Yuyutsu

The division of populations in Democratic countries, is well underway: it’s a division based on wealth. Is Israel itself, an exception; I doubt it.
The result is gated communities, or as you predict, gated counties.

This division is very stark in Australia with its fixation on multiculturalism.
One example appropriate to this discussion, is the demographics of Sydney, one I know well enough.

The Muslim communities are pretty much confined to the Western suburbs, while their nemesis brethren the Jews, congregating in the wealthy Eastern suburbs.
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But I know this to be a fact, both elements patrol their particular schools with armed guards, totally fearful of each others ability for retribution.

Why do you think Israel as a Democracy, is different in the mentality of its mix and match inhabitants, to other likewise Democratic conglomerates?

AC poses the more direct question a post above, viz:

#How can any nation please all its citizens in a liberal democracy?#

In pleasing everyone, nobody is pleased! Simple answer.

Any clear thinking Politician is constantly looking for ways to convert Democracies into Autocracies; that works until voting day, then it’s a Democracy again for a moment!

Dear Yuyutsu,

We have incompatible definitions of democracy. I don’t consider Israel a democracy whatever it chooses to call itself. A Jewish democracy is a contradiction and not a democracy. The US was not a democracy when it had slavery, and it is not a democracy at present when a major party denies the result of an election. Democracy is fragile and easily denied.

You wrote:

“Now what about intermarriages between these two broad groups - they do exist! And some people also change camps, both ways. Should grandparents also leave their mixed grandchildren?”

My family is an example of that.

My cousin, his mother was my father’s sister, is a supporter and acquaintance of Netanyahu, and he was president of the Orthodox Union. He wrote that he gives the government of Israel his ‘unconditional support’. One of his grandsons goes to a yeshiva in Israel with no secular subjects. My cousin graduated from Cornell and is content to have his grandson go to such a yeshiva. We differ very much on Israel. However, we exchange an occasional email in which we discuss family matters. Some of his siblings and his descendants disagreed with both of us. I have no disagreements with my descendants on Israel as far as I know. My cousin’s siblings are dead, and I have none. We both have many descendants.

To my mind Israel is a failed experiment. Others disagree. With all my cousin’s devotion to the government of Israel he remains in Los Angeles. We disagree, but he is not stupid.

Possibly, Costa Rica and Iceland are the most democratic countries in the world at present.

Dear AC,

A country cannot please all its citizens, but it can do its best to give them all equal rights under law. I think chaplains in the state schools and government aid to private schools are undemocratic, but I’m not going to leave Australia because of that. I will try to change it by legal means.

Dear Dan,

«Why do you think Israel as a Democracy, is different in the mentality of its mix and match inhabitants, to other likewise Democratic conglomerates?»

The original Zionists who first arrived in and built would-be-Israel, came there in order to renew an old culture, the Hebrew culture. They were enthusiastic, they had a purpose, they seemed to make it but then they failed, and they feel bitter about it, they still struggle desperately to try and save that culture, but the Jewish culture from which they tried to escape, now seems to be winning.

In other countries, like in Australia, there are no such presumptions.
I am not here to form or participate in a culture, I never had any such expectations, I am here only to live my life. Period. If you have such expectations than you too, like the Israelis, will be disappointed.

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Dear David F.,

Yes, it feels like Israel is a failed experiment, but the jury is still out.

The seeds of this failure were first sewn when Ben Gurion opportunistically agreed to declare Israel a "Jewish state" rather than the Hebrew state he really wanted; then second of course in 1967.

Still, I don't think that your cousin in Los Angeles would be willing and happy to host my family members in his own house should they become refugees, nor do you have room for them in your small retirement unit, thus they have to fend for themselves and somehow survive. Looking at the map, some of them have their homes and farm right on the proposed border line between Israel and Judea. If they happen to fall on the wrong, Judean, side, then they might have to lose their home and either become "internally displaced" or join other relatives in Europe and America.

Dear Yuyutsu,

Except for God, I don't think we differ greatly. One mistake humans make is to try to recreate a past world in the present. It can never be done. Ben Gurion may have wanted a Hebrew state rather a Jewish state. It really doesn't matter. The world of his time is a different world from the world he would recreate. Various Christian movements try to go back to the world of their Bible. Anachronism and nostalgia inform their fruitless efforts. Time is unidirectional.

One of the most quoted remarks of Karl Marx, is “History repeats itself, first as a tragedy, second as a farce”. I think Marx was wrong. I think history never repeats itself. The present is not the past.

What is 'true democracy'?
If it's what you've got in the US it's probably time for a rethink.

Dear Critic,

«What is 'true democracy'?»

Why is this question important to you?

Are you perchance expecting democracy to grant you salvation?

Democracy is just one system by which some people order other people around, and in that particular case the ordering party is not a king, not a bunch of aristocrats or priests, not a particular family or tribe, but rather the majority of the people who are being ordered, which form a group that one had not even been given a choice whether or not to belong to.

What's the big deal about it?