In July 1950, speaking at the annual convention of the Zionist Organization of America, U.S. Vice President Alben W. Barkley asserted that Israel was “an oasis of freedom in the desert of despotism,” articulating a precursor to the oft-repeated adage “Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.” Although the phrase cannot be attributed to a single person, the sense that Israel – a nation with free elections and civil liberties – stands alone amid a sea of authoritarian regimes has been cultivated by Western institutions and Israeli leaders since the state’s inception.
From the beginning, the first Israeli laws legalizing persecution against Palestinians showed the incompatibility between Jewish supremacy and democracy. But a group’s subjugation is rarely limited to itself, and throughout history, illiberal nations have almost always turned against some portion of their citizens, often when violence against the out-group reaches a fever pitch.
In the midst of the bloodiest three years in the country’s history, and particularly during the election campaign, this trend began to manifest itself. Israel has disenfranchised voters, sometimes even going against its own discriminatory laws, in an effort to marginalize Jews perceived as a threat to Benjamin Netanyahu and his increasingly violent political agenda.
Obstacles to voting
Over the past three years, emigration from Israel has reached record levels. According to a study published by Tel Aviv University, 270,000 citizens have left the country over the past three years. Between 2013 and 2015, the corresponding period in the previous decade, that number was 183,000. Like much of the American Jewish diaspora, those who left in recent years have become deeply critical of Benjamin Netanyahu.
Although Israel guarantees the right to vote to any citizen over the age of eighteen, it has never allowed postal voting. With the exception of diplomats, emissaries and Israeli Defense Force (IDF) soldiers occupying territory in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, voters must be in the country on election day. With this election widely considered one of the most important in the country’s history, a survey carried out before the election estimated that up to 67,000 expats could return home to vote.
On October 27, Likud won twenty-seven seats and Gad Eizenkot’s Yashar party won twenty-one. Netanyahu’s bloc won fifty-three seats, compared to forty-eight for the Jewish opposition bloc and nineteen for the Arab parties. No bloc won the sixty-one seats needed to obtain a majority. The results left the country facing uncertain coalition negotiations.
Before the vote, Likud attempted to prevent Israelis living outside the country from returning. In September, Likud petitioned the Central Election Commission, demanding that it block Fly & Vote, an initiative of the nonpartisan American-Israeli Democracy (AID) coalition, which sought to help Israelis abroad return and vote.
Providing logistical assistance, including eligibility checks and passport renewals, the organization also coordinated six group flights and helped research commercial flights. While participants were still required to pay for their plane ticket, Likud argued that the initiative violated financing laws and constituted electoral corruption.
Although the petition was ultimately rejected, the AID Coalition agreed not to subsidize tickets, arrange additional group flights, or provide transportation and accommodations.
This summer, a second row erupted when hundreds of Israelis living abroad discovered they had been deprived of their right to vote after being classified by the Interior Ministry as non-residents. This designation, known as Code 51, completely excluded citizens from the electoral register.
Speaking to the Supreme Court, the expatriates argued that they had not been informed of their change in status, with many only realizing it when they checked their electoral eligibility. The courts dismissed the case on procedural grounds, finding that the complaint was filed too late.
Although there is no definitive evidence linking Likud to the Code 51 scandal, it is clear that the party has repeatedly attempted to restrict expat voting. Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that informal discussions were held between senior officials at the Ministry of Transport about the possibility of restricting designated landing slots at airports, which would make it more difficult to enter the country by plane.
Similar to judicial reforms proposed in 2023, where Netanyahu sought to weaken the power of the Supreme Court, this democratic backsliding has sparked fury within the Israeli left. But as is often the case with liberal Zionists, the much larger repression facing Palestinians remains largely ignored.
Defend ethnocracy
The AID Coalition describes itself as a group “strengthening and preserving the democratic foundations of the State of Israel.” While a worthy goal, a more honest statement would be to preserve an ethnocracy. Israeli professor Oren Yiftachel describes this form of governance as one that “promotes the expansion of the dominant group into contested territory and its domination of power structures while maintaining a democratic facade.” This dynamic has been present since the creation of the State.
While the 150,000 Palestinians who remained in their country after the Nakba were declared citizens and granted the right to vote from the start, the community also faced systematic discrimination from the start. From 1948 to 1966, Palestinian citizens of Israel were placed under military rule, which included measures restricting their movement, prohibiting political organizing, and imposing arbitrary curfews. Simultaneously, the government confiscated hundreds of thousands of dunums of land, ripping farmers out of their livelihoods and forcing many to turn to low-wage labor to survive.
In 1967, a year after lifting military rule, Israel turned its attention to the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza after occupying both territories in the Six-Day War.
Taking control of approximately one million Palestinians, the residents of the newly occupied territory were placed under military rule. This time, they were denied citizenship and the right to vote, because such incorporation would threaten the Jewish demographic majority.
As Jewish settlers moved into the occupied territories, aided by generous subsidies from the Israeli government, an apartheid regime took shape, with authorities applying separate laws, courts, and democratic rights to Palestinians and Israelis living in neighboring areas.
Although Israel disengaged from Gaza in 2005, it besieged the Gaza Strip two years later, imposing a crushing blockade. After the October 7 attacks, it returned once again as the occupying power, this time triggering a genocide that killed more than 74,000 Palestinians. In the West Bank, the apartheid regime persists, as around 500,000 settlers, excluding those in East Jerusalem, live with full rights outside Israel’s internationally recognized border, alongside Palestinians who cannot vote, travel freely or even build on their ancestral land.
Amid the dire situation in the West Bank and Gaza, the plight of Palestinians living in Israel is largely forgotten. However, these 2.1 million inhabitants continue to live as second-class citizens.
In 2018, the Israeli Knesset passed the quasi-constitutional Nation-State Law, stipulating that self-determination is unique to the Jewish people, without guaranteeing equality for its other citizens. Additionally, Palestinian citizens of Israel continue to face entrenched discrimination in urban planning, economic development, and educational opportunities.
The authoritarian turn
In 2024, the Varieties of Democracy Institute downgraded Israel from a liberal democracy to an electoral democracy. The demotion follows Netanyahu and his coalition’s attempt to overhaul the justice system, their accusations that the Supreme Court is “left-wing” and the deterioration of protections against torture. This classification did not take into account the active atrocities that Israel was perpetrating at the time in Gaza and the West Bank.
Yet since this reclassification, Netanyahu has further shed the democratic façade he has long sought to uphold.
More than five hundred aid workers have been killed since the start of the war in Gaza. In December 2025, Israel attempted to ban thirty-seven non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from operating in the West Bank and Gaza. The Supreme Court froze the ban, allowing the organizations to continue operating pending a final decision.
More recently, many foreign journalists were turned away at the border during the election campaign, while others were subjected to harsh interrogations and detention before being allowed entry.
Perhaps most telling is the government’s desire to break long-standing supremacist laws that treat Jews as a privileged class in Israel.
Beginning in 2025, several Jewish activists have been arrested and deported for exercising protective presence, a form of nonviolent solidarity work in which civilians deter violent settlers from harassing Palestinian communities. Earlier this year, a Jewish American academic on a three-year residency visa was denied entry after being accused of being a “left-wing anarchist.”
After the backlash caused by the film NAZAin which IDF soldiers admitted to knowingly killing innocent civilians in Gaza, Netanyahu announced his intention to introduce a bill that would strip those who defame the IDF of their Israeli citizenship.
Last month, it was reported that two Jews had been denied citizenship for previously participating in anti-occupation activism in the West Bank. This is the first known case of the state violating the Law of Return, which states that every Jew has the right to immigrate to Israel.
Many saw Gad Eisenkot as the last chance to put an end to the country’s authoritarian drift. The elections leave open the possibility that he could still lead the government, but he has no clear path to power. While he may reverse the emerging trend of discrimination against Jews and Israelis deemed insufficiently patriotic, none of the policies he proposes address the fundamental problems that make Israel an ethno-state.
The elections have not changed the reality for Palestinians, with or without Israeli citizenship, nor the refusal of all major parties to address these injustices. What Eisenkot could propose is only a return to the illusion of democracy.
This article was originally published in Jacobina democratic socialist magazine publishing long-form essays and analyzes on politics, economics, and culture. Subscribe to the print edition for $20 per year.
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