The Racist
Accusation that Israel is an Apartheid
State
(Updated November 2006)
“We do not
want to create a situation like that
which exists in South Africa,
where the whites are the owners and
rulers, and the blacks are the workers.
If we do not do all kinds of work, easy
and hard, skilled and unskilled, if we
become merely landlords, then this will
not be our homeland.”
— David Ben-Gurion
Even before the State
of Israel was established, Jewish leaders
consciously sought to avoid the creation
of a segregated society.
Since the United
Nations Conference on Racism in August
of 2001, anti-Semites and
racists have tried to delegitimize Israel
by calling it an apartheid state. Their
hope is that this false equation will tar
Israel and encourage measures similar to
those used against South
Africa, such as sanctions and divestment,
to be applied to Israel.
The comparison is malicious
and insults the South Africans who suffered
under apartheid.
The term “apartheid” refers to the official government policy of racial segregation formerly practiced in South Africa. The whites sought to dominate the nonwhite population, especially the indigenous black population, and discriminated against people of color in the political, legal, and economic sectors.
- Whites and nonwhites lived in separate
regions of the country.
- Nonwhites were prohibited from running
businesses or professional practices
in the white areas without permits.
- Nonwhites had separate amenities (i.e.
beaches, buses, schools, benches, drinking
fountains, restrooms).
- Nonwhites received inferior education,
medical care, and other public services.
- Though they were the overwhelming
majority of the population, nonwhites
could not vote or become citizens.
By contrast, Israel’s Declaration
of Independence called upon the Arab inhabitants
of Israel to “participate in the
upbuilding of the State on the basis of
full and equal citizenship and due representation
in all its provisional and permanent institutions.”
The 156,000 Arabs within Israel’s borders in 1948 were given citizenship in the new State of Israel. Today, this Arab minority comprises 20% of the population.
It is illegal for employers
to discriminate on the basis of race and Arab citizens
of Israel are
represented in all walks of Israeli life. Arabs have
served in senior diplomatic and government
positions and an Arab currently
serves on the Supreme
Court.
Israeli
Arabs have formed their own political
parties and won representation in the Knesset. Arabs are
also members of the major Israeli parties.
Twelve non-Jews (10 Arabs, two Druze)
are members of the Seventeenth
Knesset.
Laws dictated where nonwhites could live, work, and travel in South Africa, and the government imprisoned and sometimes killed those who protested against its policies. By contrast, Israel allows freedom of movement, assembly and speech. Some of the government’s harshest critics are Israeli Arabs in the Knesset.
Arab students and professors
study, research, and teach at Israeli
universities. At Haifa University,
the target of British advocates of
an academic boycott against Israel, 20 percent
of the students are Arabs.
Israeli society is not perfect
— discrimination and unfairness
exist there as it does in every other country.
These differences, however, are nothing like
the horrors of the apartheid system. Moreover,
when inequalities are identified, minorities
in Israel have the right to seek redress
through the government and the courts, and
progress toward equality has been made over
the years.
The situation of Palestinians
in the territories is different. While many
Palestinians in
the West
Bank and Gaza
Strip dispute Israel’s
right to exist, nonwhites did not seek the
destruction of South
Africa, only of the
apartheid regime.
Unlike South
Africa, where restrictions were racially
motivated, Israel is
forced by incessant Palestinian
terrorism to take actions, such as
building checkpoints and the security
fence, to protect
its citizens. Israel has
consistently demonstrated a willingness, however,
to ease restrictions when violence subsides.
Beyond limits placed on
their ability to attack Israel,
roughly 98% of the Palestinians
in the territories are governed by the rules
of the Palestinian
Authority, which do not permit freedom
of speech, religion, assembly or other rights
taken for granted by Westerners — and
guaranteed in Israel.
If Israel were
to give Palestinians full citizenship, it
would mean the territories had been annexed
and the possibility of the creation of a Palestinian state foreclosed. No Israeli government has been prepared to take that step. Instead, Israel seeks
a two-state solution predicated on a Palestinian willingness to live in peace.
The clearest refutation
of the calumny against Israel comes from the
Palestinians themselves. When asked what
governments they admire most, more than 80
percent of Palestinians consistently choose Israel because
they can see up close the thriving democracy
in Israel,
and the rights the Arab citizens
enjoy there.
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