The Israelis must be happy...

[Urbane Guerrilla]

I don't think so. Democracies behave much better than un-democracies, and they always have -- that's the fundamental thing. The rest is just specific details. Read some history. Then read some more history. A lot of history is the bad behavior of governments and the nations they govern. You don't even have to cover the whole globe, though that breadth of reading will make you well rounded (pun!) -- Europe alone will provide sufficient examples, and so will the Old Testament if you don't want to read ten feet of books.

A nondemocratic government is always at least over-controlling, and even more often, oppressive also, without regard for either human rights or property rights, to a greater or lesser degree, and in about every imaginable mix. The result is that investment and wealth creation languish, the economy underperforms, and misery prevails, particularly so if you lump "lost opportunities" under "misery." This is that 85% of all problems being traceable to top management that tw is always on about.

When the population of a nation is all pretty much miserable, scapegoating foreign entities, outsiders, usually by the central government, is preferable from the government's point of view to being seen itself as the source of miseries. Not any too surprising, is it? And look what's likely to happen then -- and it does, doesn't it? Do not the Arab States attack Israel? Are not these same States well-known examples of not much property rights (going back centuries if not millenia) and miserably underperforming economies and chronic incapability? Do they practice creativity in policymaking, or is uncreativeness the universal situation?