No, that’s oligarchy.
These questions have been debated for a long time. There is a No True Scotsman nature to the project, given the very nature of citizenship and polity means there are always demarcations between who can and cannot vote. But the difference is in degrees, and it should be obvious that there is a difference in kind between twenty-five people in a multi-billion-person nation and millions in a millions-more territory.
But perhaps we should say majoritarian democracy is the criteria we are interested in.
Athens is classically considered a democracy. Partly because democracy means more than just suffrage.
> perhaps we should say majoritarian democracy is the criteria we are interested in
This is fair. Though Israel proper still satisfies the criterion. (I wouldn’t demote Britain from a democracy while it was administering occupied Germany, nor even necessarily its colonies. Same for ancient Rome.)
Your argument is more akin to calling South Africa a majoritarian democracy after it passed the Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act, imo. By the rules of the 1948 partition (prior to 1948 which side you are living on determines your citizenship), close to a majority of people today living in Gaza or West Bank would be Israeli-side citizens. Post-facto stripping of the partition rights so that only a minority are considered citizens does not make you a majoritarian democracy.
I'm aware that Athens is classically considered a democracy, I just think that view should be complicated from a modern perspective (and even contemporaries described Athens as a democracy in name only).
Ironically Socrates and Plato would say this is exactly what democracies are like. The difference is that you take democracies as positive and they did not. Anyway, calling Athens democracy (they are the OG democracy and the founder of the word itself) not the real thing made me chuckle. If only all that is at stake was a definition disagreement.
If you continue learning about history, you might happen to notice that there appear to be gaps between how societies self-describe and the actual values they live by. This was well-known by contemporaries at the time, as Athens was described "in name a democracy but in fact governed by its first citizen."
It would be completely reasonable to say that the US (or at least the southern states) was not a democracy in the modern sense of the word until that happened.
That’s redefining democracy to the extent it excludes Athens. The term you may be looking for is a liberal democracy, or more precisely universal suffrage.
You are. That’s a redefinition. It neuters the term of its millennia-old moral weight.
Sure, I’ll agree Israel isn’t a democracy per whatever definition you’re using. It isn’t a “real”country per others’. At that point, however, you’re just expressing a personal dislike. Nothing foundational.
> I’ll agree Israel isn’t a democracy per whatever definition you’re using.
Okay then, do you have an actual point, other than quibbling about what words mean?
You very obviously can, given 18th-century America and ancient Athens were democracies despite slavery and male-only suffrage.