War Against the Jews by Alan Dershowitz

Author:Alan Dershowitz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hot Books
Published: 2023-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

H. Israeli Democracy’s Vibrance Is Again on Display

Israel remains among the most vibrant democracies in the world today.

No democracy has had more transforming elections and more successful demonstrations than Israel. The recent turnabout in the Netanyahu government’s plan to rush through a one-sided judicial “reform” is just the latest example of Israel’s raucous democracy at work. Those who fear that Israel is on the path to autocracy need only observe recent events in that nation’s history.

No country has a freer or more critical press and media than Israel, especially with regard to political controversies. Although there are limits on the publication of some national security secrets, the media has figured out how to evade military censorship by laundering the secrets through foreign reporters. In actual practice, there is no country that publishes information more critical of the government than Israel.

Nor are there many countries whose universities are more one-sidedly antagonistic to the government. Yet they operate freely with government financial support.

Neither is there any country that has a more contentious parliament than the Knesset.

The ultimate check on authoritarianism is, of course, the citizenry, which can bring about changes in government by fair and free elections. Israel has had more such elections than any other nation since 1996. As noted earlier, the great judge Learned Hand observed during World War II: “Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it.”

The Israeli people are too argumentative, opinionated, and ornery for liberty to die in their hearts. The Jewish people, which comprise the majority of Israelis, have too long a history of being oppressed by tyrants ever to tolerate autocracy. Israel, like England, lacks a written constitution of the kind other countries have. But like England, it has a tradition of civil liberties that serves as an effective protection.

There are, to be sure, certain components of Israeli society that are undemocratic. A small number of very religious Jews believe that Israel should not be a secular democratic state but rather a biblical theocracy. The number of these fundamentalists is growing, but they remain a tiny portion of the population. Because of Israel’s coalition system, their voices are somewhat magnified, and they have disproportionate influence over the current government. That, too, is part of democracy: giving voice to undemocratic elements in an otherwise democratic polity. There are also those ultra-nationalists who, while insisting on democracy in Israel, would deny it to Palestinians on the West Bank. That too is part of Israeli internal democracy: giving voice to those who would deny democracy to others. They too have disproportionate influence in West Bank policy, but not necessarily on policies involving Israel itself.

These issues are complex, as is the nature of democracy in a polity that calls itself the nation-state of the Jewish people, and whose Declaration of Independence guarantees equality to its non-Jewish citizens. There can be, and are, divisive debates about the nature of democracy in so complex a context. But

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