Democracy contains an uncomfortable bargain. It gives people the power to use the institutions of the state to argue that the state itself should be fundamentally different.
Israel is now confronting that bargain, again. Sami Abu Shehadeh, chairman of the Palestinian nationalist Balad party, faces an effort to bar him from the coming Knesset election. Israel’s attorney general has said there appears to be an evidentiary basis for disqualification because statements Abu Shehadeh made after Oct. 7 may constitute support for armed struggle against Israel. He disputes that interpretation.
The immediate controversy is predictable: right against left, Jewish nationalist against Palestinian nationalist. But underneath it lies a harder question. How much opposition to the state must a democracy tolerate from people seeking the privilege of governing it?
Israel’s Basic Law establishes boundaries. Candidates may be disqualified for negating Israel’s existence as a Jewish and democratic state, inciting racism or supporting armed struggle by an enemy state or terrorist organization. But those boundaries must be narrow, because democracies are not clubs whose members must subscribe to a common creed.
Consider where the alternative leads. Haredi parties have resisted generally applicable military obligations and demanded fundamental changes in the relationship between religious authority and the state. Parts of the left seek profound changes in Israel’s relationship with the Palestinians and the character of Jewish sovereignty. Parts of the right have sought sweeping changes in the power of the judiciary.
These causes are not morally or politically equivalent. That is precisely the point. Democracy cannot survive if participation depends upon whether the majority approves of the change being demanded.
A Palestinian nationalist may believe Israel should become a very different country. A Haredi leader may believe secular law should yield on matters his community considers religiously fundamental. A right-wing politician may believe institutions celebrated by the left require radical reconstruction. The democratic answer to all of them should begin the same way: make your argument. Organize. Campaign. Persuade voters. Change the law.
The boundary comes when politics gives way to violence. That is why the case against Abu Shehadeh should turn neither on Balad’s ideology nor on whether most Israelis find his politics offensive. The question is whether the evidence establishes that he crossed the statutory line from advocating political change to supporting armed struggle against the state.
And that standard must apply without regard to whose politics offend us. A Jewish extremist receives no greater license because he wraps his politics in the Israeli flag. A Haredi party does not become illegitimate because it demands exemptions from laws binding other Israelis. And an Arab nationalist does not forfeit democratic participation merely because he seeks an Israel most Jewish Israelis would reject.
A confident democracy must tolerate people who want to change it. What it cannot tolerate is abandoning democratic politics for violence. That is the distinction worth defending.
Democracy does not require loyalty to the status quo. It requires loyalty to the democratic method: arguing, organizing, voting, losing when the voters reject you and trying again. The price of demanding the right to change the state is accepting that ballots, not bullets, will determine whether you succeed.
