[QUOTE="themajormayor"][QUOTE="GazaAli"] Let's not play semantics here. Whether Judaism is a religion or an ethnicity is not the subject of discussion here. What matters is that we have a state that affiliates itself with a religion or an ethnicity and there are people of great influence and power in the name of that religion or ethnicity.GazaAli
But the case here is that it does not officially affiliate itself with a religion. To a large extent an ethnicity yes, but not religion. There are definitely powerful figures in Israeli politics advocating at the very least theocratic influences. But can you really judge a country based on minority parties not in government? Then alot of states I'm sure could be considered theocratic, racist, facist, nazi, communist and other bad words.
But these are not minority parties. To get a real understanding of their scale, just observe parties and candidates before any major elections. They seek their votes and offer them things that can be absurd at times which are strongly opposed by some Israeli citizens and politicians. They are of great influence and their votes are essential for candidates to secure a considerable representation in the Knesset. Their influence has grown over the past 25 years or so which can be seen in the serious deterioration of the more moderate left which by the way hasn't ruled in Israel for some 20 consecutive years or so. To put it simply if it was not for extreme right wing and religious parties and tendencies Israel may have had offered something substantial in the past and the conflict would have looked different by now.Zionists are a very small percent in government and even smaller as a percentage in overall Israeli society. Using that excuse for the Palestinian situation is lame.
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