What democracy is Netanyahu talking about?

Netanyahu indicated via satellite at the “Democracy Summit” organized by the US State Department a few days ago that the alliance between the greatest democracy in the world, by which he means the United States of America, and a strong democracy, Israel, is unshakable. The latter's statements came a day after US President Joe Biden's public statements against efforts to curb the authority of the Supreme Court, as Biden questioned Netanyahu's position on his measures to freeze the Judicial Reform Law, which led to massive demonstrations over the past weeks that paralyzed life throughout Israel. It seems that Biden's skeptical position on Netanyahu's freezing of the Judicial Reform Law came because of the repeated warnings, which fell on deaf ears in Tel Aviv, by the US administration of the Israeli Prime Minister about the need to stop the Judicial Reform Law and replace it with laws that are acceptable to the general public. The last of these warnings was what US Secretary of Defense Austin made when he visited Israel several weeks ago and reprimanded Netanyahu for continuing to support this law. In fact, Biden is absolutely certain that Netanyahu is evasive, just as his predecessor Obama did when he expressed his annoyance at his lie during his conversation with French President Sarkozy on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Cannes, France, in 2011.

The strange thing about this paradox is that with the growing demonstrations against the Netanyahu government and hundreds of thousands taking to the streets denouncing the dictatorship and fascism and calling for the overthrow of the Netanyahu government, the Israeli prime minister comes out to everyone praising Israeli democracy, describing it as strong and eternal. What kind of democracy is Netanyahu talking about when Israel's rank in the current global corruption index is 36 out of a total of 180 countries? And what is this democracy that the Global Democracy Index of the British magazine The Economist placed in the year 2022 in the rank of fragile (flawed) democracies. Not only that, the previous index indicated that Israel has fallen six ranks in the Democracy Index for the year 2022, from 23rd to 29th place out of 165 countries. It is expected that Israel will slide in a lower ranking for the current year 2023 due to sharp internal divisions as a result of judicial reform laws, the nature of the tense relationship between Ashkenazim and Haredim, and the growth of religious fascism within Israeli society. On the other hand, what democracy is Netanyahu lying to the world about while he and his fascist government team are proud that Israel is a state for Jews only! What democracy is this for one category of citizens of the state? What kind of democracy is this when Israel is an apartheid state? And what kind of democracy is this? The “Israeli Democracy Index” survey for the year 2022, issued by the “Israeli Democracy Institute,” showed that the percentage of Israelis’ trust in state institutions has reached its lowest level in twenty years.

In fact, the entire world should stop calling Israel the oasis of democracy in the Middle East. It may have been an oasis in the past, but now it is definitely a barren desert whose soil is mixed with blood and racism. It is "a country moving at a dangerous speed towards ultra-nationalism, fundamentalism, racism and fascism, that is, it is destroying the democratic foundations on which it was built," as Gideon Levy said in his article last week in Haaretz.