Of course, as far as the Palestinians are concerned, Israel was never a democracy — from the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians during the Nakba and denial of their right to return, through military rule over Israel’s Palestinian citizens that lasted until 1966, to the occupation of 1967 and its systematic violation of Palestinian rights until today. Macron, like other world leaders, is surely aware of this. But as long as sovereign Israel operated more or less with all the trappings of democracy, it was convenient for the French leader and others in the so-called Western world to turn a blind eye to what was happening beyond the Green Line, and to see Israeli occupation and apartheid in the territories as a bug, rather than a feature of Israeli democracy.

Its self-styled image as “the only democracy in the Middle East” served for decades as Israel’s strategic asset, not only during the Netanyahu era, and is one of several reasons that explain how Israel enjoyed international immunity with regard to the occupation. Its relatively independent judicial system, the appearance of a free press, its ostensibly liberal policies toward its LGBTQ community, and the aggressive marketing of Tel Aviv as one of the hippest cities in the world all served this image. Even the concept of the “Start-Up Nation” helped paint Israel as a free and creative country that is an integral part of the West.