Thank you Alon - nice observations.

One correction though:

Despite all hiccups, Israel is still significantly more democratic than Australia.

You may (rightly so) complain about Israel's demography, but you cannot claim that Israel's government fails to fulfil the desires of its citizens.
You may (rightly so) complain about the concepts of democracy, including "one man one vote" where the system can be deliberately rorted and defeated through the womb.
What you may not, is to claim that because Israel fails to follow the path which you (and I) believe it should, makes it any less democratic.

When Israel was created, it was declared to be a Jewish state - but never was there any agreement regarding what "Jewish" means!

The tragedy is that those who seriously identify as Jewish, cannot give up the occupation - in fact they cannot rest until the Jerusalem temple is restored and animal-sacrifices there resume. This is NOT what the founders of Israel had in mind: they never believed or followed the Jewish bible and the commandments therein, yet they cynically used it for diplomatic gains - and now reap the bitter results. Never in their worst dreams had they imagined that the seriously-Jewish would one day outnumber them and take over their creation.

The Jewish, Arab conflict in Palestine is like a mirror to the world on what happens when you have big ethnic tribal bloodlines, competing for survival off the territorial resources of one land or territory.
There ends up being war and conflict over who’s in control of the land, more so when economic hardship( on the Arab side) is desperate, because the Arabs who cant feed the children they already have, persist in doubling and tripling the number of children they have.

The Jews unfortunately, are in the same situation again, that they were in,in Germany in World War 2, They are involved in a territorial dog fight over the land.
Once again they have a differing ethnic bloodline from their own who wish to take the land they live on off them.
This time though The Jews to a fair degree can defend themselves.

This is why multiculturalism is doomed to failure unless intermarriage takes place on a huge scale. Otherwise huge tribes are formed and sooner or later, whos got control of the country becomes an issue.
We saw it with the Sunni and Shites over control of Iraq and democracy didnt save them, because one tribe wouldnt accept the rule of the other. And the tribe that did have the parliamentary numbers to dominate, was only interested in the welfare of their own tribe and treated the Sunni people badly.
We saw democracy fail in Ukraine after a democratic election, because of the mixed bloodline tribal loyalities, there as well.
We are seeing in Catalonia the nation break up, along ethnic loyalty lines.
The tribes opposing each other over territorial control.

Its everywhere you look. The Rohingya another example.
Its all through history and yet we have all these seemingly unaware people trying to create multi tribal(multicultural) societies.
They are only setting up what we see happening in Isreal and Palestine to happen in all these other countries. Its madness, why cant they see it. The truth is its everywhere you look right across history and being played out all around the world today.

The "protests" in Gaza were anything but peaceful leading to the death of mostly Hamas activists as the SMH article clearly illustrates:

https://www.smh.com.au/world/middle-east/gaza-deaths-a-win-for-hamas-but-show-palestinian-leadership-failures-20180517-p4zfwd.html

The loss of 60 Palestinian lives along the Israel-Gaza border on Monday was indeed tragic and heartbreaking.Yet these deaths were not the result of anything resembling a peaceful protest, despite claims to the contrary; nor were they the result of either the difficult and worsening humanitarian situation in Gaza, or the opening of the new US embassy in Jerusalem.

Those who say Israel should have found non-lethal means to counter the invasion attempts – and Israeli forces extensively employed tear gas, rubber bullets, warning shots and other riot-control measures before resorting to live fire – frankly cannot offer any plausible way this could have worked, given that large unarmed masses were interspersed with the armed, and many of the armed were concealing their weapons.
Moreover, it now seems likely most of those killed were Hamas activists or militants. Hamas official Salah Bardawil, in an interview with the Palestinian Baladna news outlet, said: “In the last rounds of confrontations, if 62 people were martyred, 50 of the martyrs were Hamas and 12 from the people.”
So 60 Palestinians are dead, but Hamas attained its goal. It garnered international attention to the Palestinian cause and to itself, put itself at the forefront of Palestinian debate, and got Israel condemned internationally. The dead Palestinians are martyrs to Hamas’ continued destructive rule over Gaza.

This has been the ongoing story of the Israelie-Palestinian conflict.

Israel was constantly attacked by terrorist attacks on school buses in Israel, Arab states
also sending armies to attack them over the last few decades.
Every time it is Israel blamed when they react with increasing force against a non-relenting enemy.

The Arabs are truly ridiculous in their belief that they should be allowed to attack Israel
in any way they see fit, and Israel must do nothing to defend themselves.
And the world has been guilty of buying into this Arab propaganda.
When have the Arabs ever taken responsibility for anything, it is always the victims fault.
In Europe, it is not the fault of the terrorists, but the fault of the victims because they are Islamaphobic. Oh please! Stop the excuses and lies.

I don't know what fake news you guys are listening to, but my news has a quite different narrative.
http://www.republicbroadcastingarchives.org/what-really-happened-with-michael-rivero-may-17-2018-hour-1/

From what I understand the wholesale slaughter of Palestinians has been going on unreported for months.
http://thinkprogress.org/gaza-israel-passover-massacre-420132f01e1c/

I think those people have just finally had an absolute gutful of living in the world's biggest open air prison for generations, and all they want is the right to return to their homeland that was taken from them.

Nice to see the brave and gallant Israeli Defence force using tanks, gas and snipers against thrown rocks to defend that fence they put up to protect the land they stole and occupied in the first place.

An invasion? Really? A mob of unarmed civilians against one of the best equipped military forces in the world?

It's also to remind the world that they are always the victims and have reluctantly been forced to oppress another population for decades because they are "squatting" on land that Israel has always considered belongs to them and them alone. The plan for Greater Israel has always been their agenda.

Israel seems to have forgotten that it was they who supported Hamas as the replacement for the PLO - but then again, likely knew it would continue to stall the Peace Process. They believe in the Peace Process but never the Peace because as long as the process continues, so does the opportunity to seize and occupy new territory.