[DiogenesKynikos]

Israel is a democracy (albeit increasingly authoritarian) only if you belong to one ethnicity. There are 5 million Palestinians living under permanent Israeli rule who have no rights at all. No citizenship. No civil rights. Not even the most basic human rights. They can be imprisoned indefinitely without charges. They can be shot, and nothing will happen. This has been the situation for nearly 60 years now. No other country like this would be called a democracy.

[thyristan]

Afaik those 5 million Palestinians are not Israeli citizens because they don't want to be, and rather would have their refugee and Palestinian citizen status. There are also Palestinians who have chosen to be Israeli citizens, with the usual democratic rights and representation, with their own people in the Knesset, etc.

And shooting enemies in a war is unfortunately not something you would investigate, it isn't even murder, it is just a consequence of war under the articles of war. In cases where civilians are shot (what Israel defines to be civilians), there are investigations and sometimes even punishments for the perpetrators. Now you may (sometimes rightfully) claim that those investigations and punishments are too few, one-sided and not done by a neutral party. But those do happen, which by far isn't "nothing".

[McDyver]

It makes sense that people don't want to become citizens and legitimise the entity occupying their country and committing genocide, no?

> In cases where civilians are shot (what Israel defines to be civilians), there are investigations and sometimes even punishments for the perpetrators.

Obviously Israel doesn't consider children to be civilians

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gd01g1gxro

[thyristan]

> It makes sense that people don't want to become citizens and legitimise the entity occupying their country and committing genocide, no?

I can accept not wanting to be part of that. But in that case, whining about missing democratic representation is just silly, of course you won't be represented if you chose not to be, no matter the reason.

> Obviously Israel doesn't consider children to be civilians

You seem to assume that all children are always civilians, but that is wrong. The articles of war don't put an age limit on being an enemy combatant. If you take up arms, you are a legitimate target, no matter your age. Many armies use child soldiers, and it is totally OK to shoot those child soldiers in a war.

[McDyver]

I assume children queuing for food are not soldiers. Yes, yes I do.

If they are killed while they are in uniform and holding a gun during a gunfight, then they are soldiers.

[reliabilityguy]

> legitimise the entity occupying their country

What’s country? Palestine never existed as independent country.

[McDyver]

Exactly, what's a country?

Israel never existed either, until it was administratively created in 1948. Maybe it shouldn't have been created where other people were already living?

[reliabilityguy]

You started with “occupying their country”. Can you tell me what country is that?

[DiogenesKynikos]

If it's not a different country from Israel, then give them Israeli citizenship.

There's a very simple reason Israel doesn't give the Palestinians citizenship: Israel wants to make sure the large majority of voters are Jewish. It wants the land, but not the people who live there.

[McDyver]

Indeed. But what is a country? Is it a place where people live and have their identity, or does it need to be "ratified" by the UN? Before 1945 were there no "countries"?

Does it legitimise the invasion of someone's land? I don't think so

[thyristan]

Phrase it "occupy their land", then it will certainly be correct.

[sva_]

> committing genocide

I've been hearing this for as long as I can remember, yet the population numbers tell a completely different story. It makes no sense to speak of a genocide if the birthrate far outpaces any casualties. In fact, the Palestinian population has been growing at a faster pace than Israeli over the past 35 years (that's how far the chart goes on Google)

[McDyver]

Ah, OK. So, in that case they can be killed, but just in a culling kind of way, is that it? Your children can be killed as long as you keep making them?

[reliabilityguy]

How do you propose to fight an asymmetric war?

Genocide requires intent, not just a number of dead. If you judge by the numbers only, then US committed many genocides in the past 50 years.

[tim333]

It tends to be in a defensive or retaliatory way rather than culling. Like things largely peaceful October 6th Hamas kill 1200 Israelis, rape, hostages etc. Israels amazingly enough hits back. Hamas: "help! genocide!"

[lostlogin]

So genocide hasn’t happened if the population grows?

‘Just adjust the frame of measurement. With this one simple trick, you can remove any genocide.’

[thyristan]

https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%2078/v78... PDF page 289ff (numbered 277).

> In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

> (a) Killing members of the group;

> (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

> (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

> (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

> (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The tricky part isn't about (a) to (e), it is in "intent to destroy".

[DiogenesKynikos]

"Intent to destroy" is usually difficult to prove, but in this case, it's the easiest part to prove. Israeli leaders (including the President, Prime Minister, Defense Minister, and other ministers), politicians, generals, soldiers and TV commentators (not to mention opinion polling of the general population) have made so many genocidal statements that it's difficult to keep track.

[7sigma]

Palestinian citizens in Israel do not have the same rights as the Israeli Jew, with more than 50 laws discrimination against them. They also face systemic discrimination and also you cannot marry between faiths, all the hallmarks of apartheid. Initially Palestinians within the Green lines were also under military occupation and only after 80% of the other Palestinians were either massacred or ethnically cleansed, so it was basically a forced acceptance. Israeli policy has always been to have a an ethnic supremacy for Jews, so the representation in the Knesset is tokenistic at best. If Israel decides to expel Palestinians in Israel, there's nothing they can do, its the tyranny of the majority.

Palestinians in the West Bank do not have the option of becoming Israeli citizens, except under rare circumstances.

Its laughable that when you say that there are investigations. The number of incidents of journalists, medics, hospital workers being murdered and even children being shot in the head with sniper bullets is shockingly high.

One case is the murder of Hind Rajab where more 300 bullets were shot at the car she was into. Despite managing to call for an ambulance, Israel shelled it killing all the ambulance crew and 6 year old Hind Rajab.

Another example is the 15 ambulance crew murdered by Israel forces and then buried.

Even before the genocide, the murder of the Journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was proved to have been done by Israel, after they repeatedly lied and tried to cover it up. Another case was this one, where a soldier emptied his magazine in a 13 year old and was judged not guilty (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/nov/16/israel2)

The examples and many others are many and have been documented by the ICC and other organisations. Saying that it's not nothing is a distinction without a difference

[reliabilityguy]

> and also you cannot marry between faiths, all the hallmarks of apartheid.

Marriage laws have nothing to do with apartheid, a system that uses race to differentiate peoples.

There are plenty of countries where marriage is done on religion basis and there is no civil marriage at all. What does it have to do with Palestinians?

[7sigma]

Because it is imposed by a a colonial population on the native Palestinians in order to maintain a jewish majority in the ethnostate.

[reliabilityguy]

> Because it is imposed by a a colonial population on the native Palestinians in order to maintain an ethnic majority.

So, the jews who fled from pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe to Ottoman Palestine in 1900s are colonizers? I thought that people whole flee violence are refugees. Why do you have a different standard for them?

Jews that moved to Ottoman Palestine, btw, were buying land from locals. Are you saying that buying land is an act of colonialism if jews are doing that?

Why are you twisting the facts to fit your narrative?

[7sigma]

> So, the jews who fled from pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe to Ottoman Palestine in 1900s are colonizers? I thought that people whole flee violence are refugees. Why do you have a different standard for them?

Whether you are a refugee or not, the act of displacing the native population (and Jews from eastern Europe and Russia are not native to Palestine), and maintaining that displacement and subsequent subjugation is colonialism. In fact, organisations like the Jewish Colonisation Fund existed for the purpose of facilitating immigration to Palestine.

> Jews that moved to Ottoman Palestine, btw, were buying land from locals. Are you saying that buying land is an act of colonialism if jews are doing that?

> Why are you twisting the facts to fit your narrative?

If this is how you characterise the birth of Israel, then you are sorely misinformed. Israel was created through a terrorist campaign of ethnic cleansing starting in early 1948 with the forced depopulation hundreds of thousands of native Palestinians from their villages accompanied by massacres like Deir Yassin, i.e. the Nakba. This was the culmination of the Zionist rhetoric of "transfer" of Palestinians from their land and in effect has continued to this day.

Zionism is a replication of white European colonialism, but performed by Jewish European people, and partly encouraged by European powers primarily for geopolitical and also partly religious purposes (see Christian Zionism). It uses the dubious Jewish ancestral claim to the land as well as past oppression to create a Jewish ethno state and oppress a people who is probably more related in ancestry to the original Jewish people than most Jews (except those that had been there for generations).

[xdennis]

> with more than 50 laws discrimination against them

List them.

> you cannot marry between faiths

Which law bans this. C'mon show it.

> Palestinians in the West Bank do not have the option of becoming Israeli citizens

Because they're a different country, remember?

[7sigma]

> List them. - Citizenship and Entry into Israel lay (2003), denies the right to acquire Israeli citizenship to Palestinians from occupied territories even if married to citizens of Israel - Absentee's property law, which expropriates the ethnically cleansed palestinians in 1948 - Land Acquisition for Public Ordinance, which allows state to confiscate Palestinian land - Jewish Nation state law that stipulates that Jews only have the right to self determination

There's actually 65 apparently https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/7/19/five-ways-israeli-l...

> Because they're a different country, remember?

They are being occupied illegaly for decades, remember? by a supremacist ethno state, remember?

[reliabilityguy]

> which allows state to confiscate Palestinian land - Jewish Nation state law that stipulates that Jews only have the right to self determination

Similar law exists in Palestinian Authority -- no land can be owned by Jews. Selling land to jews is punishable offense.

> They are being occupied illegaly for decades, remember?

Who? You have to be specific.

> by a supremacist ethno state, remember?

Israel is not supremacist ethno state. Multiple ethnicities live in Israel and have the same rights. Find me another state in the Middle East that offers at least the same rights as Israel to its own minorities.

[7sigma]

> Similar law exists in Palestinian Authority -- no land can be owned by Jews. Selling land to jews is punishable offense.

Source? but even if true, I suspect this is an act of resistance against settlers who are already encroaching on Palestinian land through intimidation and terror tactics (poisoning goats, burning trees, cars, houses and evening murdering palestinians, with the protection of the IOF). In any case, the PA is a puppet dictatorship controlled by Israel, so these laws are essentially powerless to stop the stealing of land by Israel. This argument ignores the fact that Israel is gradually ethnically cleansing the rest of Palestine by seizing more and more land every year.

> Who? You have to be specific. Palestinians are being occupied by Israel, the West Bank since 1967 more specifically.

> Israel is not supremacist ethno state. Multiple ethnicities live in Israel and have the same rights. Find me another state in the Middle East that offers at least the same rights as Israel to its own minorities.

Having multiple ethnicities does not negate ethno nationlist policies. South Africa was also multi ethnic, having for example people of Indian ancestry and yet there was still discrimination and apartheid. Palestinian citizens in Israel suffer from systemic discrimination and there are numerous laws that prioritise Jews.

Pointing to the poor human rights records of Middle Eastern countries doesn’t absolve Israel. Israel is the only country in the world that puts children through military tribunals. Given the current genocide, and its tacit support of that, those are not the hallmarks of a tolerant society.

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-05-28/ty-article-ma...

[kgwgk]

> Israel is a democracy only if you belong to one ethnicity.

There are over two million Arab citizens of Israel. What ethnicity do they belong to?

[SiempreViernes]

The one that mysteriously don't fit in the bomb shelters https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20250624-arab-israel...

[Y_Y]

I've lived in several "top-tier" democracies and had limited or no voting rights because I wasn't a citizen. I don't think this is unreasonable (or unusual) from a definitional perspective.

A country who government was chosen by its inhabitants could be quite different. I know many states allow voting from abroad, but my home country doesn't and nobody ever questions its democratic credentials.

(I make no comment on the justice or long-term stability of the system in general or specifically in Israel, that has been done at length elsewhere.)

[DiogenesKynikos]

Your comparison is absurd. We're not talking about small numbers of recent immigrants without citizenship. We're talking about 5 million people (out of only about 14 million living under Israeli sovereignty) whose families have largely been living in the same place for hundreds of years.

They live their entire lives in a country that refuses them citizenship, and they have no other country. They have no rights. They're treated with contempt by the state, which at best just wants them to emigrate. They're subjected to pogroms by Jewish settlers, who are allowed to run wild by the state.

This isn't like you not having French citizenship during your gap year in France. This is the majority of the native population of the country being denied even basic rights. Meanwhile, I could move to Israel and get citizenship almost immediately, simply because of my ethnicity.

[Y_Y]

Pardon me, but I think you may have mistaken my point.

I agree entirely with your first two paragraphs, except that I don't feel I'm making any comparison or absurdity.

I'm not talking about extended holidays. I don't like giving much detail about my own life here, but I didn't get automatic citizenship in the country of my birth due to being from a mixed immigrant family. I have lived, worked, and studied for multiple years around Europe and North America. I've felt at times genuinely disenfranchised, despite paying taxes, having roots, and being a bona fide member of those societies.

All that said, I never had to live in a warzone, and even the areas of political violence and disputed sovereignty have been Disneyland compared to Gaza. This isn't about me though!

I am merely arguing that Israel can reasonably be called a democracy by sensible and customary definition which is applied broadly throughout the world. I don't mean I approve, or that I wouldn't change anything, I'm just trying to be precise about the meaning of words.

(I think your efforts to advocate for the oppressed may be better spent arguing with someone who doesn't fundamentally share your position, even if we don't agree on semantics.)

[thrance]

No, Palestinians are citizens, simply second class ones with less rights and more duties. It would be like if you were born in a "democracy" but weren't given some rights because of who you were born to. It's obviously very different from being a tourist in another country.

[Y_Y]

Citizens of Israel, under Israeli law? Some are, but most are not. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Israel )

They're certainly humans worthy of rights and dignity, citizens of the world, and most are citizens of the (partially recognised, limited authority) Palestinian state. But I think it's clear what we are talking about, that the Israeli state is "democratic" in the sense that it has a conventional (if unfair) idea of who its population/demos is, and those are the people eligible to vote for the representatives at the State level.

The situation you describe actually did happen to me, and many others in states without jus soli which are nonetheless widely considered democratic. This is typical in Western Europe, for example.

[reliabilityguy]

> No, Palestinians are citizens,

They are not though. They are citizens of PA, where they vote and pay taxes.

Israeli Arabs get full citizenship like any other ethnic/religious minority in Israel.

[thrance]

Israel does not recognize the Palestinian state, ergo all Palestinians are considered permanent residents of Israel, but not given any right, which is the issue.

[reliabilityguy]

> Israel does not recognize the Palestinian state

Israel does recognize Palestinian Authority.

> ergo all Palestinians are considered permanent residents of Israel

Palestinians are not permanent citizens of Israel. And they are not considered ones.

Why do you invent things that are easily verifiable online?

> but not given any right, which is the issue.

They have all their rights within Palestinian Authority!

The issue is that Oslo accord were not finalized and military occupation never ended.

[Y_Y]

> > ergo all Palestinians are considered permanent residents of Israel

> Palestinians are not permanent citizens of Israel. And they are not considered ones.

> Why do you invent things that are easily verifiable online?

The distinction between citizen and resident is a sharp and significant one in many jurisdictions!

[tim333]

In Gaza the Israelis have tried to give them independence - the Palestinian Authority in the 1990. In 2005 Israel withdrew from Gaza but the locals elected Hamas in 2006 which is dedicated in it's charter to the destruction of Israel which makes it hard to live peacefully as neighbours. You can't really have it both ways unless you have a lot of military power. Either independence and live peacefully as neighbours or attack the neighbours and be at a state of war.