On the Virtues of Israel's Government
What, a reader asks, does Bastiat's Window endorse?
A Bastiat’s Window reader asks:
“What aspects of [the] Israeli government would [Bastiat’s Window] endorse?”
There are a great number of things to admire about the Israeli government—especially when compared with governance in Palestine and elsewhere in the region. Israel’s elections are frequent and competitive to the point of chaotic. The government guarantees the rights and safety of women, ethnic minorities, and LGBTQ residents (including Palestinian LGBTQs who have fled Gaza’s virulently homophobic laws and culture). It guarantees freedom of religion, speech, assembly, and the press. Economic liberties have enabled Israelis to lift themselves from poverty to wealth. The government lives by rule of law, and it conducts warfare in ways above and beyond the demands of the Geneva Conventions. Israel’s government has provided decades of humanitarian aid to scores of nations—and even to its enemies. The government has never engaged in the ethnic cleansing common in the region. Israel’s enemies, not Israel, crave and/or practice “genocide” and “apartheid”—despite the libels parroted by Jew-haters. For greater detail:
DEMOCRACY: Israel’s government has seen eight elections and six prime ministers (Netanyahu twice) since 2004. Hamas won the Gaza elections in 2006, murdered its political opponents, and cancelled all subsequent elections. Palestinians elected Mahmoud Abbas as president in 2005 and a parliament in 2006—and all subsequent elections have been cancelled.
MULTICULTURALISM: Israel’s government presides over a population that is 73.6% Jewish, 21.1% Arab, and 5.7% other—and all ethnicities have full rights of citizenship. Hamas does not tolerate even a single Jew living in Gaza—and almost all Arab countries (plus Iran and other Muslim countries) expelled their millennia-old Jewish communities after the late 1940s.
REPRESENTATION: Arabs (Muslims, Christians, Druze, Bedouin) have served in all 37 Knessets (Parliaments) since the country’s first election in 1949—and a number have served as Deputy Speaker. Israeli Arabs have served as cabinet ministers, Supreme Court justices, and ambassadors. One served temporarily as the nation’s president. Arab soldiers have served with distinction in the Israel Defense Forces—up to and including the rank of Major General.
LGBTQ RIGHTS: Israel’s government protects LGBTQ Israelis and has offered asylum to LGBTQ Palestinians facing oppression in Gaza, where Hamas criminalizes, brutalizes, terrorizes, and murders LGBTQ Palestinians. LGBTQ Israelis are welcome in the Israel Defense Forces; in contrast, Hamas executed its own commander, Mahmoud Ishtiwi, when he was outed as gay.
LIBERTY: Israel’s government guarantees freedom of religion to all faiths—Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druze, Baha’i, Samaritans, and others. The Israeli Supreme Court has ruled that, “The right of demonstration and procession is a fundamental human right in Israel. It is recognized along with free speech, or emanating therefrom—as belonging to the freedoms that characterize Israel as a democratic state.” Economic freedoms have allowed Israel to rise from a deeply impoverished country in the 1940s to one of the world’s wealthiest economies today—a world leader in medicine, defense technology, and other crucial industries. Equality of women has always been of paramount importance to Israel.
RULE OF LAW: Israel’s government is subject to rule of law. Ex-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert went to prison for 16 months for bribery and obstruction of justice. President Moshe Katsav served five years in prison for sexual crimes.
RECONCILIATION: Israel’s government enjoys diplomatic relations with six Arab nations (all former enemies) and many other Muslim countries—plus informal relations with Saudi Arabia, Oman, and others. After Israel’s capture of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, Palestinians enjoyed an unprecedented flowering of educational institutions. For the first decades of administration by Israel’s government, Gaza had the single fastest-growing economy on earth. Israel’s government has facilitated business relationships between Jews and Arabs. Israel and multiple Arab nations recently cooperated in staving off Iran’s unprecedented aerial attack on Israel.
HUMANITARIANISM: Israel has long made it a practice to provide high-quality medical care to Palestinians—even to those injured while engaged in terrorist activities against Israel. For many years, Israel has provided Gaza with food, electricity, fuel, and water; Gaza could have been self-sufficient in all of these things, except that Hamas has looted humanitarian shipments and the Gaza economy in general—repurposing water pipes, for example, into missiles to be fired at Israeli civilians. When Ariel Sharon forcefully removed every Jewish resident of Gaza in 2005, Israel gave the evicted residents’ lucrative businesses to the people of Gaza as a gesture of goodwill; Hamas and other militants destroyed all of those businesses within days.
CONCERN FOR CIVILIANS: Israel’s government has always gone to extraordinary lengths to protect civilians in time of war. In this endeavor, Israel has succeeded to an extent almost unknown in the urban warfare that characterizes conflict in the region. Israel’s government has placed its own troops in harm’s way by warning civilians in Gaza when and where military actions will occur—thus enabling those civilians to vacate those areas beforehand. The IDF uses text messages and airdrops of leaflets to warn civilians of when danger will arise. As a result, the ratio of civilian-to-combatant casualties in Gaza is lower than in most urban conflicts—including America’s conduct of war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and territories controlled by ISIS.
CONTRASTS WITH THE NEIGHBORHOOD: Israel’s government has never engaged in the barbarism seen in surrounding countries, including:
Since its founding, Hamas has pledged to murder every Jew worldwide. The Hamas charter has stated, “The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: 'O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.’”
Throughout its history, Hamas has specifically, intentionally targeted Israeli civilians, including children and the elderly. On October 7, 2023, with no military targets in sight, Hamas engaged in war crimes against Israelis: wholesale rape, torture, murder, beheading, kidnapping, and necrophilia—much of it live-streamed and posted on social media.
Throughout its history, Hamas has committed war crimes by intentionally placing Palestinians in harm’s way.
The flag of the Houthis (Iran’s puppets in Yemen) reads, “God Is the Greatest, Death to America, Death to Israel, A Curse Upon the Jews, Victory to Islam.” Note the separate threats to “Israel” and to “the Jews.”
Most Arab nations and certain other Muslim nations (e.g., Iran) engaged in wholesale ethnic cleansing of their ancient Jewish populations.
Iran hangs LGBTQ people from construction cranes.
Iran and certain other nations deny all vestiges of human rights to women.
Syria has murdered hundreds of thousands of its own citizens via bombing, chemical weapons, and other heinous means.
Iran, its puppet groups (Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, etc.), and others in the region have sworn to eradicate a sovereign nation (Israel).
So to answer the reader’s question, Bastiat’s Window heartily endorses the Israeli government’s longstanding dedication to democracy, multiculturalism, LGBTQ rights, liberty, rule of law, reconciliation, humanitarianism, and concern for civilians—as well as its avoidance of the murderous urges of all too many of its neighbors.
HATIKVAH / הַתִּקְוָה / THE HOPE
The above video depicts the Israeli national anthem, “HaTikvah,” played in Abu Dhabi on the occasion of President Isaac Herzog’s 2022 visit to the United Arab Emirates.
There’s a phrase I picked up somewhere along the way… “the only vertebrate choice.” I think it applies here.
Great compilation. Thank you for this.