Where is the democracy here?

Where is the democracy here?
Aeyal Gross, ICDAB, 27 December 2002
Dr. Aeyal GrossThe occupation, and not Azmi Bashara, is the real threat to democracy.

The Legal Advisor to the government has asked the Central Elections Committee to bar the Balad list and MK Azmi Bashara from standing in the forthcoming elections, on the grounds that the party denies Israel's right to exist as a democratic Jewish state. The "Haaretz" leader article (The limits to the right to be elected, 22/12/02) argues that it may indeed be necessary to deny Bashara the right to be elected to the Knesset, because Israeli democracy needs to defend itself.

Reading these lines, one might be misled into thinking that Israel has a vibrant democracy, to which only Bashara and his party pose a serious threat. I wonder, however, what is really the major threat to Israeli democracy? Is it the Balad party -- whether or not we agree or disagree with their platform -- which is really threatening israeli democracy and which needs to be barred?

Do not parties which support a policy of destroying the houses of innocent people, whose only crime is that someone in their household was involved in terror activities, threaten Israeli democracy? Do not parties whose policy, for years, has been the systematic discrimination against the Israeli Arab population threaten democracy?