Israeli Democracy's Vibrance Is Again on Display | Opinion

Israel remains the most vibrant democracy in the world today.

No democracy has had more transforming elections and more successful demonstrations than Israel. The recent turnabout in the Netanyahu government's plan to rush through a one-sided judicial "reform" is just the latest example of Israel's raucous democracy at work. Those who fear that Israel is on the path to autocracy need only observe recent events in that nation's history.

No country has a freer or more critical press and media than Israel, especially with regard to political controversies. Although there are limits on the publication of some national security secrets, the media has figured out how to evade military censorship by laundering the secrets through foreign reporters. In actual practice, there is no country that publishes information more critical of the government than Israel.

Nor is there any country whose universities are more one-sidedly antagonistic to the government. Yet they operate freely with government financial support.

Neither is there any country that has a more contentious parliament than the Knesset.

The ultimate check on authoritarianism is, of course, the citizenry, which can bring about changes in government by fair and free elections. Israel has had more such elections than any other nation since 1996. As the great judge Learned Hand observed during World War II: "Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it ..."

The Israeli people are too argumentative, opinionated, and ornery for liberty to die in their hearts. The Jewish people, which comprise the majority of Israelis, have too long a history of being oppressed by tyrants ever to tolerate autocracy. Israel, like England, lacks a written constitution of the kind other countries have. But like England, it has a tradition of civil liberties that serves as an effective protection.

There are, to be sure, certain components of Israeli society that are undemocratic. A small number of very religious Jews believe that Israel should not be a secular democratic state but rather a biblical theocracy. The number of these fundamentalists is growing, but they remain a tiny portion of the population. Because of his Israel's coalition system, their voices are somewhat magnified, and they have disproportionate influence over the current government. That, too, is part of democracy: giving voice to undemocratic elements in an otherwise democratic polity. There are also those ultra-nationalists who, while insisting on democracy in Israel, would deny it to Palestinians on the West Bank. That too is part of Israeli internal democracy: giving voice to those who would deny democracy to others. They too have disproportionate influence in West Bank policy, but not necessarily on policies involving Israel itself.

These issues are complex, as is the nature of democracy in a polity that calls itself the nation state of the Jewish people, and whose Declaration of Independence guarantees equality to its non-Jewish citizens. There can be and are, divisive debates about the nature of democracy in so complex a context. But at its core democracy means that important policies are determined by a majority vote of the citizens. That has never been challenged with regards to Israel. Arab citizens—both Muslim and Christian—have equal rights to vote. Their political parties, which have joined past Israeli governments, are increasingly influential.

The proposed reforms, which led to the demonstrations and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's recent pause, would not, even if enacted in full, end democracy in Israel. They might, however, result in a reduction of minority rights and the rights of dissenters to free speech and due process. These negative consequences would be caused by the power of the Knesset to override Supreme Court decisions that have hereto protected those rights. Rejecting these reforms therefore would keep Israel a better democracy, but Israel will remain a vibrant democracy even if all these ill-advised reforms were to be enacted.