Just How Do You Measure The Level Of Democracy In A Terrorist State?

In my last post, I wrote about the Democracy Index for 2017, compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit. Looking at its evaluation of Israel gave an opportunity to contrast 2 very different views of what the index revealed about Israel.

But the Democracy Index also evaluates "Palestine" and Iran, for example

Which raises the question: How do those two jive with this description of "democracy," from the report?

Israeli Democracy Defies Being Pigeonholed

With the passing of its Nation-State Law this year, the issue of Israel as a democracy continues to be a topic of debate, and at times becomes even more pointed.

But last week we were reminded that for all the debate and the claims that Israel was revealing its fascist colors, Israeli democracy is alive and well:

Arlene Kushner on Moshe Ya'alon's Surprising Comments About Democracy in the Middle East and a Palestinian State

From Arlene Kushner:
September 9, 2013

Amazing!

You don't often find a person in a high government position -- who has aspirations to be even higher, and is serving at the pleasure of a prime minister who has publicly embraced a decidedly different position from the one he thinks proper -- who speaks truth to power.  And so, that is what is amazing.

That government official is Defense Minister Moshe (Bogie) Ya'alon (Likud).  I have long known that Ya'alon is one of the good guys, but I watched as he pulled back once he became Defense Minister, careful not to take positions that blatantly transcended what Netanyahu was saying.  Until now...

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Video: "The Founding Fathers Did Everything They Could to Keep us From Having a Democracy"

In this past week's "Goldberg File," Jonah Goldberg writes in response to the mobs and the demagogues who claim to be demanding "justice" for Trayvon Martin by discarding the acquittal of George Zimmerman:

...Both the literal and the merely figurative mobs clamoring for justice against Zimmerman are in important respects asking for the same thing. Sure, the lynch mobs want Zimmerman dead, while those pushing for a federal case just want him locked up -- an important distinction to be sure. But they both want to reject the findings of a court of law and a duly appointed jury because they do not like the result. In this, both are manifestations of arbitrary power, the bane of conservatives since Edmund Burke. Arbitrary power is the exercise of force for grievances found neither in law nor reason. It is the marshaling of violence to remedy resentment and justify caprice.