Nuanced narratives

Israel for all its questionable positions on Palestine is a rare, healthy, and thriving democracy. As the world's most sanctioned nation by the United Nations, Israel has still not allowed the international opprobrium to coalesce, and consequently to regress into a single-party nation. while there are laws that directly or indirectly discriminate against the native Arab Israelis (largest minority composing 21 per cent of the population), yet the Arabs/Palestinians in Israel have equal voting rights with political space afforded for exclusive Arab parties

There is a simplistic conflation of sensibilities that T are imagined by India's right-wing about the policies and approach of Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It is superficially assumed that Netanyahu enjoys unflinching support amongst all Israelis as the country goes about retaliating disproportionately in the Gaza Strip and expanding the war to Lebanon.

The axiomatic and slightly lazy equation that Netanyahu is personally equal to Israel and Israelis besets such misplaced beliefs. What is missed in this oversimplified understanding is that while Israelis (especially the Jews), like patriots from any other country, would certainly perceive organisations like Hamas or Hezbollah as 'enemies', and therefore put all hands on deck in times of grave exigencies like now, they may or may not support the politics of a Netanyahu and his manufactured 'muscularity' unthinkingly.

Israel for all its questionable positions on Palestine is a rare, healthy, and thriving democracy.

As the world's most sanctioned nation by the United Nations, Israel has still not allowed the international opprobrium to coalesce, and consequently to regress into a single-party nation.

While there are laws that directly or indirectly discriminate against the native Arab Israelis (largest minority composing 21 per cent of the population), yet the Arabs/Palestinians in Israel have equal voting rights with political space afforded for exclusive Arab parties.

Internally, Israel has contested on conflicting ideas for better governance and handling of the underlying issues facing the country, and done so, democratically.

Besides the religious/clerical parties representing various faithbased positions, the partisan landscape entails shades of Communist parties, Centrist/Liberal parties and a host of right-wing options.