What can the Israeli case contribute to a comparative study?

One of the aims of comparative political sciences is to find “invariant or at least highly consistent connections between causal conditions and outcomes” (Ragin and Rubinson 2009, 18). The comparative method can enable us to “broaden our understanding of the political world” and to “test hypotheses about politics” (Hague and Harrop 2004, 69). If we follow an ideal‐typical method of comparison, namely Mill’s method of the most similar or most different research design in comparative political science, then Israel is a very relevant case to study due to its uniqueness in many respects. With all her special features, Israel can be a most crucial “case” in testing existing theory of comparative political sciences, as well as in setting up new theory. This article makes reference to existing theory in the fields of democratization, terrorism, religion and democracy, and the foreign policy behavior of democracies to show how the comparative study of Israel contributes to all of them.