This Is How Democracies Fall — and Israel Is Near the Brink

Hungary offers a warning: democratic decline begins quietly, through institutions. Israel is now showing the same patterns.

In an earlier column — “Insights into the Political Aspirations of Netanyahu and Orbán” — I argued that both leaders share a similar instinct: to weaken liberal constraints and consolidate executive power. What was once a comparative observation has become an urgent warning. Hungary has already followed a path that Israel is now distressingly close to replicating.

Hungary’s democratic erosion did not begin with a dramatic rupture. When Viktor Orbán won a two-thirds parliamentary majority in 2010, he used it not to govern within the existing system but to remake the system around himself. Hungary is now only “Partly Free,” and the European Parliament has concluded that it “can no longer be considered a full democracy.”

Orbán’s 2011 Fundamental Law weakened the Constitutional Court, reshaped judicial appointments, and entrenched political power through “cardinal laws” requiring supermajorities to amend, concerns documented by the Venice Commission and Human Rights Watch.

But Hungary’s most consequential transformation occurred in its media landscape. Through coordinated acquisitions and regulatory pressure, pro-government actors consolidated more than 400 media outlets into the loyalist KESMA foundation. Monitors including the OSCE and Reporters Without Borders now rank Hungary among the weakest media environments in the EU. By 2024, press pluralism deteriorated further when a pro-Orbán consortium acquired Blikk, the country’s largest daily newspaper, a development reported by Telex.

Israel saw early echoes of this trend under Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi, whose 2023 media-reform proposals sought to weaken regulatory oversight, restructure the public broadcaster, and ease the entry of partisan outlets with minimal supervision. The plan, covered by The Times of Israel, analyzed by scholars at the Israel Democracy Institute, and denounced by RSF, would have dramatically eroded safeguards protecting media pluralism. Although parts of the plan were halted, the intent was unmistakable: to reshape Israel’s media landscape along lines strikingly similar to Hungary’s.

Hungary’s trajectory did not stop with media consolidation. Universities were pressured, NGOs faced “foreign influence” restrictions, and a sweeping Sovereignty Protection Office was established — developments widely documented by European watchdogs and democracy researchers. Orbán did not abolish elections; he rendered them non-competitive.

Israel is not Hungary — but the parallels are becoming uncomfortably clear.

In 2025, Netanyahu nominated his military secretary Roman Gofman as Mossad director, despite no professional intelligence background — an appointment reported by Israel Hayom and other Israeli outlets. Earlier, he moved to appoint IDF General David Zini as Shin Bet chief — a development reported in English by The Times of Israel. Concentrating control over both foreign and domestic intelligence would raise concerns in any democracy, especially amid efforts to weaken judicial constraints.

The judicial overhaul — analyzed extensively by the Israel Democracy Institute — aimed to give the government near-total control over judicial appointments, eliminate the reasonableness doctrine, restrict judicial review of Basic Laws, and permit a 61-seat override clause.

These institutional battles unfold as Netanyahu governs with a 68-seat coalition out of 120, representing 56.6% control of the Knesset — a majority that enables rapid legislative change, Basic Law amendments, and political appointments across the state apparatus. While not comparable to Orbán’s former two-thirds supermajority, Netanyahu’s stable bloc remains powerful enough to reshape Israel’s institutional landscape. Such majorities can accelerate democratic erosion even without constitutional dominance, a lesson Hungary has already demonstrated.

All of this is occurring while Netanyahu remains on trial for bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. The overlap between the prime minister’s criminal prosecution and his coalition’s attempts to restructure the judiciary heightens concerns about conflicts of interest.

These concerns intensified when political allies publicly floated the idea of a presidential pardon before the trial concluded, a danger I analyzed in an earlier column, “A Pardon Israel Cannot Afford”. Even raising such an option during an active trial blurs fundamental democratic boundaries.

Despite these pressures, Israelis did not remain passive. Well before the tragedy of October 7, a broad civic movement had already emerged: hundreds of thousands protesting weekly; former judges, business leaders, academics, and security officials speaking out. Notably, reservists expressed concern that changes to Israel’s democratic framework could strain the values that underpin their service — a principled warning about legitimacy, not refusal.

When the Knesset abolished the reasonableness doctrine, the Supreme Court struck it down in January 2024 — a historic ruling widely reported in international media, including The Guardian. Hungary no longer has such judicial independence.

Yet Israel’s democratic indicators continue to drift downward. Freedom House reports increasing centralization of executive power and weakening institutional resilience. The trauma of October 7 and the ongoing war has further normalized emergency-style governance — historically a dangerous catalyst for democratic deterioration.

Israel is not Hungary — but it is closer than many wish to acknowledge. Democracies rarely fall in a single moment. They erode when citizens believe “it won’t happen here.” Hungary shows how quickly erosion becomes irreversible once guardrails fail. Israel still has a choice — but only if it acts before that choice disappears.

Defending Israeli democracy does not require ideological uniformity; it requires civic responsibility. Citizens must stay informed, challenge disinformation, support independent institutions, and refuse to normalize attacks on the judiciary, media, or civil society. They must speak out in public forums, in their communities, and at the ballot box, whenever leaders attempt to weaken the restraints that protect us all. Security and patriotism are not excuses to erode democracy; they are reasons to defend it.

Democracies survive when people defend them — not when they assume someone else will.

The defense of democracy is not an act of defiance. It is an act of national loyalty.