Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Israel’s Repressive New Laws

By NEVE GORDON, Counterpunch, May 11, 2011

“Bad laws,” Edmund Burke once said, “are the worst sort of tyranny.”

The millions of people who have been protesting – from Tunis, Egypt and Libya, to Bahrain, Yemen and Syria – appear to have recognised this truism and are demanding the end of emergency law and the drafting of new constitutions that will guarantee the separation of powers, free, fair and regular elections, and basic political, social and economic rights for all citizens.

To put it succinctly, they are fighting to end tyranny.

Within this dramatic context it is also fruitful to look at Israel, which is considered by many as the only democracy in the Middle East and which has, in many ways, been an outlier in the region. One might ask whether Israel or not stands as a beacon of light for those fighting tyranny.

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