In other words, it seems that Israel began losing its democratic accolades when Netanyahu dared upset the socio-political equilibrium among Israel's Jewish, not Arab population.
Be that as it may, the jig is up. If the Freedom House report was not clear enough regarding Israel's failed democracy, the V-Dem Report is more damning and detailed.
According to the Swedish report's "Political Corruption Index," Israel is the 35th most politically corrupt country, followed immediately by Botswana in Southern Africa. Interestingly, the United Arab Emirates is six spots ahead of Israel in that category and one spot ahead of the United States.
If that score was not bad enough, it was actually Israel's best performance in all other indexes: Israel occupied the 51st spot on the "Liberal Democracy Index," 53rd in the "Egalitarian Component Index," 55th in the "Electoral Democracy Index," 57th in the "Liberal Component Index" and 76th in the "Deliberative Component Index." It gets worse.
Particularly revealing is Israel's score in the "Participatory Component Index," where Israel claimed the 80th position, lagging behind Congo, Zambia, Somaliland and Myanmar, the latter being the focal point of international attention over its massacres and ethnic cleansing campaigns of the Rohingya Muslim minority in the Southeast Asian country.
This is not in the least surprising as Israel has long perceived its Palestinian Arab population, in fact, all Palestinians, as a 'demographic bomb', whose diffusion can only happen through exclusion, marginalization or outright ethnic cleansing.
The Nation-State Law of 2018 was not an innocent attempt of a country eager to define itself (oddly enough, seven decades after its founding), but a deliberate attempt at laying the legal ground for a prolonged system of apartheid.
Netanyahu has summed up this sentiment perfectly when he exclaimed, prior to the March 2015 general elections that "the right-wing government is in danger. Arab voters are heading to the polling stations in droves."
In Netanyahu's mind, in fact, by the calculation of mainstream Israeli politicians, the participation of Arabs in the democratic process is a threat that must be eliminated, exactly as their increasing numbers are also a demographic threat that has to be thwarted at any cost.
In truth, neither the Freedom House nor the V-Dem Institute are conveying new information regarding Israel's democratic status. Israel never deserved the badge of democracy, which is used to rationalize all of its wars, sieges, and mistreatment of Palestinians, in the first place.
Now, even that false pretense of democracy is lost, likely forever. According to the very democracy standards created by Western institutions, Tunisia is now the only democracy in the Middle East.
More important than badges and titles, however, is the fact that Israel should now be exposed for its crimes against Palestinians without such long-overdue criticism having to be filtered through Israel's false democracy discourse.
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