Show notes
Michael Oren, former Israeli Ambassador to the United States, discusses how the United States got into a proxy war with Russia and the New York Times blunders. The Ambassador comments on the recent New York Times article calling into question the state of Israel’s democracy after re-relecting Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister. The Ambassador comments, the "New York Times has been trying to delegitimize us for a very, very long time. But there's nothing unusual about that proxy war, unfortunately. In Israel we had five elections, that was a hard thing, five elections in about two years. But we had 72% of the population voting. That number, that percentage, is unthinkable in the United States and in most democracies in the world. And people come out and vote, even in the Arab part of Israel, we had over 50% of Arabs in Israel voting. That's extraordinary. It's a great vote of confidence in our democratic system.” Commenting, "Israel is one of the maybe 5 countries in the world, United States, Australia, New Zealand, that has never knowed a second of non-democratic governance. And [Israel] is the only country on that list, that has never known a second of peace, and that is what kills democracies all the time, wars and upheavals. We've never had a second of non-democratic governance.” The Ambassdor comments that you would think because o this, the "New York Times would maybe want to respect us a little bit for that, and respect the the intelligence of Israeli voters going to the polls.” Saying, “what can you do? In a democracy, sometimes people get elected, who maybe would not be to my liking both in the United States and in [Israel]. But that is the price of democracy, would you rather not have a democracy and only have us assign people to offices who are more acceptable to the New York Times? Is that what they want?” Going on to say, that "democracy is thriving" in Israel, “and yes, we’re going to have some challenges with some of the people in this government who are a little bit outside of the envelope. But there's no danger to democracy in this country. On the contrary, democracy here has once again proven to be very, very resilient, and irrepressible."
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