Former Israeli Ambassador to the US blasts New York Times for saying Israel isn't a democracy

Former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren blasted the New York Times Monday for claiming that Israel is not a democracy after the re-election of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The New York Times published an op-ed Saturday in which the editorial board implied that democracy was in jeopardy due to the recent re-election of Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister.

"The New York Times has been trying to delegitimize us for a very, very long time," Oren said on the John Solomon Reports podcast. "But there's nothing unusual about that unfortunately."

Oren explained that Israel had one of the largest voter turnouts for that election, which proved that democracy in Israel was not at stake.

"Israel has had five elections in two years," Oren stated. "We had 72% of the population voting. That percentage is unthinkable in the United States and in most democracies in the world. People came out and voted even in the Arab part of Israel. We had over 50% of Arabs in Israel voting. That's extraordinary. It's great to vote in confidence in our democratic system."

Oren said that voters in Israel are intelligent and they are not voting away their democracy just because Netanyahu is going to return to power. 

"The New York Times may want to respect the intelligence of Israeli voters going to the polls," Oren said. "What can you do? Democracy sometimes gets people get elected who may not be to my liking — both in the United States and here. But that is the price of democracy."

"Democracy is thriving here," he continued. "We're gonna have some challenges with some of the people in this government who are a little bit outside of the envelope. But there's no danger to democracy in this country. Democracy has been proven to be very, very resilient."