Lorna Fitzsimons is CEO of BICOM (the Britain Israel Communications & Research Centre), a not-for-profit, independent organisation

Israeli Democracy: Time to Tamp Down the Crisis Talk (Huffington Post)

“Permanent vigilance about the health of our democracies is the only guarantee of their survival. Across the political spectrum leading Israeli politicians and commentators are expressing concern at controversial Knesset legislation widely seen as illiberal or anti-democratic.

On the right, the leading Likud figure Benny Begin, son of the former Prime Minister Menachem Begin, is astonished at colleagues who have “forgotten the basic rules of democracy”. In the centre, Tzipi Livni is aghast at bills that push the country “towards dictatorship.” And on the left, Haaretz columnist Ari Shavik fears the country’s very survival is being put in jeopardy by a “vile reactionary spirit rising from the parliament.”

Short-sighted and opportunistic politicians, he believes, are playing to their base inside the country upon which their Knesset seats depend, and alienating Israel’s base outside the country – the democratic Westerners upon which the state’s survival depends.

The problem is not that the alarm bells are being rung – a healthy democracy always needs its citizens to be watchful. The problem is that a notion is spreading in the West that Israel is fast becoming an illiberal ethno-democracy – fear-driven, bigoted, and small minded. And that just is not true. And how we debate the state of Israel’s democratic future casts a light on how we view our own, as well as being vital to Israel’s international standing.”

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