Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "ข้อวิจารณ์รัฐบาลอิสราเอล" in Thai language version.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (ลิงก์)Israel might be the only country in the world whose right to exist is debated and whose future is questioned. Can you imagine anyone asking whether the United States will survive or whether it should exist? Or anyone saying "no" if asked?
Ilan Pappé: No, Israel is definitely not a democracy. A country that occupies another people for more than 40 years and disallow them the most elementary civic and human rights cannot be a democracy. A country that pursues a discriminatory policy against a fifth of its Palestinian citizens inside the 67 borders cannot be a democracy. In fact Israel is, what we use to call in political science a Herrenvolk democracy, its democracy only for the masters. The fact that you allow people to participate in the formal side of democracy, namely to vote or to be elected, is useless and meaningless if you don’t give them any share in the common good or in the common resources of the State, or if you discriminate against them despite the fact that you allow them to participate in the elections. On almost every level from official legislation through governmental practices, and social and cultural attitudes, Israel is only a democracy for one group, one ethnic group, that given the space that Israel now controls, is not even a majority group anymore, so I think that you’ll find it very hard to use any known definition of democracy which will be applicable for the Israeli case.
Whether it ends the occupation and discrimination against Arab citizens within its borders will alter our perception of whether the nation began as an imperfect democracy or a false one. Today's political battles, strangely enough, will determine not only its future but also its past.
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