{"id":47512,"date":"2019-05-16T11:00:14","date_gmt":"2019-05-16T01:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=47512"},"modified":"2019-05-16T09:34:49","modified_gmt":"2019-05-15T23:34:49","slug":"netanyahus-re-election-was-israels-liberal-democracy-in-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/netanyahus-re-election-was-israels-liberal-democracy-in-action\/","title":{"rendered":"Netanyahu\u2019s re-election was Israel\u2019s liberal democracy in action"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

The re-election of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been described by some of his critics as a blow to democracy, or as evidence of Israel\u2019s progression towards becoming an \u2018illiberal democracy\u2019.<\/p>\n

However, several democracy watchdogs disagree with this assessment, as do some constitutional law experts and political analysts in Israel\u2014and some of them are on the left.<\/p>\n

In fact, according to a variety of benchmarks, Israel\u2019s democratic system remains among the world\u2019s most stable and healthiest. Its quality has actually improved in certain aspects in recent years.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s election, as always, was direct and free, and the result unambiguous. While the outcome was never assured, in hindsight there\u2019s no shortage of reasons why Israeli voters chose Netanyahu over his challenger, political newcomer and leader of the Blue and White party Benny Gantz, regardless of whether they agreed with Netanyahu\u2019s worldview or approved of him personally.<\/p>\n

Political analyst Anshel Pfeffer, of Israel\u2019s left-leaning paper Haaretz<\/em>, wrote<\/a> after the election, \u2018[Netanyahu] has delivered a decade of uninterrupted economic growth. His last term has seen four of the calmest years in Israel\u2019s history, and he is now on close terms with the most powerful leaders in the world\u2019, adding, \u2018The biggest surprise of this election for me was that Benjamin Netanyahu didn\u2019t win by a landslide.\u2019<\/p>\n

Although a recent biographer of Netanyahu, Pfeffer is no fan. \u2018I\u2019m one of the 47 percent who voted against Netanyahu, and I\u2019m pretty depressed he won\u2019, he wrote. \u2018But I can\u2019t for the life of me see how the result is the death of Israeli democracy, as some are now writing in op-ed columns and on social media \u2026[T]his election \u2026\u00a0was probably one of the most democratic we\u2019ve had.\u2019<\/p>\n

Much of the angst over the risk to Israel\u2019s democratic institutions has focused on clashes between members of Netanyahu\u2019s governing coalition and the Supreme Court of Israel, which has occasionally made rulings they dislike.<\/p>\n

Yet voters turned their backs on Naftali Bennett\u2019s New Right party, which had built its campaign around returning Ayelet Shaked as justice minister and continuing her crusade against what she saw as the high court\u2019s judicial activism against popular interests. New Right failed to cross the electoral threshold.<\/p>\n

And Netanyahu\u2019s incoming government will likely be more moderate than the previous one. Parties to the right of Netanyahu\u2019s Likud party have gone from 14 seats in the previous Knesset to 10.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the robust state of Israel\u2019s democracy and freedoms holds up to scrutiny and compares well with other democracies in the eyes of impartial and respected watchdog groups.<\/p>\n

For the past two years, Israel has placed 30th in the Economist Intelligence Unit\u2019s Democracy Index<\/a>. Its ranking in 2018 placed it ahead of Belgium and just behind France.<\/p>\n

In 2017, the Israel Democracy Institute\u2019s annual survey<\/a> found that \u2018the international indicators suggest that, on the whole, Israel has been a stable democracy over the past decade\u2019. Last year\u2019s report<\/a>, the most recent, only continued the trend.<\/p>\n

Some of Israel\u2019s respected academics have also assessed the condition of the nation\u2019s democracy as robustly healthy.<\/p>\n

In December 2018, Pnina Sharvit Baruch, an expert in international law and senior research fellow and head of the program on law and national security at Tel Aviv University\u2019s Institute for National Security Studies published a paper<\/a> on the topic \u2018Is Israeli democracy at risk?\u2019<\/p>\n

In her paper, Shavit Baruch narrowed her focus to four spheres in which Israeli democracy is tested: protection of human rights, control over the West Bank, critics of the government and civilian activists, and checks and balances and the status of gatekeepers.<\/p>\n

\u2018At the bottom line\u2019, she concluded, \u2018it appears that Israeli democracy remains strong and rests on solid foundations\u2019.<\/p>\n

While Shavit Baruch cautioned against \u2018complacency\u2019 and added that \u2018steps aimed at eroding democratic values should be countered\u2019, she lashed out at those who would overstate the threat to Israeli democracy. \u2018The tendency on the part of some critics to portray any view contrary to their political position as undemocratic is dangerous in itself\u2019, she wrote, \u2018because \u201ccrying \u2018wolf\u2019\u201d makes it difficult to distinguish between legitimate, albeit politically controversial measures and measures that are truly undemocratic by nature.\u2019<\/p>\n

Shavit Baruch\u2019s opinion has been shared by others.<\/p>\n

For Israel\u2019s democracy to be considered illiberal, it would have to compare poorly with other democracies on major benchmarks such as freedom of the courts and the press and on civil liberties. And yet these are precisely the areas in which Israel continues to excel.<\/p>\n

The World Economic Forum\u2019s 2017\u201318 Global Competitive Index<\/a> ranked Israel 14th out of 137 countries globally in terms of judicial independence, an improvement of four places over the previous report<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Freedom House\u2019s 2019 Freedom in the World report<\/a> gave Israel 13 out of 16 points for \u2018political pluralism and participation\u2019, a perfect score for \u2018electoral process\u2019, and 10 out of a possible 12 for \u2018functioning of government\u2019.<\/p>\n

Freedoms for the press, religion, minorities, women and LGBTQ communities are broad, enshrined in law and embraced and protected by Israel\u2019s national institutions. The country\u2019s culture of freedom and open debate of sometimes radically opposing ideas is a hallmark of its political culture within and outside of the Knesset.<\/p>\n

In a 2016 poll<\/a> by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, 68% of Palestinian respondents (73% in the West Bank and 59% in the Gaza Strip) expressed admiration for Israel\u2019s democracy, describing it as either good or very good.<\/p>\n

Given the healthy state of Israel\u2019s democracy and civil liberties, to characterise the country as \u2018illiberal\u2019 or anything close to it is a pejorative exaggeration and a distortion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The re-election of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been described by some of his critics as a blow to democracy, or as evidence of Israel\u2019s progression towards becoming an \u2018illiberal democracy\u2019. However, several democracy …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":327,"featured_media":47516,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[106,83,240,218],"class_list":["post-47512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-democracy","tag-elections","tag-israel","tag-middle-east"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nNetanyahu\u2019s re-election was Israel\u2019s liberal democracy in action | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/netanyahus-re-election-was-israels-liberal-democracy-in-action\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Netanyahu\u2019s re-election was Israel\u2019s liberal democracy in action | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The re-election of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been described by some of his critics as a blow to democracy, or as evidence of Israel\u2019s progression towards becoming an \u2018illiberal democracy\u2019. 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