…Israel for sure is a democracy but an inferior one thanks to several factors. None of its founding fathers grew up in a liberal democracy. Most came from Eastern Europe and Russia. They had no tradition of living in a self-governing democratic republic in the English tradition.

Second, within its first eighteen months in 1948-49, Israel’s struggling 650,000 brand-new Israelis were inundated by about the same number of penniless Jewish refugees from Arab countries when medieval despotism remained the norm.

Factor No. 3: The inherent tribalism, for want of a better word, of the Jewish people that has led to too many political parties that cripple good government. Liberal democracy tends to produce two major parties and not the dozen or more parties in Israel.

It is also a system of cronyism by denying the electorate the right to vote for specific individual representatives in the Knesset. One only votes for a party list…