Israel, Palestinian Democracy and Occupation: A Critique

Israel is not a democracy.

It's what the Israeli historian Shlomo Santos called an ethnocracy.

It's designed to ensure the rule of a certain ethnic group.

There's no democracy for the Palestinians living under occupation,

whose lands are grabbed every day,

whose children are jailed every day,

who are tortured every day.

Do you know that,

according to a New York Times report a few months ago,

Palestinians whose homes are destroyed by settlers,

when they come back to their homes,

they don't have the right to even put

a tarp over their living room to

protect the rain from coming in,

because that would be construction without permit,

and their home could be bulldozed by the Israeli army.

Don't believe me?

Read the New York Times.

So under those conditions, it's extraordinarily difficult to have elections.

These are people under siege,

under occupation, under daily brutality.

And when we talk about the hostages,

how about the thousands of Palestinians held in Israeli jails

for the crime of opposing the illegal occupation of their country?

How about the children that are being beaten and tortured in Israeli jails?

How about that?

Do we ever talk about that?

I'm only asking again.

And then we'd say that they don't have free elections.

But no, they don't.

We don't let them.

We don't create the permissions for them to

live in conditions where democracy is even possible.

That's just how it is.

And by the way, who supports and uses the manipulative,

corrupt Palestinian authority?

Israel.

And by the way, who supported Hamas?

This is not even controversial.

Netanyahu did.

Israel did.

Because they wanted somebody there with whom they wouldn't have to negotiate.

That's just how it is.

Again, I don't make this stuff up.