The myth of Israel as the region's 'only democracy' should be dead. Not in western media

For much of the western media, Israel’s election was a festival of democracy. La Croix billed it as a vote for peace and “the honour of democracy”. The BBC framed it as a pivotal election “defined by security and democracy”. The New York Times cast it as hard-right nationalism against Israel’s “founding ideals”. Le Monde gave it extensive coverage with seemingly little regard for the expectations of Palestinians, the axis of the whole campaign. But the numbers are now in, and they tell a story the democracy-worshippers have chosen not to read. The morning after the vote, Yair Netanyahu, the son of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said the results proved that most Muslim Arabs in Israel support terrorism against the state, calling it “an existential problem no less than the Iranian nuclear threat”. Their offence? They voted. He was not freelancing. Likud, in a statement his father shared, claimed the election had been stolen by Arab parties, offering no specific evidence; police said there was none. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters Then the state joined in. Justice Noam Sohlberg, chair of the Central Elections Committee and a resident of the West Bank settlement of Alon Shvut, ordered Shin Bet chief David Zini to investigate claims of foreign-funded Arab turnout. A senior police official dismissed the claims as baseless. Netanyahu’s party branded it “Ra’amgate”, a plot for the “Islamisation of Israel”, and demanded that Arab party leaders be interrogated by the Shin Bet. The courts and security services, held up as proof of Israeli democracy, are being enlisted to put Palestinian votes under suspicion. Behind the facade, the danger of post-election violence is no longer remote. Familiar pattern In a normal democracy, politicians at least pretend to celebrate turnout. Israel recorded 77.7 percent, the highest since 1999, and its ruling party treated it as a crime scene. In 2015, Netanyahu warned that Arab voters heading to the polls “in droves” meant that the election was being stolen. Britain should recognise the pattern. When the Greens took Gorton and Denton in February, in a seat where around a third of residents are Muslim, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage called it a victory for “sectarian voting and cheating” and reported “family voting” to police. Greater Manchester Police found no evidence of anyone being directed or coerced. Farage kept calling the vote rigged anyway. I have boycotted Israeli elections for years, but this time I will vote Read More » Israel’s advocates make the link themselves. Joseph Cohen of the Israel Advocacy Movement branded Arab citizens’ votes as “tribalism” incompatible with democracy, and warned that such parties are emerging in Europe and will “divide then devour your nations”. The threat, in his telling, is not fraud. It is Arab and Muslim citizens voting at all. With most votes now counted, Netanyahu’s bloc stands at 53 seats, Gadi Eisenkot’s opposition at 48, and Palestinian-led parties at a record 19. On paper, the anti-Netanyahu camp holds 67 of 120 seats. In practice it holds 48, because the roughly 730,000 people who voted for Palestinian-led parties are treated as irrelevant. Eisenkot demands that any partner recognise Israel as a Jewish state, terms built to keep Palestinian lawmakers out. Netanyahu may yet govern despite losing, with talk already emerging of a possible Netanyahu-Eisenkot power-sharing deal. Jewish voters back that exclusion. Asked by the Israel Democracy Institute what should happen to each Arab party after the election, 75 percent of Jewish Israelis said the Joint List should be neither in government nor even its outside safety net; 65 percent said the same of Ra’am. Just three percent wanted the Joint List in the coalition. And Palestinian citizens are the lucky minority. As scholar Norman Finkelstein has pointed out, the millions of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, roughly 30 percent of the potential electorate under Israeli rule, cannot vote at all. Imagine a US election that barred New York, California, Texas and Florida. By that measure, there was no democratic election in Israel. United on war Netanyahu’s bloc survived 7 October, a corruption trial, the Qatargate probe, and a disastrous war with Iran. The Jewish vote barely moved. Above all, it survived Gaza. A UN commission of inquiry concluded that Israel committed genocide there, naming Netanyahu among the leaders who incited it - yet he remains the leading force in Israeli politics. That tells you everything you need to know about Israeli society. A survey of Jewish Israelis published last year found that 82 percent support expelling Gaza’s population, 79 percent the West Bank’s, and 56 percent the Palestinian citizens of Israel. Forty-seven percent support killing the entire population of a city after its conquest. Yet the BBC’s diplomatic correspondent filed the vote result under the headline “Israel’s election deadlock is a sign of the country’s deep divisions”. On war and Palestinians, Jewish Israelis are united. The divisions are over who runs the machine, not what it does. Eisenkot is the author of the Dahiya doctrine, promising that what Israel did to Beirut’s southern suburbs in 2006 would happen “in every village from which Israel is fired on”. Yet the BBC’s Middle East correspondent cast the race as Netanyahu against “centrist” and “leftist” figures, describing Eisenkot as “softly spoken” and low-key. In what world is that left wing? Yair Lapid, the supposed centrist, has set out his principle as “maximum Jews on maximum land with maximum security and with minimum Palestinians”. Avigdor Lieberman, the former defence minister, declared in 2018 that there are “no innocent people” in Gaza. Naftali Bennett, another member of the “centrist” opposition coalition, was quoted in 2013 as saying he had killed lots of Arabs and saw no problem with it. For Palestinians, this election changes nothing. Without borders In 1995, as former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin pursued Oslo, Netanyahu led the campaign against him. At one Jerusalem rally, protesters displayed Rabin in a Nazi uniform; his widow, Leah, said Netanyahu was there and didn’t stop it. After Yigal Amir shot Rabin dead, Leah Rabin said she would rather shake Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s hand than Netanyahu’s. Seven months later, Amir voted for Netanyahu from his prison cell, and enough of the country followed to hand him victory by a margin of more than 29,000 votes. Israel did not stumble into Netanyahu. It chose him, kept choosing him, and has moved to his right. A better question would be: will Israel ever declare its borders? It never has, because doing so would concede that somewhere there is a Palestine As journalist Owen Jones wrote in Zeteo, the election has destroyed the “it’s only Netanyahu” lie. On the questions that matter most, Israeli society is more extreme than its prime minister. Some still ask: “Do you support Israel’s right to exist?” A better question would be: will Israel ever declare its borders? It never has, because doing so would concede that somewhere there is a Palestine. In 1978, as a student in the US, Netanyahu argued on American television that Palestinians had no right to a separate state, because Jordan already was one. The journalists reciting the mantra about “the region’s only democracy” share Israel’s defining trait. Their stupidity, too, is without borders. The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.