Comment by 0points
2 days ago
> Israel ranks high on democracy indicies
Those rankings must be rigged.
Nethanyahu should be locked up in jail now for the corruption charges he was facing before the Hamas attack.
He literally stopped elections in Israel since then and there's been protests against his government daily for some years now.
And now, even taco tries to have the corruption charges dropped for Nethanyahu, then you must know he's guilty.
https://nypost.com/2025/06/29/world-news/israeli-court-postp...
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/netanyahu-corrupti...
Almost none of what you wrote above is true, no idea how is this a top comment. Israel is a democracy. Netanyahu's trail is still ongoing, the war did not stop the trails and until he is proven guilty (and if) he should not go to jail. He did not stop any elections, Israel have elections every 4 years, it still did not pass 4 years since last elections. Israel is not perfect, but it is a democracy. Source: Lives in Israel.
Israel is so much of a democracy that netanyahu is prosecuted by the ICC court since almost a full year and still travels everywhere like a man free of guilt
Prosecution is not equal to being guilty. In fact, during prosecution, he is still presumed innocent, only a trial that comes after the prosecution can find him guilty. "Innocent until proven guilty" is a basic tenet of jurisprudence, even in many non-democratic societies. For a democratic society, it is a necessary condition.
That Netanyahu still walks free is a consequence of a) Israel not being party to the ICC, therefore not bound to obey their prosecutors' requests and b) the countries he travels to not being party to the ICC either or c) the ICC member states he travels to guaranteeing diplomatic immunity as is tradition for an invited diplomatic guest.
c) is actually a problem, but not one of Israel being undemocratic, but of the respective member states being hypocrites for disobeying the ICC while still being members.
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How is that related to the method of selecting the government of Israel?
Isn't that how most people who are being prosecuted behave, except those for whom the judge imposed a travel restriction?
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I question the legitimacy of the ICC, considering their impartiality and failure to take action against Hamas
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If you have no idea why this is the top comment then that explains so much. You say you live in Israel, I wonder how much of the international perspective cuts through to your general lived experience, outside of checking a foreign newspaper once in a while? I doubt many even do that.
Almost everything you said is technically true, but with a degree of selective reasoning that is remarkably disingenuous. Conversely, the top comment is far less accurate but captures a feeling that resonates much more widely. Netanyahu is one of the most disliked politicians in the world, and for some very good and obvious reasons (as well as some unfortunately much less so, which in fact he consistently exploits to muddy the water to his advantage)
From a broad reading on the subject it’s obvious to me why this is the top comment.
You think I live under a rock? I probably know more than you. I wrote facts, while you talk about "capturing a feeling". This is a top comment for the same reason people think AIPAC controls the USA or why the expulsion of Jews from Spain happened [1]. The fact that Netanyahu is disliked around the world (and even by me and many of my friends) does not change the nature of Israel being a democracy.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_Jews_from_Spain
Israel is an apartheid state, many people living there can't get citizenship. Everything you call democratic there is not, then.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_apartheid?wprov=sfla1
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Israel is a democracy (albeit increasingly authoritarian) only if you belong to one ethnicity. There are 5 million Palestinians living under permanent Israeli rule who have no rights at all. No citizenship. No civil rights. Not even the most basic human rights. They can be imprisoned indefinitely without charges. They can be shot, and nothing will happen. This has been the situation for nearly 60 years now. No other country like this would be called a democracy.
Afaik those 5 million Palestinians are not Israeli citizens because they don't want to be, and rather would have their refugee and Palestinian citizen status. There are also Palestinians who have chosen to be Israeli citizens, with the usual democratic rights and representation, with their own people in the Knesset, etc.
And shooting enemies in a war is unfortunately not something you would investigate, it isn't even murder, it is just a consequence of war under the articles of war. In cases where civilians are shot (what Israel defines to be civilians), there are investigations and sometimes even punishments for the perpetrators. Now you may (sometimes rightfully) claim that those investigations and punishments are too few, one-sided and not done by a neutral party. But those do happen, which by far isn't "nothing".
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> Israel is a democracy only if you belong to one ethnicity.
There are over two million Arab citizens of Israel. What ethnicity do they belong to?
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I've lived in several "top-tier" democracies and had limited or no voting rights because I wasn't a citizen. I don't think this is unreasonable (or unusual) from a definitional perspective.
A country who government was chosen by its inhabitants could be quite different. I know many states allow voting from abroad, but my home country doesn't and nobody ever questions its democratic credentials.
(I make no comment on the justice or long-term stability of the system in general or specifically in Israel, that has been done at length elsewhere.)
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In Gaza the Israelis have tried to give them independence - the Palestinian Authority in the 1990. In 2005 Israel withdrew from Gaza but the locals elected Hamas in 2006 which is dedicated in it's charter to the destruction of Israel which makes it hard to live peacefully as neighbours. You can't really have it both ways unless you have a lot of military power. Either independence and live peacefully as neighbours or attack the neighbours and be at a state of war.
Its incredible when you consider that they have operating what is essentially a fascist police state in the West Bank for decades where the population has essentially no right and are frequent targets of pogroms by settlers.
In Monty Python fashion: if you disregard the genocide, the occupation, the ethnic cleansing, the heavy handed police state, the torture, the rape of prisoners, the arbitrary detentions with charge, the corruption, the military prosecution of children, then yes its a democracy.
All of your morally indefensible points can still happen in a democracy; democracy doesn't equate morally good, it means that the morally reprehensible acts have a majority support from the population.
Which is one reason why Israelites get so much hate nowadays.
The current government is in power by a small majority, meaning that it is strongly contested by about 50% of Israelis (on most matters). That means against settlements, for ending the war, and largely liberal views. But no, we won't put out head on a platter thank you very much.
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I'm not defending Israel, but just because it commits genocide doesn't mean it's not a good democracy - worse, if it ranks highly on a democracy index, it implies the population approves of the genocide.
But that's more difficult to swallow than it being the responsibility of one person or "the elite", and that the population is itself a victim.
Same with the US, I feel sorry for the population, but ultimately a significant enough amount of people voted in favor of totalitarianism. Sure, they were lied to, they've been exposed to propaganda for years / decades, and there's suspicions of voter fraud now, but the US population also has unlimited access to information and a semblance of democracy.
It's difficult to correlate democracy with immoral decisions, but that's one of the possible outcomes.
Democratic genocides are the fairest and most equal of the genocides.
>Israel ranks high on democracy indicies
>population approves of the genocide.
Getting your average Zionist to reconcile these two facts is quite difficult. They cry "not all of us!" all the time, yet statistically speaking (last month), the majority of Israelis supported complete racial annihilation of the Palestinians, and over 80 percent supported the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.[0]
I find the dichotomy between what people are willing to say on their own name versus what they say when they believe they are anonymous quite enlightening. It's been a thing online forever, of course, but when it comes to actual certified unquestionable genocide, they still behave the same. It's interesting, to say the least. I wish it was surprising, however.
[0] https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/majority-israelis-support...