Israel’s Democracy Movement Has Something Important to Teach Us

The left in the U.S. hasn’t shown much love for the democracy movement that has rocked Israel since January. Such indifference is, perhaps, unsurprising, because many progressives consider Israel to be a—if not the—force for evil in the world. At its recent convention, the Democratic Socialists of America put forward a resolution titled “Make DSA an Anti-Zionist Organization in Principle and Praxis,” and the Harvard Crimson editorial board has “proudly” endorsed a campus protest that equated Zionism with “white supremacy,” among other ills. Even many liberals, including Jewish ones, seem oddly disconnected from the events that are unfolding; in the United States, demonstrations against the Netanyahu government have been insignificant and mainly confined to small left-Zionist groups.

Some critics that Israel isn’t a real democracy because Arab Israelis face discrimination, or because Israel was founded as a state of refuge for the Jewish people, or because the occupation persists. Underlying this view is an oddly moralistic, rather than political, understanding of democracy that confuses it with purity. Democracy—the rule of law, the equality of citizenship, the balance of governmental powers, the freedom to speak and publish, the protection of minorities, the sanctity of elections, the ability to be religious or secular—can be, and in fact usually is, partial and incomplete. Democracies have been known, and not just occasionally, to embark on odious wars, support oppressive institutions, and sustain colonialism; see, for instance, France when it ruled Algeria. The difference is that Israel’s colony—the