[flagged]
You very obviously can, given 18th-century America and ancient Athens were democracies despite slavery and male-only suffrage.
No, that’s oligarchy.
These questions have been debated for a long time. There is a No True Scotsman nature to the project, given the very nature of citizenship and polity means there are always demarcations between who can and cannot vote. But the difference is in degrees, and it should be obvious that there is a difference in kind between twenty-five people in a multi-billion-person nation and millions in a millions-more territory.
But perhaps we should say majoritarian democracy is the criteria we are interested in.
Athens is classically considered a democracy. Partly because democracy means more than just suffrage.
> perhaps we should say majoritarian democracy is the criteria we are interested in
This is fair. Though Israel proper still satisfies the criterion. (I wouldn’t demote Britain from a democracy while it was administering occupied Germany, nor even necessarily its colonies. Same for ancient Rome.)
Your argument is more akin to calling South Africa a majoritarian democracy after it passed the Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act, imo. By the rules of the 1948 partition (prior to 1948 which side you are living on determines your citizenship), close to a majority of people today living in Gaza or West Bank would be Israeli-side citizens. Post-facto stripping of the partition rights so that only a minority are considered citizens does not make you a majoritarian democracy.
I'm aware that Athens is classically considered a democracy, I just think that view should be complicated from a modern perspective (and even contemporaries described Athens as a democracy in name only).
Ironically Socrates and Plato would say this is exactly what democracies are like. The difference is that you take democracies as positive and they did not. Anyway, calling Athens democracy (they are the OG democracy and the founder of the word itself) not the real thing made me chuckle. If only all that is at stake was a definition disagreement.
If you continue learning about history, you might happen to notice that there appear to be gaps between how societies self-describe and the actual values they live by. This was well-known by contemporaries at the time, as Athens was described "in name a democracy but in fact governed by its first citizen."
It would be completely reasonable to say that the US (or at least the southern states) was not a democracy in the modern sense of the word until that happened.
That’s redefining democracy to the extent it excludes Athens. The term you may be looking for is a liberal democracy, or more precisely universal suffrage.
You are. That’s a redefinition. It neuters the term of its millennia-old moral weight.
Sure, I’ll agree Israel isn’t a democracy per whatever definition you’re using. It isn’t a “real”country per others’. At that point, however, you’re just expressing a personal dislike. Nothing foundational.
> I’ll agree Israel isn’t a democracy per whatever definition you’re using.
Okay then, do you have an actual point, other than quibbling about what words mean?
And any bystanders too for that matter, safe in the knowledge that the end justifies the means.
By this argument, since there's still Jewish people around, the holocaust was not a genocide, which I find a completely unacceptable conclusion.
> if this were a genocide, they'd be in camps
Gaza has been described and essentially functions as a concentration camp. 2.5 million people in an area the size of Rotterdam, no going in or out, all borders, shores, airspace controlled by Israel, food, electricity, water supply controlled (and heavily restricted) by Israel. By your argument it is in fact a genocide, and I'm inclined to agree.
> The discrimination is based on citizenship status and not on race. Arab Israelis have the same rights as Jewish Israelis.
It is based indirectly on race (inasmuch as "Jewish" is a race; maybe "cultural group" would be more accurate), because any Jewish person in the world can become an Israeli citizen, whereas most Arabs have no way to become citizens unless they are in Israel proper, the Golan Heights, or East Jerusalem. I.e. for people who live in the West Bank (outside East Jerusalem), whether they are Israeli citizens is entirely determined by whether they are Jewish.
On some timeline this is every population on the planet.
I’m not defending the Nakba. But it’s not a commonly-used exclusionary rule for democracies. If it were, there has never been a democracy on Earth. (And never can be. Everyone lives on territory once occupied by another people.)
It’s horrible that so many Palestinians had to leave during the Nakba, but since the ones who stayed were eventually granted citizenship and legal equality, I think it’s fair to say that Israel proper is administered democratically today — similar to the situation of Native Americans in the U.S.
But people in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank have no way to become Israeli citizens (unless they are Jewish), despite those territories being controlled by Israel, probably permanently. That is clearly undemocratic.
Not only undemocratic, but it is running an apartheid. Not to mention the complete denial of right to return for displaced Palestinians, not even acknowledging it.
Agreed. But that doesn’t unmake Israel a democracy.
The Federalist Papers are the deep dive. The Wikipedia article is a good start [1].
If you’re excluding classic members of a set with your measure, your measure is inconsistent with the classic set. You may argue Athens wasn’t a true democracy, but that obviously puts your definition of a true democracy in a special bucket.
> South Africa has been a democracy since the end of apartheid in 1994.
People in the present day use the word "democracy" in a way that would exclude either ancient Athens or the Jim Crow-era US. You are the one who's insisting on an unusual definition from thousands of years ago; my definition is the mainstream one. Furthermore, your "classical" definition is irrelevant, since we're talking about Israel the modern state in 2024 which should be judged by present-day standards.
Never mind the explicit ethnic-based right of return, land ownership rules, etc. By their own admission, the state frequently makes decisions prioritizing communities of the dominant ethnic group, see for instance 'National Priority Area's.
Honestly, the ethnic favoritism in Israel's government is so widespread and blatant I could just keep listing examples on and on.