False hysteria over Israeli democracy

Progressive critics, take note: the US system at its core is not a pure democracy at all, but a constitutional republic.

by Matthew Hausman

Before the dust settled and all votes were counted, the American liberal establishment began lamenting the death of Israeli democracy as Benyamin Netanyahu was poised to form the next government with a commanding number of Knesset seats and a potentially stable coalition.

The last time I checked, that’s how the Israeli electoral system works. But political progressives have conflated the term “democracy” with its antithesis – an agenda promoting censorship, thought control, viewpoint discrimination, woke intolerance, and hatred of Israel and the west. What they are peddling is not democratic at all, but a dictatorial stew that degrades personal rights and discourages dissent. And in so doing they are abetted by a mainstream media that engages in political activism and preys on its audience’s ignorance of constitutional and democratic values.

Now they are applying this skewed worldview to the latest Israeli election to delegitimize a result they don’t like. Regardless of how one feels about Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir, or Smotrich, their election was democratic. And despite what liberal pundits are saying, the results don’t represent an aberrant shift in Israeli electoral preferences. Indeed, conservative parties were on the ascendancy over the last few elections, though the formation of a coalition was prevented by those on the right who wouldn’t accept Netanyahu as PM.

Given that Israel’s electoral system seems to work, we need to understand what’s really going on…

CONTINUE READING AT https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/362944