Letters

Israel and Sinn Féin

Is Israel a “true democracy”?

Sat Jun 04 2022 - 00:16

Sir, – Israeli Ambassador Lironne Bar Sadeh reiterates the increasingly threadbare claim that the Israeli state is “the one true democracy in the region” (Letters, June 3rd).

An examination of the Israeli state’s response to inconvenient historical facts and peaceful political activism shows a state that is increasingly undemocratic.

For many Palestinians, the story of Israel’s foundation is also the story of their violent dispossession: Al-Nakba (The Catastrophe). Faced with Palestinians telling their truth in 2009, the then Israeli minister of education’s response was to order the offending word to be removed from school textbooks. Subsequent years saw Israeli lawmakers legislate for the denial of state funding or support to organisations that raise awareness of Al-Nakba.

The Israeli state’s response to the peaceful Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement also shows contempt for democratic principles.

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In 2017, the Israeli government legislated to ban BDS advocates from entering the state. The following year, Israel’s strategic affairs ministry published a list of 20 Palestine solidarity organisations worldwide – including the US group Jewish Voice for Peace – whose members were banned from entry to the state, solely on the basis of their support for a peaceful campaign.

In recent weeks, a delegation from the European Parliament Delegation for Relations with Palestine, including members of Sinn Féin and the Green Party, were blocked from entering the Gaza Strip.

Worst of all, the Israeli state’s electoral system extends the vote to settlers in Israel’s illegal colonial settlements in the West Bank, while the Palestinians living alongside them endure decades of suffering due to decisions that Israeli state’s “democracy” affords them no power to influence.

Do these sound like the actions of a “true democracy”? – Yours, etc,

BRIAN Ó ÉIGEARTAIGH,

Donnybrook,

Dublin 4.