The [Israeli] minister, who spoke on condition of not being identified by name or portfolio, cites the Gaza Strip as a signal warning of the risk that comes with asking the people what they want. The seaside territory, home to some 1.5 million Palestinians, elected the militant Islamist group Hamas in a 2006 election that had been carried out at the urging of George W. Bush, when the President was casting the invasion of Iraq as a mission to introduce democracy to the Middle East.
That is not an example to prove that democracy can be bad because of the simple reason that the Gaza experience was not democracy. Having one shot at one election to elect one party that will assume it won for good is not democracy--it is a popular plesbiscite on who will be the next dictatorial elite.
Democracy is a system of ongoing elections in an equally important system of rule of law. If Gazans had another chance to judge whether the Hamas government's focus on killing Jews is really the best policy, maybe Hamas would lose. And if not, maybe the next election would be their undoing. But we didn't have democracy in Gaza. We have a Hamas autocracy put in place by a plurality of Gazan votes.
And recall that the alternative is the stability of a tyrant, How's that stability looking in the Arab world these days? And even if stability is restored, what price to the people who live in that stability pay?
