“Pluralistic democracies that respect human rights do not find themselves resorting to using lethal force against demonstrators. That’s what apartheid states do. But Israel has sold itself to the world as something else, a beacon of liberalism and democracy. Few things expose this image as a sham as well as massive non-violent mobilizations or civil disobedience.”

— Yousef Munayyer

In Gaza, Israel Aims To Massacre Hope (2018)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Yousef Munayyer 5

American writer

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“Israel is the Middle East’s only legitimate democracy, surrounded by cadres, warlords and villains that do not respect democracy or human rights. These bellicose nations jealously regard Israel, envying its success, stability, and might. Israel faces an impossible calculus between defending itself and facing angry outcries or risking its own destruction.”

Stephen Harper (1959) 22nd Prime Minister of Canada

Stephen Harper, as quoted in " We Must Support Democracy in the Middle East http://www.thebarrieexaminer.com/2014/01/31/we-must-support-democracy-in-the-middle-east" (31 January 2014), The Barrie Examiner.
2014

“And Israel is not only our ally; it is a beacon of what democracy can and should mean… If the people of the Middle East are not sure what democracy means, let them look to Israel.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Hanukkah dinner speech http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0550,lombardi,70903,2.html at Yeshiva University (December 2005)
Senate years (2001 – January 19, 2007)

“Israel, since its inception, has relied on external support, particularly from the Western world, for justification of its policies in Gaza and the West Bank. These relationships are contingent on many things, including values the West claims to hold dear like freedom, democracy, civil rights and equality. The prospect of a negotiated agreement based on two-states has allowed Israel to stave off the confrontation between the myth of these values and the reality on the ground. But as the notion of a two-state agreement fades firmly into history, the apartheid reality becomes impossible to ignore, and further episodes where Israel will confront masses of mobilized Palestinians demanding their rights will continue to highlight this contradiction.”

Yousef Munayyer American writer

In Gaza, Israel Aims To Massacre Hope (2018)

“Western democracy has to be ruled out. For me that’s cut and dried: there’s no question of setting up democracy in Israel, because democracy means equal rights for all, irrespective of racial or religious origins. Therefore democracy and Zionism cannot go together. And Israel’s Declaration of Independence, which proclaimed this state to be a Jewish state, is a totally schizophrenic document. You just can’t, on the one hand, want a Jewish state and at the same time give non-Jews the right to become a majority.”

Meir Kahane (1932–1990) American/Israeli political activist and rabbi

G-d's Law: an Interview with Rabbi Meir Kahane https://web.archive.org/web/20090219141224/http://kahane.org/meir/interview.htm

“The most basic problem for democracy raided by propaganda is the possibility that the vocabulary of liberal democracy is used to mask an undemocratic reality. If so, there could be a state that appeared to be a liberal democracy. It would be a state the citizens of which believed was a liberal democracy. But the appearance of liberal democracy would be merely the outer trappings of an illiberal, undemocratic reality.”

Jason Stanley book How Propaganda Works

Source: How Propaganda Works (2015), p. 11

“Wherever democracy has prevailed, the power of the State has been used in some form or other to plunder the well-to-do classes for the benefit of the poor.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Quarterly Review, 107, 1860, p. 524
1860s

“Looking at the contemporary world, two things are obvious: democracy is doing rather badly, and democracy is doing very well. New states are born free, yet everywhere they are in chains. Democracy is doing very badly in that democratic institutions have fallen by the wayside in very many of the newly independent 'transitional' societies, and they are precarious elsewhere. Democracy, on the other hand, is doing extremely well in so far as it is almost (though not quite) universally accepted as a valid norm.”

Ernest Gellner (1925–1995) Czech anthropologist, philosopher and sociologist

Contemporary Thought and Politics (1974)

“I believe that international terrorism is a modern form of warfare against liberal democracies. I believe that the ultimate but seldom stated goal of these terrorists is to destroy the very fabric of democracy. I believe that it is both wrong and foolhardy for any democratic state to consider international terrorism to be 'someone else's' problem…. Liberal democracies must acknowledge that international terrorism is a 'collective problem.”

Henry M. Jackson (1912–1983) American politician

(1979, Jerusalem) [Defending the 'Ancient Dream of Freedom', Paul, Wolfowitz, November 18, 2002, Jinsa.org, http://www.jinsa.org/articles/articles.html/function/view/categoryid/1366/documentid/1839/history/3,2359,2166,1366,1839]

“As somebody who understands the pervasive evil of apartheid, to say 'Israel is an apartheid state' is not only false and prejudicial to Israel, but it undermines the real struggle against apartheid and the integrity of that movement.”

Irwin Cotler (1940) Canadian politician

As quoted in the Jewish Chronicle, 27 November 2015, p.34

“Aside from anarcho-libertarianism, there are two contending ideas of libertarianism. In its broad sense, libertarianism is equated with civil liberties and political rights—what we usually mean by democracy. Sweden, Japan, and the United States would thus be almost equally libertarian. In its narrow sense, libertarianism is equivalent to classical liberal democracy, adding to democracy the requirement of a free market. India would then be less libertarian than Japan; Israel less libertarian than West Germany. Theoretically, liberal democracies should have significantly less violence than socialist democracies, but both should have significantly less than nondemocracies.”

Rudolph Rummel (1932–2014) American academic

“Libertarian Propositions on Violence Within and Between Nations: A Test Against Published Research Results," The Journal of Conflict Resolution, 29, Sage Publications, (September, 1985): pp. 419-455. https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/DP85.HTM

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