Comment by DiogenesKynikos
1 day ago
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".
It makes sense that people don't want to become citizens and legitimise the entity occupying their country and committing genocide, no?
> In cases where civilians are shot (what Israel defines to be civilians), there are investigations and sometimes even punishments for the perpetrators.
Obviously Israel doesn't consider children to be civilians
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gd01g1gxro
> It makes sense that people don't want to become citizens and legitimise the entity occupying their country and committing genocide, no?
I can accept not wanting to be part of that. But in that case, whining about missing democratic representation is just silly, of course you won't be represented if you chose not to be, no matter the reason.
> Obviously Israel doesn't consider children to be civilians
You seem to assume that all children are always civilians, but that is wrong. The articles of war don't put an age limit on being an enemy combatant. If you take up arms, you are a legitimate target, no matter your age. Many armies use child soldiers, and it is totally OK to shoot those child soldiers in a war.
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> legitimise the entity occupying their country
What’s country? Palestine never existed as independent country.
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> committing genocide
I've been hearing this for as long as I can remember, yet the population numbers tell a completely different story. It makes no sense to speak of a genocide if the birthrate far outpaces any casualties. In fact, the Palestinian population has been growing at a faster pace than Israeli over the past 35 years (that's how far the chart goes on Google)
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Palestinian citizens in Israel do not have the same rights as the Israeli Jew, with more than 50 laws discrimination against them. They also face systemic discrimination and also you cannot marry between faiths, all the hallmarks of apartheid. Initially Palestinians within the Green lines were also under military occupation and only after 80% of the other Palestinians were either massacred or ethnically cleansed, so it was basically a forced acceptance. Israeli policy has always been to have a an ethnic supremacy for Jews, so the representation in the Knesset is tokenistic at best. If Israel decides to expel Palestinians in Israel, there's nothing they can do, its the tyranny of the majority.
Palestinians in the West Bank do not have the option of becoming Israeli citizens, except under rare circumstances.
Its laughable that when you say that there are investigations. The number of incidents of journalists, medics, hospital workers being murdered and even children being shot in the head with sniper bullets is shockingly high.
One case is the murder of Hind Rajab where more 300 bullets were shot at the car she was into. Despite managing to call for an ambulance, Israel shelled it killing all the ambulance crew and 6 year old Hind Rajab.
Another example is the 15 ambulance crew murdered by Israel forces and then buried.
Even before the genocide, the murder of the Journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was proved to have been done by Israel, after they repeatedly lied and tried to cover it up. Another case was this one, where a soldier emptied his magazine in a 13 year old and was judged not guilty (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/nov/16/israel2)
The examples and many others are many and have been documented by the ICC and other organisations. Saying that it's not nothing is a distinction without a difference
> and also you cannot marry between faiths, all the hallmarks of apartheid.
Marriage laws have nothing to do with apartheid, a system that uses race to differentiate peoples.
There are plenty of countries where marriage is done on religion basis and there is no civil marriage at all. What does it have to do with Palestinians?
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> with more than 50 laws discrimination against them
List them.
> you cannot marry between faiths
Which law bans this. C'mon show it.
> Palestinians in the West Bank do not have the option of becoming Israeli citizens
Because they're a different country, remember?
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> who were not expelled by Israel in 1948
A large fraction of “expelled” Palestinians were “expelled” because Arab armies told them to leave for the time of fighting. For some reason you ignore this fact and put it all on Israel “expelling” people.
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> a small enough minority
Also the largest muslim minority outside of Africa.
> Israel is a democracy (albeit increasingly authoritarian) only if you belong to one ethnicity.
> You're referring to the small minority of Palestinians who were not expelled by Israel in 1948. They and their descendants number about 2 million now.
Your initial statement was highly sensational, strongly negative if true, and yet easily debunked. Statements like this on a contentious topic reduce one's credibility and the overall quality of discussion. Why do it?
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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?
The one that mysteriously don't fit in the bomb shelters https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20250624-arab-israel...
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.)
No, Palestinians are citizens, simply second class ones with less rights and more duties. It would be like if you were born in a "democracy" but weren't given some rights because of who you were born to. It's obviously very different from being a tourist in another country.
Citizens of Israel, under Israeli law? Some are, but most are not. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Israel )
They're certainly humans worthy of rights and dignity, citizens of the world, and most are citizens of the (partially recognised, limited authority) Palestinian state. But I think it's clear what we are talking about, that the Israeli state is "democratic" in the sense that it has a conventional (if unfair) idea of who its population/demos is, and those are the people eligible to vote for the representatives at the State level.
The situation you describe actually did happen to me, and many others in states without jus soli which are nonetheless widely considered democratic. This is typical in Western Europe, for example.
> No, Palestinians are citizens,
They are not though. They are citizens of PA, where they vote and pay taxes.
Israeli Arabs get full citizenship like any other ethnic/religious minority in Israel.
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Your comparison is absurd. We're not talking about small numbers of recent immigrants without citizenship. We're talking about 5 million people (out of only about 14 million living under Israeli sovereignty) whose families have largely been living in the same place for hundreds of years.
They live their entire lives in a country that refuses them citizenship, and they have no other country. They have no rights. They're treated with contempt by the state, which at best just wants them to emigrate. They're subjected to pogroms by Jewish settlers, who are allowed to run wild by the state.
This isn't like you not having French citizenship during your gap year in France. This is the majority of the native population of the country being denied even basic rights. Meanwhile, I could move to Israel and get citizenship almost immediately, simply because of my ethnicity.
Pardon me, but I think you may have mistaken my point.
I agree entirely with your first two paragraphs, except that I don't feel I'm making any comparison or absurdity.
I'm not talking about extended holidays. I don't like giving much detail about my own life here, but I didn't get automatic citizenship in the country of my birth due to being from a mixed immigrant family. I have lived, worked, and studied for multiple years around Europe and North America. I've felt at times genuinely disenfranchised, despite paying taxes, having roots, and being a bona fide member of those societies.
All that said, I never had to live in a warzone, and even the areas of political violence and disputed sovereignty have been Disneyland compared to Gaza. This isn't about me though!
I am merely arguing that Israel can reasonably be called a democracy by sensible and customary definition which is applied broadly throughout the world. I don't mean I approve, or that I wouldn't change anything, I'm just trying to be precise about the meaning of words.
(I think your efforts to advocate for the oppressed may be better spent arguing with someone who doesn't fundamentally share your position, even if we don't agree on semantics.)
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.