The United States is heavily invested in Israel and Ukraine. One of the primary arguments used to justify extravagant American military spending, intelligence cooperation, and diplomatic support on those two nations is that they are both democracies—not merely countries with elections, and not merely flawed democracies, but shining beacons of democratic representation surrounded by regions where authoritarianism and dictatorship are the norm.
What garbage! To characterize either Israel or Ukraine as a democracy, much less an exemplar of liberty, is grotesque.
Israel has 10 million people, of whom 7.8 million are Jews and 2.1 million Arabs. On paper, both groups have equal voting rights…in Israel proper.
But that’s only part of the story.
The problem for Zionists and their defenders is that Israel also occupies Gaza (2.1 million Palestinians) and the West Bank (3.4 million Palestinians plus 780,000 Israeli Jewish “settlers”). 5.5 million Palestinians under Israeli military occupation are stateless and have no right to vote.
That’s intentional.
Israel’s international image as a representative democracy depends on the legal fiction that the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank is temporary. Eventually—sooner rather than later, one hopes—the IDF will withdraw and Palestinians will get their own state side-by-side with Israel.
In reality, the Israeli government officially opposes a two-state solution. It won’t even sit down to talk about one. While consideration has been given to the possibility of annexing the occupied territories, the U.S. is opposed—and many Israeli politicians fear annexation would lead to turning the Palestinians into Israeli citizens. Palestinians have no hope of becoming democratically enfranchised.
Israeli Jewish settlers living in the West Bank enjoy full voting rights in Israel proper. This exposes the regime’s apartheid system. Jewish and Arab residents of the same military administration are not only treated differently by the authorities; they are even officially subjected to radically different punishments for the same offenses. Occupation is a legal status that cuts only one way, against Arabs. If the West Bank were truly “occupied territory,” everyone who lived in the zone would be considered stateless, including the settlers.
Israel evacuated its Jewish settlers from Gaza in 2005 in order to focus on its campaign of land seizures in the West Bank; Israeli Jews in Gaza were entitled to full voting rights, even though they lived under occupation.
Adding to the sense that Israel is using the delineation between its own territory and those it captured from Egypt and Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War (which it began as a war of aggression) as a fig leaf for de facto apartheid is the nearly 60-year length of the military occupation, widely regarded as one of the longest in the modern era. Most conflicts are resolved much faster, or lead to annexation and/or integration with the victorious invader. Israeli policy toward the Palestinians, intended to relegate them to a permanent state of legal purgatory, is incompatible with democratic norms.
Imagine if the United States were to invade Canada, and they created a new Black Zone under military occupation, then forcibly moved Black citizens there. Even allowing its remaining citizens to vote, the rump U.S. could safely ensure its white-dominated political and cultural character. But it wouldn’t be a real democracy.
That’s effectively what Israel has done to the Palestinians it controls.
Israel cannot permanently disenfranchise a third of the human beings under its control, yet call itself a democracy. It must either set the Palestinians free or annex their territory into a one-person, one-vote republic encompassing all of historic Palestine.
A representative democracy requires at least two political parties, which between them represent the majority of the population. Opposition parties must have access to public debates and journalistic outlets, and be permitted to campaign openly. Elections must be held on a regular basis in accordance with rules that are clearly defined and widely understood. By these standards, Ukraine is not a democracy either.
Ukraine justifies its abandonment of democracy with circular logic.
Ukraine’s constitution prohibits holding presidential, parliamentary, or local elections under martial law. President Volodymyr Zelensky declared martial law after Russia invaded in February 2022. The term to which he was elected officially ended in May 2024, but under martial law the constitution extends the incumbent president’s tenure until a new one is elected—in this case, perhaps never. Parliament’s term also gets extended until, possibly, forever. Martial law, declared by a president who stays in office indefinitely as a result, has been repeatedly renewed by a parliament which also gets to keep their jobs for the foreseeable future as a result.
Zelensky has repeatedly said that martial law is required in wartime, though his nation’s constitution is silent on that point.
When it suits him, that requirement becomes optional. In order to deflect criticism that his declaration of martial law is self-serving, especially when that criticism comes from the president and vice president of the United States, Zelensky began offering to hold elections last year. Despite the ongoing conflict and martial law, he said he was “ready” for elections and would push for legal changes to allow them during martial law.
Nineteen anti-Zelensky political parties have been suspended or banned. (Five remain.) Some banned parties had their assets seized by the government. Opposition leaders have been subjected to house arrest.
In a move that would have made Brezhnev blush, Ukrainian TV channels were merged into a single “United News” station broadcasting censored, government-approved content. Print and online news outlets that criticized the junta have been shuttered.
So Ukraine is a country that does not hold presidential or parliamentary elections, has no plans to do so, uses weasel words to explain its policies about suspensions of political rights, imprisons opposition politicians, censors the media, and bans rival political parties. If that’s a democracy, so is North Korea.
If you want to support Israel, there are many reasons to do so. It’s the only Jewish state, its high-tech sector has business relationships with Silicon Valley, and the Mossad is an intelligence partner of the CIA. But Israel is not a democracy. And you shouldn’t say or think that it is.
Similarly, there are reasons to support Ukraine. It was the victim of an invasion, and if you are worried about Russia, Ukraine is tying down Putin. But it’s not a democracy. And you shouldn’t say or think that it is.
(Ted Rall, the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of “Never Mind the Democrats. Here’s What’s Left.” Subscribe: tedrall.Substack.com. He is co-host of the podcast “DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas.”)
