Yeah, one of the things that I find most frustrating about talking about anything to do with Israel is that it’s a democracy index 7.80 country that is consistently brought up in the same breath as a group of countries which pretty much all fall in 1-3.5 range (leaving aside Afghanistan as an outlier, because last I checked it had fallen all the way to 0.25 and it’s almost as unfair to compare that to Jordan as it is to compare Jordan to Israel).
Like. Israel is a concerningly flawed democracy at real risk of serious backsliding! It’s very bad! This law is very bad, the rhetoric coming out of the current majority coalition is very bad, the enduring popularity of people who built their political careers cheering on the Israeli equivalent of the JFK assassination is very bad.
But every time you try and talk about any of that, you have to contend with an avalanche of propaganda that posits that this means that Israel is somehow a more repressive regime than its neighbors, and like… I’m sorry, but that’s just completely detached from reality?
Like just as a point of comparison, Ukraine is only a 4.90 on the democracy index, and that’s not great. But only the most diehard self-parody tankies ever bring Ukrainian domestic policy and law up in the context of whether the war in Ukraine is justified, because given that Russia is a whooping 2.03 on the democracy index and has earned every bit of that rating, “some of the political purges in Ukraine are a bit concerning for long-term domestic governance” a fucking absurd thing to go after Ukraine for in the context of Russian hostility.
Anyway holy shit is this Israeli death penalty law awful, and it should be condemned, and I fucking wish I didn’t always have to disclaimer saying that with “but to be clear, this doesn’t mean that Egypt and Lebanon and the PA have any moral high ground, obviously, I mean come the fuck on”
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