Weekly Commentary: Israel Democracy Institute Fails To Advocate

Weekly Commentary: Israel Democracy Institute Fails To Advocate Democracy
Dr. Aaron Lerner 5 December, 2019

One might think from its name that the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI)
seeks to promote democracy in the Jewish State.

Instead they have been recently focusing their efforts to promote a
profoundly anti-democratic change in the election process.

They have been spending a fortune on huge advertisements calling for the
election law to be changed so that the leader of the largest party
automatically becomes prime minister.

Why would such an arrangement necessarily reflect the will of the people?

Consider an example of 3 large parties – two from one camp while the other
camp has only one large party.

Each of the two large parties from one camp have 25 seats for a total of 50
seats in the Knesset while the large party from the rival camp has 26 seats.

The IDI program would have the leader of the camp with 26 seats become prime
minister.

That’s promoting democracy?

This week Yisrael Beiteinu called for changing the rules so that under
certain circumstances the president of Israel (who is not elected by the
public) would pick someone to be prime minister who would head a government
of “experts” that would rule the country for a year with the Knesset
effectively neutralized.

I have reached out repeatedly to the IDI to comment. Stone silence.

This isn’t the first time IDI failed.

When Ariel Sharon was elected on a platform NOT to leave the Gaza Strip and
pulled out, the head of the IDI maintained that this was a democratic move
since leaving the Gaza Strip was good for democracy.

Its unfortunate that IDI appears to favor a “the ends justify the means”
approach.

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