Israel: This isn't how you defend democracy
Netanyahu's attempts to ban Palestinian politicians from the parliament can only harm Israel's democracy.
Last week, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking at a party meeting, said that democracy had to "protect itself and defend itself".
To which you kind of want to reply that, these days, democracy all over the world needs to defend itself from governments more than anything else. Israel's current, hard-right coalition government seems to be a case in point, as numerous Israeli human rights groups have been cautioning for some time.
And this current cautionary tale is essentially over the question of what democracies do with views they don't like.
The Israeli parliament just suspended three of members of the Knesset (MKs) over what was described as "support for terrorism". Such support was read in a trip taken by members of the Arab nationalist Balad party - part of the Joint Arab List that is currently the third largest bloc in parliament - who visited the East Jerusalem families of Palestinians who carried out deadly attacks against Israelis.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=post&forum=1016
