A vibrant democracy in a sea of ​​dictatorships

Despite Israel’s vulnerable and challenging situation – where a string of dictatorships and terrorist groups would like to wipe out the Jewish state – Israel, unlike its neighbours, is a country with democratic elections, freedom of the press, freedom of expression and an independent legal system.

Protests against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government around Habima Square in Tel Aviv in January 2023. Photo: Commons wikimedia

Unlike other countries in the Middle East, Israel is a vibrant democracy with demonstrations, democratic elections, lively debate, free opinion, private property rights and an independent legal system. In the media even the foundations of democracy are portrayed as something negative. The media image of Israel often makes out that the country is divided and that all its citizens are dissatisfied with their decision-makers.
This anti-Israeli – not to say anti-Semitic – attitude in the media in which Jews, Israelis and decision-makers in Israel are measured by a completely different yardstick than the surrounding dictatorships, terrorist groups and genocidal killers, fuels prejudice and Jew-hatred.
Sane arguments that Israeli decision-makers present as a basis for their decisions rarely make it to the news, while critics are allowed to present their views unchallenged. Not so with the reporting from the dictatorships surrounding Israel.

Who has heard, or seen or read media reports about Israel’s neighbouring country Syria, despite the fact that millions of Syrian refugees made their way to Europe to seek asylum from 2014 onwards? The very basic journalistic question – why are they here in Europe – has rarely been asked.
In Syria, President Bashar al-Assad has concentrated power to within his immediate family and further restricted human rights in the country during the thirteen-year civil war that began in 2011. At the same time that Assad has been consolidating his dictatorship, Israel has held seven (!) democratic and free elections where nearly two million Israeli Arabs have the right to vote.
That is more democratic elections than have been held in the rest of the Middle East during the same period. If you are Arab and want the right to vote, you must live in Israel.

Israel has managed to maintain its democracy in hard-pressed situations while the surrounding countries have on several occasions attacked the Jewish state. The media often ignores this existential threat that Israel has faced for decades.
Just as Hitler in the 1930s believed that the Jewish presence in Europe was the single biggest problem on the European continent, Islamists in Turkey, Iran and Syria, as well as the terrorist groups Hamas, Hezbollah and theHouthi, believe that the presence of the Jewish state of Israel is the single biggest problem in the Middle East.