The problem with Israel’s so called ‘crisis of democracy’

JVL Introduction

What accounts for the extraordinarily large and unstained demonstrations in Israel against the direction of the new Netanyahu government? Are they really to “save Israeli democracy” as we hear regularly in the mainstream media ?

The truth, as Neve Gordon shows in this opinion piece in Al Jazeera, is rather different.

Calling Netanyahu’s proposals “undemocratic” assumes that, but for them, Israel would be a fully-thriving democracy.

It serves merely to whitewash the inherently undemocratic nature of Israel and its leading institutions, including its Supreme Court which the protestors are trying to defend.

It is a “democracy” in which Palestinians are second-class citizens within green-line Israel and wholly excluded in the rest of the area under Israeli domination, subject in B’Tselem’s words to “a regime of Jewish supremacy”.

An ethnocracy by another name…

This article was originally published by Al Jazeeera on Wed 22 Feb 2023. Read the original here.