Freedom House comment in introduction 

I deleted a paragraph in the opening of the article; this was promptly re-inserted by another user.  The text is: "Israel is a democratic republic with universal suffrage that operates under the parliamentary system. According to the international data reported by Freedom House, the degree of political rights and civil liberties in Israel makes it the only liberal democracy in the Middle East, consisting of a multi-party system and separation of powers" 

I believe I had good reasons for removing it:

(1) The very same text - verbatim - is repeated later in the article.  This is reason enough for deleting it from the opening.  Without citing chapter and verse of Wikipedia policies, obviously a well-written article cannot be repetitious.

(2) A conclusionary statement about civil liberties is ipso facto a value-judgment.    This is obviously going to be endlessly controversial whatever the country involved (see point (3) below).  It is churlish to place this kind of comment right up there in the introduction.  Common/significant views about political rights are much better dealt with (less tersely) under the Government heading. I myself do not seek to contest the view that Israel has a high degree of political freedom, so if you disagree with me, deal with the point I make about the reasonableness of reporting this sort of evaluation in the opening of *any* country article.

(3) Where the very same text appears in the Government section, it is immediately followed by a contrary viewpoint, which the author(s) of this section thought was equally significant: "Conversely, the research group Minorities at Risk (MAR) characterizes Israel's system ..."  This gives a nice indication of how controversial the Freedom House opinion is, or at least appears to be to other Wikipedians.  Indeed, I'd like to ask: does the person who reverted my deletion of the same text from the opening think that its stupid to allign the Freedom House statement with opposing viewpoints (maybe because the Freedom House statement is 'incontrovertible', or whatever), and if so why did he/she not remove the 'Minorities at Risk' comment from the Government section?

(4) The text is a quote from Freedom House, which is widely regarded as a US-lead, organisation operating to promote a particular policy programme.  The Times (hardly a fringe opinion) has described it as an "outpost of American soft power": .  Unlike, say, the Human Development Index there is hardly any global consensus support for its reports.  Giving its views such decisive prominence - treating them as the bottom-line on the country's political status by placing them in the opening - seems unencyclopaedic.  

I suggest that unless consensus forms against me on this, I should remove the offending text from the introduction.  There's presumably no objection to the same text being under the Government section (as it currently is - as well).