Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.

A state that exercises colonial control over 15 million Palestinians while granting full rights and self-determination exclusively to Jewish Israelis is not a democracy. It is an apartheid system, as recognized by several states, UN bodies, and major international and Israeli human rights organizations.

Even if Israel were a democracy, meaning even if all Palestinians were granted Israeli citizenship and voting rights, that still would not justify settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing, or genocide. At the same time, Palestinians are not seeking democracy under colonial control, but self-determination and freedom in their own homeland.

The claim that Israel is a democracy often points to the fact that Palestinian citizens of Israel can vote and run in elections. This obscures the structural discrimination they face under more than 65 laws governing nearly every aspect of their lives, including political life. Palestinian political parties have been banned, excluded, or marginalized, while Palestinian political expression is systematically criminalized, repressed, and surveilled.

From its establishment in 1948, Israel built a legal framework to ensure Jewish supremacy. Laws from the 1950s, such as the Law of Return and the Absentee Property Law, grant any Jewish person the right to nationality and settlement while denying Palestinians the right to return and enabling the confiscation of their land and property. The 2018 Nation-State Law entrenched this system by constitutionally stating that "the exercise of the right to national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people." This is not democracy. It is ethnic engineering encoded in law.

How can Israel be a democracy when more than five million Palestinians live under military occupation, subjected to systematic raids, detention without charge, and the suppression of political activity, while Israeli settlers living illegally on the same occupied land are protected by Israeli civil law and the full backing of the occupying power?

Israel claims to be democratic while obstructing any potential Palestinian democratic processes. Every form of Palestinian resistance and political expression is targeted through killings, mass arrests, suppression of protests, surveillance, and restrictions on organizing and campaigning. Even Palestinian attempts to hold elections under occupation are obstructed. In 2021, Israel blocked Palestinian legislative elections by arresting candidates, banning election-related meetings, and refusing to approve polling in Jerusalem.

Whether other countries in the region are democratic is irrelevant to whether Israel is. But even on its own terms, the comparison is not in Israel's favor. Israel is one of the last remaining settler-colonial projects, maintains the world's longest military occupation, operates a system of apartheid, is committing a live-streamed genocide, and has attacked or occupied at least 12 countries across the region since its establishment. This is not the record of a democratic state. It is the record of a colonial expansionist power.

The branding of Israel as "the only democracy in the Middle East" is a propaganda tool used to whitewash occupation, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. It frames the colonizer as the civilized exception, allowing it to evade accountability and expand impunity with Western diplomatic, financial, and military support.

Democracy is not inherently just. The United States under Jim Crow was considered a democracy while maintaining racial segregation. France upheld democratic principles at home while committing brutal aggressions in its colonies. Democracy for some is not a moral alibi for injustice against others.