Some interesting information hit the news recently about Israel’s status as a democracy. The Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) published its 2010 index on Israel’s democracy.

The Democracy Index has three general aspects: institutional, rights, and stability. What is the most relevant here are the aspects of rights in Israel, which includes political rights, civil rights, social rights, economic rights, gender rights and equality for minorities. The Economic Intelligence Unit, which performs an independent democracy index, lists Israel as a “flawed democracy,” probably due to short-comings in the aspect of rights, while listing the United States as a “full democracy.”

In the 2010 IDI Report abstract, the IDI acknowledged that many weaknesses in Israel’s democracy are associated with “rights.” The following distributions illustrate why so many people deem Israel’s democracy to be flawed.

* 86% of Jewish Israelis believe that critical decisions for the state should be made by a Jewish majority.

* 53% of Israeli Jews believe that Israel is entitled to encourage Arabs to emigrate from Israel.

* The following percentages illustrate the opposition to equal rights between Jewish Israelis and Arab Israelis: 33.5% of secular Jews, 51% of traditional Jews, 65% of religious Jews, and 72% of ultra-Orthodox Jews.

* 62% of Jewish Israelis believe that as long as Israel is in conflict with the Palestinians, the views of Arab Israelis on foreign affairs and security issues should not be taken into account.

* 67% of Jewish Israelis feel that first-degree relatives of Arabs should not be able to reunite with their families in Israel.

* 55% of Jewish Israelis believe that more resources should be allocated to Jewish communities than to Arab ones.

* 51.5% of Jewish Israelis believe that only new immigrants who are Jewish according to Halakhah (Jewish religious law) should be entitled to automatically receive Israeli citizenship.

Read the full article on the Nationalist Coalition blog.