chapotraphouse

so i finished the essay. the prompt was this:

Pick a case study of a post-colonial country. Using Freedom House, evaluate its democratization progress or lack thereof. Discuss the main cause(s) of this.

and thanks to some comrades here, I found a worthwhile 'creative' interpretation of the prompt to maintain my ability to write something that doesn't come off inherently cynical/farcical, despite the source's farcicality.

thought i'd post it here since i posted the initial cry for help. Some stuff will be edited out due to the fact that i don't know how prevalent my textbook is in the field. excuse the choppiness of it, i had to edit it down to the word limit.

Democracy by whom? Freedom to what? These are the questions one should ask themselves when trying to quantify esoteric concepts such as freedom and democracy. Israel, considered by many to house the world’s largest open-air prison, ranks at 76 points out of 100 on Freedom House’s ‘Global Freedom Status’ rating. Why is this? The likely cause behind the Freedom House’s rating for Israel being discrepantly high is that they are a key geopolitical ally of the United States within the Middle East, and Freedom House is financially entrenched in the State Department as well as the United States Agency for International Development.

In 1947, due to pressure on the British to remove its colonial apparatus from the territory alongside increasing tension between the Jewish immigrants and Palestinian nationals, the UN recommended a territorial split between Palestine and Israel alongside British evacuation. Due to tension over this proposal, civil war between the two groups broke out following the adoption of it. The result of this civil war was a decisive Jewish victory and the official establishment of the Israeli state.

Israel is largely seen as an exception to many of their fellow diverse postcolonial countries’ economic woes. [TEXTBOOK CITATION]. Israel, despite this, seems to be one of the most prosperous countries in the Middle East. What makes Israel different from similar postcolonial countries? The unfortunate fact is that while officially, Israel is regarded as decolonized, much of its territory is still occupied. Occupied by itself, against a Palestinian minority.

Oppression and disenfranchisement of the Palestinian minority is so systemically prevalent in Israel that organizations such as Amnesty International have declared Israel to be an apartheid state. The NGO published a report detailing the demographic-based oppression in Israel. “[...]Israeli authorities treat Palestinians as an inferior racial group who are defined by their non-Jewish, Arab status. This racial discrimination is cemented in laws which affect Palestinians across Israel and the OPT. [...]Palestinian citizens of Israel are denied a nationality, establishing a legal differentiation from Jewish Israelis. In the West Bank and Gaza, where Israel has controlled the population registry since 1967, Palestinians have no citizenship and most are considered stateless, requiring ID cards from the Israeli military to live and work in the territories.” (Amnesty International). If one is not a citizen, one cannot vote. Mass repression of a demographic which ensures unequal political participation is the most anti-democratic a supposed democracy can be. If credible NGOs are declaring Israel to be suppressing political participation, how can it be considered a flourishing democracy by Freedom House?

‘Human rights’, ‘freedom’, and ‘democracy’ are often wielded as bad faith geopolitical tools. PR grounds for the Gulf War were largely based on the ‘Nayirah Testimony’, a fabricated testimony delivered by 15-year old ‘Nayirah’ claiming that the Iraqi military was killing babies by removing them from incubators. Later, it was discovered that ‘Nayirah’ was actually the daughter of Saud Al-Sabah, the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US, working to astroturf a war effort on behalf of the Kuwaiti government. This sort of bad faith propaganda isn’t something the State Department chooses to abstain from. ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ in the Iraq War is one instance in which the American government lied to its citizenry to advance its geopolitical interest. Freedom House, according to themselves, are primarily funded by the US State Department and USAID. Financially, their geopolitics are compromised.

The likely cause behind the Freedom House’s rating for Israel being discrepantly high is that they are a key geopolitical ally of the United States within the Middle East, and Freedom House is financially entrenched in the US state apparatus. Israel’s anti-democratic mass disenfranchisement is inherently authoritarian, yet Israel’s PR is maintained despite that due to its heavy allegiance with the world hegemon: America. The State Department, and thus through financial influence Freedom House, show themselves to have a vested interest in maintaining the PR of their key regional ally with this blatant discrepancy.

how's that for staying within the lines of the prompt while maintaining my conscience :sicko-blur: