Gabriela Argüello and Lourdes Ornelas
Azrikam Amram
POLI 145
May 23rd, 2024
Letter to the Editor
Dear Raja Shehadeh,
We would like to summarize your New Yorker article titled “Israel’s Anti-Democratic
Practices Against Palestinians Are Infecting Its Political System: Rising violence is drawing new
attention to the alliance that Benjamin Netanyahu struck with the far right to return to power”,
and expand on some thoughts that we found to be interesting and aligning of what to believe to
be true as well. Raja Shehadeh, your article was published on January 28, 2023, and it examines
the escalation in violence between Israelis and Palestinians in January of 2023, highlighting two
significant incidents: an Israeli raid in Jenin that killed nine Palestinians and a series of attacks in
East Jerusalem resulting in multiple casualties. These events draw attention to Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu's controversial alliance with far-right political parties to maintain power,
notably featuring Itamar Ben Gvir, a national-security minister with a history of extremist views.
Amidst rising domestic protests against Netanyahu's attempts to weaken Israel's Supreme Court,
the article underscores the persistent human-rights abuses faced by Palestinians, historical
tolerance of settler violence, and the failure of the Israeli judicial system to hold perpetrators
accountable. The piece contextualizes these issues within the broader framework of Israeli
occupation policies since 1967, suggesting that the erosion of democratic norms in the occupied
territories is now impacting Israel's internal politics and calling for a reevaluation of the
occupation's implications for both Israeli democracy and Palestinian rights.
Within the context of democratic participation among the nation's different ethnic groups,
this issue is exacerbated by the marginalization of Arab citizens, who "lack political clout
because they are outside the Jewish-Zionist consensus, and their ideological, collective, and
individual needs are accorded only partial recognition" (Zalnoor, 148). This marginalization
highlights systemic inequities and calls for a reevaluation of the occupation's implications for
both Israeli democracy and Palestinian rights further. The article also elaborates on how the
judicial system does not protect Palestenians against settlers. Settlers have gotten away with
almost all of their violence against Palestenians. Israel’s incompetent judicial system that fails to
hold settlers accountable for conflicting violence is a reflection of the state’s democratic system.
This fits with the article’s claims that Israel had undemocratic practices, however the
consequences of these anti-democratic practices are being faced majorly by the Palestenians.
In the reading, “The model of ethnic democracy: Israel as a Jewish and democratic state”,
Sammy Smooha explores and compares different kinds of democracies. She claims that Israel is
an ethnic democracy, one where an ethnic-nation is created or used as the basis for identity and
solidarity. However, through your piece, we see that this process for Israel has been extremely
violent. Therefore, I question if Israel’s ethnic democracy is really a democracy, and if it is, at
what cost? If you have so many human right violations, efforts to dismantle the supreme court
and overpower the judicial systems, the legitimacy of democracy is questioned. The practices
used to create this ethnic democracy by Israel have actually proven to be anti-democratic, as the
journalist piece reflects. In addition, the author of the article reflects on the features of
ethnic-democracies, like Israel’s, and their shortcomings in being considered a Western civic
democracy:
“Ethnic democracy meets the minimal and procedural definition of democracy,
but in quality it falls short of the major Western civic (liberal, consociational and
multicultural) democracies. 5 It is a diminished type of democracy because it
takes the ethnic nation, not the citizenry, as the corner- stone of the state and does
not extend equality of rights to all. Ethnic democracy suffers from an inherent
contradiction between ethnic ascendance and civic equality. The state privileges
the majority and strives to advance its interests rather than to serve all its citizens
equally. The minority cannot fully identify itself with the state, cannot be
completely equal to the majority and cannot confer full legitimacy on the state”
(Smooha 478).
To conclude, we have used material from our classroom to support the information you
have shared in your journal article. We find several practices by the Israeli state to be
anti-democratic, and it in many cases, we find it hard to consider it a democracy while
there is a genocide happening from within. Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Gabriela Argüello and Lourdes Ornelas
