Published: 9 July 2020
Last updated: 4 March 2024
LATE LAST MONTH, A HEADLINE in the right-wing free Israeli newspaper, Yisrael Hayom, screamed, Israel is not and will never be an 'apartheid state.'
"The Jewish left is recognising that apartheid is here," countered the left-wing website, +972.
Like Godwin's Law, which argues that the probability that something or someone will be compared to Hitler or another Nazi reference increases the longer an internet conversation goes on, comparisons between Israel and the apartheid regime in South Africa frequently make their way into the media and political debates. The issue has become even more heated in view of the possibility of Israel's annexation in the West Bank and Jordan Valley.
Even Israel's premiere satire show, Wonderful Country, which airs on prime-time TV, ran a sketch for a fictitious drone company that lifts Palestinians up in the air to hover over the annexed land. The drone is named, "Apart-High."
Predictably, left- and right-wing politicians and pundits argue whether the comparison, is, or is not, valid. Yet while calling Israel an apartheid state might have international legal implications, the heated responses on all sides prove that the deliberate use of the term is a loaded, emotionally driven political decision.
At its most basic, "apartheid," which means separate in Afrikaans, refers to the system of racial segregation enforced by the white majority on black, coloured and Asian people in South Africa from 1948 until 1994.
Although some official and traditional segregationist policies had existed in South Africa for generations, the election of the white Nationalist Party in 1948 led to their legal enforcement and expansion to every aspect of life, in the attempt to maintain the non-whites in a state of permanent economic, political, and social subservience.
All sides agree that the psychological and emotional results of accusing Israel of apartheid, or calling Israel an apartheid state, are significant.
As the government became increasingly tyrannical in its attempts to enforce the system, violation of any of these laws and regulations, by whites or blacks, could result in arrest, torture, imprisonment, and death.
The institutionalisation of tyrannical racism, so soon after the horrors of the Holocaust, shocked the world. By 1973, the United Nations General Assembly had adopted the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (ICSPCA).
South Africa became a pariah state, facing condemnation, boycott, and sanctions throughout the world and increasingly violent protest at home. Eventually, the system imploded and in 1994 Nelson Mandela, the leader of the African National Congress (ANC), released after 27 years in prison, was elected president in the country’s first democratic election.
The first widespread attempts to compare Israel's treatment of its Palestinian citizens within its borders and the Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza to apartheid in South Africa were made by the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine in the 1970s. The efforts did not gain much international traction, it can be speculated, because the apartheid regime in South Africa was still in place, its cruelty and inhumanity visible to all.
But by the turn of the century, South Africa had dismantled apartheid and adopted democratic principles. Once reviled, South Africa was now hailed as an example of progressive equality.
In 2001, in recognition of these changes, the UN held its World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa. A declaration by the conference of NGOs, which was part of the official conference, overtly called Israel "a racist, apartheid state" that commits "crimes against humanity".
The association of Israel with apartheid is"an instrumental act against Israel in the intellectual field. It puts Israel on the defensive, because to define Israel as a pariah state is to deny the Jewish right to self-determination.
The Durban NGO declaration set off a global campaign against Israel that included an “Israel Apartheid Week” initiative across college campuses, especially in North America and also in other countries throughout the world and gave birth to the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) movement.
The "Israel is the new South Africa" campaign gained further traction in 2006 when former US President Jimmy Carter published his best-selling book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.
Supporters of this analogy note that Israel maintains a system of separation between Israeli Jews and Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including separate identifications, roads, roadblocks, and barriers. Others extend the analogy to the State of Israel within the 1967 borders as well, citing inequities in infrastructure, access to land and resources, and legal inequalities between Palestinian and Jewish Israeli citizens.
Opponents of the comparison argue that it is factually and morally inaccurate, solely intended to delegitimise Israel. Within the West Bank, they argue, Palestinians are governed by the elected Palestinian Authority. They further point to a "double standard," applied to Israel but not to neighbouring Arab countries, which maintain discriminatory policies towards their own Palestinian minorities. While acknowledging discrimination against Palestinians within Israel-proper, they argue that these are primarily de facto rather than de jure and are being corrected, albeit slowly.
One of the most vociferous opponents of this analogy has been the prominent author Benjamin Pogrund, who published, in 2014, his intensively-researched, Drawing Fire: Investigating the Accusations of Apartheid in Israel, in which he concludes that the Afrikaner regime in South Africa cannot be compared with the Jewish state today.
The use of the term apartheid is meant as a wake-up call, especially for Israeli Jews
Born in South Africa, Pogrund, now 87 and living in Jerusalem, began his career as a cub reporter for the Rand Daily Mail in Johannesburg in 1958, covering black politics and the cruelties of apartheid. For his brutally honest reporting, he was repeatedly threatened, arrested and imprisoned by the authorities. Pogrund met frequently with Mandela on dark Johannesburg streets, exchanging information in clandestine message drops or secretive pre-arranged phone calls.
"Calling the situation in Israel apartheid would be an insult to the victims of apartheid," Pogrund says.
Despite the UN Convention, when the term apartheid is applied to Israel, it is not with the intent to make a precise analogy, but rather as part of a "global apartheid" concept referring to systemic and pervasive inequality and demanding that Israeli policies be condemned under international law. Since the legal prohibition against apartheid is absolute, a legal finding of apartheid would obligate the international community to impose various forms of sanctions on Israel.
Yet whatever the ultimate geopolitical and international consequences, all sides agree that the psychological and emotional results of accusing Israel of apartheid, or calling Israel an apartheid state, are significant.
In the words of Pogrund: "the word, apartheid, creates a sense of distaste, revulsion. It is a scourge-word. Even if it is used incorrectly, it has the ring of authenticity and ugliness. If the label sticks, even Israel's greatest friends will be nervous about being associated with us."
Yisrael Medad, journalist, author and a spokesperson for the settler movement in the West Bank, argues that the association of Israel with apartheid is "an instrumental act against Israel in the intellectual field. It puts Israel on the defensive, because to define Israel as a pariah state is to deny the Jewish right to self-determination. Apartheid cannot be fixed, it must be dismantled, and therefore the implication of the analogy is that Zionism and the Jewish state that it created, can't be fixed and must be dismantled."
Writing in Haaretz in February, historian and commentator Gadi Taub also argues that the argument "closes the case the case on Israel's right to exist….From this perspective, the infringement on Palestinian human rights is so grave that it undermines Israel’s moral foundation – to the point of voiding its very right to exist… [The existence of Israel would be an offense] so abhorrent, so inhumanly odious, that one must die rather than commit it…"
If we refer to the situation in the West Bank as an 'occupation', then we can think of the situation as temporary. Apartheid, on the other hand, is a clear moral injustice.
Veteran journalist Meron Rapoport, a writer and editor at the left-leaning website, Local Call, and a founder of "A Land for All," a movement to create a federated solution for Israelis and Palestinians, says that the use of the term, apartheid, is meant as a wake-up call, especially for Israeli Jews.
"If we refer to the situation in the West Bank as an 'occupation,'' he explains, "then we can think of the situation as temporary. Apartheid, on the other hand, is a clear moral injustice, a crime against humanity. The opposite of occupation is withdrawal. The opposite of apartheid is equality.
"The minute you define the Israeli regime as apartheid, you cannot go back," he continues. "You have crossed a moral line that makes you consider your role in the maintaining that regime and forces you to face deep moral questions."
Rapoport continues: I believe that you can be a Zionist and dismantle apartheid. For me, equating Israel with apartheid is an expression of greater commitment and responsibility for my country."
Attorney Tova Herzl, a former Israeli ambassador to South Africa, argues that use of the term apartheid is counterproductive for all sides. "There are designations that leave you with no hope," she explains.
"Apartheid has no redeeming features. It is a slogan that makes it difficult to move us forward on any level – and we, the Israelis and the Palestinians, have much to discuss and repair."
And yet, Pogrund, who once so staunchly defended Israel from accusations of apartheid, now says that, if Israel's proposed annexation does happen, he will adopt the term. "If we annex the Jordan valley and the settlement areas," he says, "we become apartheid. There's no question about it. And I say that not only as a statement of fact, but as a declaration of despair."
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