The word democracy comes from the Greek words 'demos' (people) and 'kratos' (power), so means literally 'the power of the people' as opposed to despotism. The philosophical question that should be asked is “which people are you referring to?”
The word democracy is open to many interpretations and is often used by western politicians to condemn other countries who fail to conform to their particular interpretation of the word. It is sloppy thinking to accept this word at face value. If you were to put ten different people of different nationalities in a room to discuss democracy each one would likely define democracy differently.
Democracy is not a word like cat or camel. We all know what a cat or a camel is. These words, unlike democracy, aren’t open to a myriad of different definitions and interpretations.
In this article I put forward the argument that the word democracy when used by politicians to describe a political model is meaningless, deceptive, manipulative and even dangerous unless its meaning is defined in advance. Moreover I would argue that without defining what your particular model of democracy is, any debate about whether it is good or bad, whether it is better or worse and whether or not it is a political model that should be used by governments, is quite frankly a waste of one’s breath.
The word democracy has been abused and used by political puppeteers for centuries and has even been used to justify wars and the invasion of foreign lands.
If you Google the meaning of the word democracy hoping to find a universal definition you will quickly discover this to be a pointless task. Wikipedia will give you at least 70 different definitions.
And no, I am not going to bore you with an explanation of what all these different definitions of democracy mean. The democratic model that exists in most western countries is described as Representative Democracy. It describes a form of democracy in which governments and politicians can be voted into office by all citizens over a certain age. Every adult citizen has a right to vote.
Once in office the politicians represent the people who voted for them and are expected to carry out polices as promised in their election campaign manifesto. They provide education which is of a fairly high standard, they usually but not always protect human rights and if those who voted them in do not like how they have been governed they can change their government at the next election by voting them out. They also allow, or should allow, freedom of speech.
Above all they have a legal system which in general has laws which treat all citizens equally. As we watch the university students demonstrating in the USA in support of Palestine and the excessive force being used to crush their freedom of speech we could put forward an argument that western democracy has deteriorated in the last few decades and that many of its central pillars are crumbling. That is perhaps an argument that needs a separate article. Suffice it to say that democracy is open to many different interpretations. It can be used manipulatively and is meaningless without defining it first.
The Israeli government is fond of stating that it is the only democracy in the Middle East. Owing to the many definitions of democracy it is in its rights to call itself thus but, as mentioned above, without defining its own particular type of democracy the Israeli statement is empty, meaningless and manipulative.
Communist East Germany was referred to as the German Democratic Republic whereas West Germany was described as the Federal Republic of Germany. Having once visited both West Germany and Communist East Germany before the Berlin Wall came down I can assure you that democracy as practised in Communist East Germany was very different from the democracy as practised in West Germany. It is open to interpretation as to which one was the best.
And so it is with Israel. One thing we can state unequivocally is that its democracy is not based on the western model. Above all its legal system fails to give equal rights to all its citizens.
Since 1948 when it unilaterally declared itself to be an independent sovereign State in Palestine, Israel has passed 65 laws that either directly or indirectly discriminate against Arabs. The laws which perhaps above all demonstrate the undemocratic nature of Israel as defined by most western countries include the citizens’ right to acquire or lease land, the right of return, the right of residency, the right to commemorate the Naqba and the right to family life if your family is living outside Israel and wants to join you.
All these laws are the preserve of Jews. If we define an apartheid State as one which implements and maintains a system of discriminatory laws against people because of their ethnicity, religion or race then Israel fits the bill.
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