Villa in the jungle

From Amos Harel, Haaretz, Oct. 20:

Even more than behind penetrable fences, Israel lived with high walls of repression around it. We talked about “the villa in the jungle” and took pride in being the only democracy in the Middle East, but we didn’t grasp the meaning of the powder keg whose fuse was lit here. The Arab world spiraled into total chaos as a result of the events of the Arab Spring in 2010. This period allowed Israel to occupy itself with its own affairs for some years and to persuade itself that all was well. But in this period, borders were erased, regimes were supplanted by force, millions of people became refugees and hundreds of thousands were murdered with appalling cruelty.