Edited transcript of the Eidelberg Report, Israel National Radio, first delivered on June 26, 2004 and updated August 24, 2008.
Back in June 2004, more than a year before the government expelled 10,000 Jews from Gaza and northern Samaria, I reported that the Right, the so-called national camp, has failed to galvanize the people against the Left. The Right, representing at least 75% of the people, has allowed the Left to undermine Israel’s territorial integrity and thereby undermine the heritage of the Jewish people. This was done in the name of democracy.
I pointed out that analysis of Israel’s legislative, executive, and judicial institutions reveals that Israel is not an authentic democracy, despite its periodic, multiparty elections, Political theorist Henry Mayo correctly states that “A political system is democratic to the extent that decisions-makers are under effective popular control.”
But decisions-makers in Israel are not and cannot be under effective popular control so long as members of the Knesset are not individually elected by and accountable to the voters in regional elections. The Right—politicians, professors, and journalists—have not told the people the truth about Israel’s oligarchic system of governance. (more…)