Democracy Thrives in Israel – The American Spectator | USA News and PoliticsThe American Spectator

It has been said that one of the virtues of democratic governments is that they do not go to war without the consent and support of the people. Intuitively this makes sense. Wars, whether they be defensive or offensive, cost an enormous amount of blood and treasure and since in democracies all of that blood and treasure belongs to and comes from the people, they naturally will not want to part with it without very compelling reasons.

Nowhere does one see this principle more starkly in play than in the tiny democratic state of Israel in which, because it has a universal draft and an army made up mainly of reservists, the impact of war is immediately felt in the general population. This also explains why, except in the case of Israel’s War of Independence and the present multi-front existential war, Israel has always tried to make its conflicts end as quickly as possible.

The converse of this principle is that when a democracy does indeed face an existential crisis the people go all in. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the army recruiting stations were flooded with volunteers, and some who were under-age lied about it in order to be able to serve their country.

Similarly, right after October 7 Israeli reservists went flocking to their army bases in greater numbers than could be accommodated or were even needed, and tens of thousands of Israelis who were living abroad flew home to join the fight. This is how a healthy democracy responds to existential threats. Soldiers are willing to step up, to risk their lives for something that they love and that they feel is worth fighting for.

This spirit is bred in the bone. One of my Israeli cousins married a girl from Chile who he met when travelling in that country. She moved to Israel and their first son was a boy. When he was born, before he could even hold up his own head, her mother-in-law, who was a Holocaust survivor, looked at him and declared, “Another soldier for Israel.”

Naturally, because she had not grown up in Israel and was not yet fully acculturated to Israeli society, the baby’s mother was appalled. Eventually she had four more sons and though they have all known months of active duty in the present war she has come to accept that this is part of life in the adopted country. Moreover, despite the burden of military duty none of my Israeli family has shirked it, nor has any ever planned to leave the country. Of course, not all Israelis feel this way. There are those who have emigrated because this burden is too much for them , but all and all, through birth and immigration, the population of the country keeps growing.

That being said there are Israelis who aren’t about to leave but who hate their own democracy. Their catchword is that they want Israel to be a “normal” liberal democracy. This despite the fact that what has become normal in other so-called liberal democracies is distinctly illiberal. The EU and Canada have instituted harsh censorship regimes reminiscent of those of the former Soviet Union where “disinformation” and “misinformation” were strictly forbidden.

In Romania the last election was deleted by the judiciary because it didn’t reflect “European values.” And following the recent election in Germany the lame-duck government is trying to pass a constitutional amendment allowing it to increase the “debt brake” — Schuldenbremse — which was instituted by former Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2009. They’re doing this now because they know that they will not have the required two-thirds majority to do so in the incoming government. Nor must one forget that democratic Ukraine has cancelled elections and opposition parties during the present time of war.

None of these things could happen in Israel, yet this is the “normal” democracy that the Israeli anti-Zionists want to emulate.

Democracy is messy and that is one of its virtues, people thrash things out and from this thrashing eventually evolves a majority opinion about what is important and what to do. In Israel the vast majority now believe the country is engaged in an existential war and that it must win it decisively whatever the cost. However, at the same time, they also want to see as many of the hostages released as possible. These are, of course, contradictory aims because Hamas knows that their only hope of surviving is to keep on hanging on to hostages.

This makes for a danse macabre between the warring parties but not one, for better or for worse, which the Jewish state can easily eschew because politics is downstream from culture and it is an inescapable sacred duty in Jewish culture to ransom captives. It creates a tension that is unique to Jewish civilization and hence gets played out in Israeli democracy with protests and demonstrations on both sides of the argument.

Israel has been playing this game with Hamas for decades well before the present war but this may be the last time that it is forced to do so: Hamas and Hezbollah have almost been routed, Syria is coming to pieces, Iran’s near nuclear abilities are now on the chopping block; a recent poll shows half of Gazans say the want to leave and Hamas may no longer be in a position to stop them; and Pakistan, of all nations, has just sent a delegation to Israel.

Civil Society in Israel

More importantly, outside of the military and diplomatic realm one thing that Hamas’ endless manipulation has not been able to change but has actually strengthened is Israeli social cohesion, the habits of the heart that bind a healthy democracy together. New civil society organizations are constantly popping up like mushrooms to meet needs or supplement what the government is unable to take care of.

For example, United Hatzalah is an 8,000 strong volunteer emergency rescue organization that uses motorcycle ambulances to get to people in distress, to keep them alive until more robust help can arrive. It aims for a 90 second response time, averages under 3 minutes, and has made 7 million emergency rescue missions since its inception in 2006. Leket Israel has 95,000 volunteers rescuing and purchasing tons of food to feed hundreds of thousands of people who are dealing with food insecurity caused by the war. The list goes on and on.

Hannah Arendt, who was originally a supporter of the establishment of a Jewish state later changed her mind because she imagined that the state would end up being a sort of Sparta completely focused on security at the expense of everything else that makes for a civilized nation. One can understand her concern, but as it turned out Arendt’s vision of what Israel would become was dead wrong. A thriving civic life and copious achievements in the arts and sciences demonstrate that, despite its military and security apparatus, Israel has become like democratic Athens rather than like autocratic Sparta. It’s a pity that the anti-Zionists in Israel who are causing so much trouble with their crazy demonstrations don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.

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