My Favorite Parts About Israeli Apartheid
My Favorite Parts About Israeli Apartheid
No need to bother with facts or historical truths — why would you when you have a ready-made comparison to 20th-century South Africa?
Please consider supporting our mission to help everyone better understand and become smarter about the Jewish world. A gift of any amount helps keep our platform free of advertising and accessible to all.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
In a world where nuance and critical thinking are often optional, it is refreshing to see how clear-cut the issue of “Israeli apartheid” is for many people.
What’s not to love about the stunning clarity of a narrative that oversimplifies decades of complex history, geopolitics, and conflict into a neatly worded package? It is so much easier to ignore those pesky things like context, terrorism, or historical claims when you can simply chant catchy slogans that fit on protest signs.
The best part is how this narrative creates such an easy villain (Israel). Never mind that this tiny nation is surrounded by hostile neighbors and has been at (defensive) war since its inception.
The beauty of labeling Israel with “apartheid” is how it evokes a sense of moral clarity for the casual observer. No need to bother with facts or historical truths — why would you when you have a ready-made comparison to 20th-century South Africa?
It is not like the actual situation, with its mix of security issues, disputed borders, and existential threats, is complicated or anything. No, let’s just slap the word “apartheid” on it, and voilà! Instant expertise.
To cap it all off, there is “Israeli Apartheid Week” — an annual series of university lectures and rallies in at least 55 major cities worldwide that aim “to raise awareness about Israeli apartheid and to mobilize support for strategic BDS campaigns to end international complicity in this system of oppression as a meaningful contribution to dismantling it.”1
Here are my favorite parts about so-called Israeli apartheid:
Israel’s 1948 Declaration of Independence provided for equal rights to all Israeli citizens, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, with the State promising to “uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of race, creed or sex.” In 1992 Israel reaffirmed this pledge with the Basic Law on Human Dignity and Liberty.
According to Professor Efraim Karsh, in 1937 Jewish leader David Ben-Gurion wrote a letter to his son, saying:
“We do not wish and do not need to expel Arabs and take their places. All our aspiration is built on the assumption — proven throughout all our activity in the Land [of Israel] — that there is enough room in the country for ourselves and the Arabs.”2
And the letter to his son was no exception; on many other occasions Ben-Gurion made similar declarations about coexistence with the Arabs, and the rights that Arab citizens would have in Israel. For instance, 10 years after writing this letter, in a speech in 1947, Ben-Gurion said:
“In our state there will be non-Jews as well — and all of them will be equal citizens; equal in everything without exception; that is, the state will be their state as well. … The attitude of the Jewish state to its Arab citizens will be an important factor — though not the only one — in building good neighborly relations with the Arab states.”
“If the Arab citizen will feel at home in our state, and if his status will not be in the least different from that of the Jew, and perhaps better than the status of the Arab in an Arab state … then Arab distrust will accordingly subside and a bridge to a Semitic, Jewish–Arab alliance, will be built.”3
Benny Morris (a so-called revisionist historian much cited by Israel’s critics) documented that the Palestinians who fled Haifa, for example — leading up to and during the first Israeli-Arab war in 1948 — did so against pleas from their Jewish neighbors and a British general that they stay put:
“Under British mediation, the [Israeli leadership agreed to a ceasefire], offering what the British regarded as generous terms. But then, when faced with Moslem pressure, the largely Christian leadership got cold feet; a ceasefire meant surrender and implied readiness to live under Jewish rule. They would be open to charges of collaboration and treachery.
“So, to the astonishment of the British and the Jewish military and political leaders … the Arab delegation announced that its community would evacuate the city. The Jewish mayor, Shabtai Levy, and the British commander, Major-General Hugh Stockwell, pleaded with the Arabs to reconsider … but the Arabs were unmoved …”4
A few days later, the Histadrut (Israel’s main labor union) published its own appeal to the Arab residents of Haifa:
“Do not destroy your homes … and lose your sources of income and bring upon yourselves disaster by evacuation. The Haifa Workers Council and the Histadrut advise you for your own good to stay and return to your regular work.”
Mecca, the holiest city for Muslims, is a closed city, for Muslims only. In contrast, Jerusalem, the holiest city for Jews, is an open city — with Muslim, Christian, and Jewish residents, and around one million tourists of all faiths visiting every year.
Furthermore, all religions in Israel are free to practice. There are Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druze, Buddhists, Sikhs, Bahá'ís, and Hindus living in Israel. Not to mention, there are synagogues, mosques, churches, and temples to accommodate people of all faiths.
As the number of Palestinians working in Israeli settlements grew, the government started to amend and improve the existing labor laws, eventually explicitly requiring, more than 36 years ago, the same minimum wage as in Israel.
Because some employers, including Palestinian contractors, violated this order, Palestinian workers filed a lawsuit that eventually reached the Israeli Supreme Court. In 2007 the court ruled in favor of the Palestinian workers.
Since 1987 under a Military Order, and since 2007 as a matter of Israeli civil law, Palestinian workers in Israeli settlements are covered under Israeli minimum wage and other labor standards.
There is something else worth noting here: Despite not being citizens of Israel, Palestinians from the West Bank who have grievances against Israel or against Israelis can file suits in Israeli courts, including the Supreme Court, and sometimes they win.
One of Israel’s founding principles is the Law of Return. This law, which dates back to the earliest days of the State of Israel, grants legal permission for any Jew, from anywhere in the world, to make aliyah (move to Israel to become an Israeli citizen).
The Law of Return is neither racist nor peculiarly Israeli. Similar laws have been in effect in such democracies as Mexico, Ireland, Finland, Greece, Poland, Germany, Italy, and Denmark. Furthermore, such laws are expressly permitted by, for example, the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965). According to Article 1(3) of this convention, nations are permitted to favor certain groups for citizenship provided there is no discrimination against any particular group.
Furthermore, Article 1(4) provides for “affirmative action.” That is, a state may employ a preference in granting citizenship to undo the effects of prior discrimination. In the case of Israel such prior episodes of discrimination are clear: the British decision in 1939, for example, to bar Jewish immigration to British-era Palestine, thereby consigning millions of Jews to deaths in the crematoria of Europe. To an exceedingly small degree, the Law of Return helps to mitigate this wrong.
A recent poll run by the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion (based in the West Bank) found that more than half of Palestinians living in East Jerusalem would rather be citizens of Israel than of a future Palestinian state — perhaps because Arabs in Israel have more fundamental rights than in other Islamic and Arab countries across the Middle East.
According to a poll done by Harvard University, 77 percent of Arab citizens living in Israel would rather live in the Jewish state than in any other country across the world.
The Hadassah Medical Organization, which operates two hospitals in Jerusalem, was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize due to its push for peace in the Middle East and its equal treatment of Palestinians and Israelis. Furthermore, Arab and Israeli children are born amongst each other in the same hospitals.
In 2014, the most popular name in Israel was Mohammed with 2,650 newborn Mohammed’s.
Even during Israeli-Palestinian military conflicts, Palestinians receive top-of-the-line treatment in Israeli hospitals. Back in South African apartheid, Blacks were specifically given limited access to health care.
Israel withdrew unilaterally from Gaza in 2005 and has since had no political or legal influence within the Strip. Meanwhile, the 1990s Oslo Accords peace process between Israel and the Palestinians divided the West Bank into three areas: A, B, and C.
Area A, where the large majority of Palestinians live, is administered entirely by the Palestinian Authority (run by the Palestinian political party Fatah), which cooperates to some degree with Israel on security issues, relying on the Israeli military to prevent a Hamas takeover in the West Bank, just as it brutally overthrew Fatah in Gaza in 2006.
Area B is civilly administered by the Palestinian Authority, while security remains the responsibility of the IDF. The area has a majority of Palestinians and some Jewish inhabitants. And Area C is administered by Israel and has a majority of Jews and a smaller number of Palestinians.
This division is the result of the complexities arising from joint Israeli and Palestinian governance of the West Bank, a disputed territory that is legally and politically unique in the world.
Arabs residing in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are not now — and never have been — Israeli citizens and, therefore, cannot claim rights afforded to Israeli citizens. All countries favor their own citizens vis-à-vis non-citizens, and doing so is not an indication of apartheid simply because the two groups are treated differently.
Moreover, many Arabs in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are engaged in an ongoing armed conflict with Israel. The Jewish state is faced with a hostile Arab population which has yet to come to terms with Israel’s existence and which actively seeks to destroy Israel. This requires Israelis to take certain measures for their national security.
Because of the ongoing conflict, the relationship of Arabs in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with Israel is governed primarily by the terms of the Law of Armed Conflict. As such, any acts or policies of alleged discrimination by Israel against the Arabs living in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip must be viewed through the lens of the Law of Armed Conflict.
As long as Israel’s actions and policies comply with applicable international law, they are lawful. Israel’s actions are based on well-recognized national security needs, not racial animus.
Israeli Jews are not predominantly White, nor are they of the same race. In 2005, more than 60 percent of Jews living in Israel were of Middle Eastern and North African descent, such as Afghani, Moroccan, Yemenite, Tunisian, Persian, Libyan, Kurdish, Ethiopian, Iraqi, Turkish, and Egyptian.
Then there are Israeli Arab citizens who represent more than 20 percent of the Jewish state’s population and serve as judges, ambassadors, legislators, journalists, professors, and artists — meaning they play prominent roles in all aspects of Israeli society.
BDS co-founder and apartheid claim propagator Omar Barghouti even earned his degree at Tel Aviv University. Miss Israel 1999 was an Arab Israeli, and it was an Arab Israeli District Court judge (George Karra) who once sentenced former Israeli President Moshe Katzav to jail, and an Arab Supreme Court Justice who upheld the sentence (Salim Joubran).
Arab Israelis can participate fully in the political process. They have equal voting rights. Despite people’s aims at revisionist history, colored people during apartheid were not allowed to participate in South Africa’s political process.
What’s more, Arab Israeli political parties regularly run for seats in the Knesset (Israel’s legislature) and sometimes play key roles in forming government coalitions. This level of political participation is inconsistent with the concept of apartheid, which in South Africa prevented non-whites from participating in governance or holding office.
Arabic is also an official language in Israel, and there exists a thriving Arabic theatre and literature scene across the Jewish state. And do you know where the freest Arabic media in the Middle East is located? That’s right: Israel.
There are no restrictions for Arabs or special privileges for Jews to lease private land in Israel, whereas Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, has stated that “any Arab who sells land to a Jew should be put to death.”
It is true that Arab Israelis own about 3.5 percent of the land in Israel — but this amounts to half of the private land in the country, meaning that Arabs, who are about 20 percent of the population, own a disproportionately large share of the land; Jews, who are almost 80 percent of the population, own the other 3.5 percent.
At the same time, life is nowhere near perfect for Arabs in Israel, but guess what? Life is nowhere near perfect for most minorities in most countries. Israel has made some strides in better acclimating Arabs into mainstream Israeli society, and there is still a ways to go.
But as it stands, there are zero Jews living in Gaza and two million Arabs living in Israel with full legal and civil rights.
Numbers don’t lie. Antisemites do.
“Israeli Apartheid Week.” BDS Movement.
Karsh, Efraim. “Fabricating Israeli History.” A Chameleon, Nevertheless, p. 49-50.
Karsh, Efraim. “Fabricating Israeli History.” A Chameleon, Nevertheless, p. 67.
Morris, Benny. “1948 and After: Israel and the Palestinians.” Clarendon Paperbacks, May 19, 1994.
Another brilliant piece!
Thank you for arming us with the truth. The most noble of causes.
Keep fighting the good fight.
Am Yisroel Chai!
When I've cited figures like these, my pro-Hamas adversary always says, "Oh you're just indoctrinated with Israeli propaganda." Because facts can be inconvenient, the people who don't want them don't need them.