Golan, who entered politics five years ago after a career in the army, is one of the most prominent of the many brave Israelis who took matters into their own hands that day to save others. His new image as a hero has given his political career a shot in the arm – and he has decided his new mission is to revive his country’s moribund left.
“The right today in Israel is people who think we can annex millions of Palestinians, and Israel should adopt some sort of policy of revenge, that we can live by our swords and not attempt to reconcile with the Palestinians or any other hostile entity in the region. I think 180 degrees the opposite.”
Israeli politics has changed, Golan said. “I’m not sure whether Israel right now is truly a democratic state any more … It is not a question of left or right any more: these titles are meaningless,” he said.
In the modern sense, I think most people would take the word “democracy” to include universal suffrage - at a minimum, all adults born or granted citizenship there should have the equal right to vote for it to be considered a democracy.
In practice, Israel has substantial control over the entire region from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, between Egypt and Lebanon (that is not to say that they should, just the reality) - in the sense that anyone in that area’s lives are significantly controlled by Israeli government decisions, and the Israeli government and military operates over that entire area.
So the minimum bar for it being a democracy is that adults - including the people with ancestral ties to the area that it controls - get an equal say in the governance. That is clearly not the case, and has not been for quite some time; it not being a democracy is not a recent development (maybe it’s never actually been a true democracy).
I would like to add that having free and fair elections isn’t enough to be a democracy. A democracy, by definition, is simple majority rule in which the government represents the will and interests of the people. Paid propaganda, paid lobbying, SuperPACs, the existence of a donor class, etc all betray the ideals of what democracy represents. Any government that ceases to represent the interests and will of the people ceases to be a democracy, regardless of how fair and free their elections may seem.
