occupation" and "We’re focusing on the root cause, which is the occupation, and part of it lies in apartheid". Further reading: * Farsakh, Leila. “Independence, cantons, or bantustans: Whither the Palestinian state?.” The Middle East Journal 59.2 (2005): 230-245. * Bakan, Abigail B., and Yasmeen Abu-Laban. “Israel/Palestine, South Africa and the ‘one-state solution’: the case for an apartheid analysis.” Politikon 37.2-3 (2010): 331-351. * Yiftachel, Oren. Ethnocracy: Land and identity politics in Israel/Palestine. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. * Tilley, Virginia Beyond occupation: apartheid, colonialism and international law in the occupied Palestinian territories. Pluto Press, London, London, 2012. * El Ad, Hagai. We are Israel’s largest human rights group – and we are calling this apartheid, The Guardian. January 12th, 2021. * Tilley, Virginia. The one-state solution: A breakthrough for peace in the Israeli-Palestinian deadlock. University of Michigan Press, 2010. * Abunimah, Ali. One country: A bold proposal to end the Israeli-Palestinian impasse. Macmillan, 2006. * UN General Assembly, Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (last amended 2010), 17 July 1998, ISBN No. 92-9227-227-6

Israel cannot be called a democracy without omitting major features that most think of when they hear the term. The hyper-focus on the formalistic aspects of democracy obfuscates the preconditions and modifications needed to sustain the appearance of this label while completely twisting its spirit. However, if you remain unconvinced and still believe Israel to be democratic, then by now you should know that it has no bearing on the behavior of any state. Indeed, throughout history democracies have been capable of monstrous cruelty, genocide and repression at home and abroad, something Israel is undoubtedly guilty of regardless of how democratic you think it is.

No, Israel Is Not a Democracy

Israel is not the only democracy in the Middle East. In fact, it's not a democracy at all.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/05/israel-palestine-democracy-apartheid-discrimination-settler-colonialism

Why Israel cannot be called a democratic state

'Democracy' in Israel was established for Jews after Zionists expelled 90 percent of the Palestinian population

https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/why-israel-cannot-be-called-democratic-state