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Page last updated
July 3, 2008
Understanding the conflict
Israeli society: ethnicity and apartheid
A number of comparisons have been made in recent years between developments in Israel and/or the occupied territories and apartheid. Some are concerned simply with what distinctions are necessary to maintain 'a Jewish state', others make direct comparisons with the apartheid regime in South Africa. A selection of discussion pieces on this theme is given here.N.B. the dividing line between these articles and those in the 'general analyses and commentaries' is not always that clear.
Articles dealing specifically with the situation of Palestinian citizens of Israel are collected together on a separate web page.
13. Don't travel on Route 443: The Apartheid Road - Silence of the Judges
By Boaz Okon
Yediot Aharonot, June 10, 2008
Adam Keller writes: "Boaz Okon is a prominent jurist, was a judge on the Jerusalem District Court and registrar of the Supreme Court, and since his resignation in 2006 is the juridical commentator of Yediot Aharonot. The following article appeared not only on the op-ed page, but also with a box, containing a summary, placed conspicuously on the paper's front page - which is quite exceptional. Exceptional in the opposite direction is the fact that this article, unlike many others of Okon's, was not included in the Y-net website nor translated to English. This I have decided to do myself."
12. Shalom, Shin Bet
Uri Avnery, 7 April 2007
"RECENTLY, THE CHIEF of the Shin Bet declared that the "Israeli Arabs", a fifth of Israel's population, constitute a danger to the state..."
11. Ran GreensteinCitizenship and political integration: can we draw lessons from the rise and demise of apartheid?
Mishpat Umimshal (Law and Government), Faculty of Law, Haifa University, Volume 10, No. 1 (November 2006) in Hebrew. English version posted here
A nuanced reading of the specificities of South African history that made the transition possible:
'It is important to realize, in summary, that the South African post-apartheid state, which grants equal rights to all citizens, was made possible by specific historical circumstances: diversity of groups brought together in a long process that involved multiplicity of local circumstances and interactions. This was accompanied by the formation of intimate but unequal relations between racial groups, through the employment of black labourers in the white-dominated economy, and domestic workers and child minders in most white households. These conditions do not exist in Israel/Palestine and cannot be replicated. The legacy of communal autonomy, quest for independence, institutional separation, and hostility, is too strong to allow for joint citizenship in the short to medium term. The difference in legal approaches discussed above stems from the different histories of the two societies.'10. Jimmy Carter, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid
Accusations of antisemitism fell thick and fast around former-President Jimmy Carter, mainly but not exclusively by any means, because of the provocative title of his book, published late in 2006. There are also number of interesting - and sympathetic - discussions of the book, often from unlikely sources including:
a) Henry Siegman, Hurricane Carter The Nation, posted on line January 4, 2007 (January 22, 2007 issue). Siegman, a senior fellow and director at the Council on Foreign Relations U.S. and Middle East Project. is a former executive head of the American Jewish Congress and the Synagogue Council of America, and has served as general secretary of the American Association for Middle East Studies.
b) Yossi Beilin The Case for Carter The Jewish Daily Forward 16 January 2007
"[W]hat Carter says in his book about the Israeli occupation and our treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories — and perhaps no less important, how he says it — is entirely harmonious with the kind of criticism that Israelis themselves voice about their own country. There is nothing in the criticism that Carter has for Israel that has not been said by Israelis themselves."
c) Yoram Kaniuk Like the worst nations: Israeli actions in Territories corrupt Zionist dream, no better than Apartheid YNetnews, 25 December 2006
"I haven't been a leftist for years... and I believe in the Jews' right to a national home and a state in our historic homeland. Yet what we've been doing with this dream borders on the criminal...
"Our intelligent young people are leaving the country. For most of them the reality they see is a harsh one. Those who remain here are violent and indifferent, yet we, who do not wish to renounce the Zionist dream, see how with every passing day it becomes more wicked and cruel."
d) Tony Karom Israel and Apartheid: In Defense of Jimmy Carter
"The point being that Jimmy Carter had to write this book precisely because Palestinian life and history is not accorded equal value in American discourse, far from it. And his use of the word apartheid is not only morally valid; it is essential, because it shakes the moral stupor that allows many liberals to rationalize away the daily, grinding horror being inflicted Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza."
e) Kenneth W. Stein, one of the people who resigned from the Carter Foundation over the book has produced a critique which is actually very thin. As Jeffrey Stein of Jewish Voice for Peace puts it: " It appears that nearly all the so-called “errors” cited in Carter’s book are differences of interpretation and/or trivial disagreements over wording. In the few specific supposed “factual” errors or “distortions”, Carter’s account is at the very least defensible and the criticism mostly disingenuous." But judge for yourself: My Problem with Jimmy Carter's Book Middle East Forum, Spring 2007, Vol XIV/2
f) And for a swashbuckling tour of Carter's critics see Norman Finkelstein Carter's Real Sin is Cutting to the Heart of the Problem: The Ludicrous Attacks on Jimmy Carter's Book Counterpunch, 28 December 2006. "As Jimmy Carter's new book Palestine Peace Not Apartheid climbs the bestseller list, the reaction of Israel's apologists scales new peaks of lunacy."
9. In February 2006 Chris McGreal of the Guardian set the cat among the pigeons with two extremely interesting pieces on South Africa, apartheid and Israel.(a)Worlds apart , Monday 6 February 2006
'Israelis have always been horrified at the idea of parallels between their country, a democracy risen from the ashes of genocide, and the racist system that ruled the old South Africa. Yet even within Israel itself, accusations persist that the web of controls affecting every aspect of Palestinian life bears a disturbing resemblance to apartheid.'(b) Brothers in arms - Israel's secret pact with Pretoria, Tuesday 7 February 2006
'During the second world war the future South African prime minister John Vorster was interned as a Nazi sympathiser. Three decades later he was being feted in Jerusalem...'For responses see Benjamin Pogrund's 'Why depict Israel as a chamber of horrors like no other in the world?' Wednesday, 8th February
plus
Letters, Tuesday 7 February
Reactions from other experts and from readers Wednesday, 8th February
Letter by Alon Liel, 11 February
Guardian readers' editor on the correspondence
7. Susie Jacobs on Israel=Apartheid - 20/05/05
'Susie Jacobs, a sociology lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University, argues in this scholarly, rigorous and informed piece, that any comparison must be systematic and in context, not used as an easy 'way out' of thinking about the real difficulties and uncertaintites that exist in the current situation in Israel and Palestine.'
Moshé Machover, November 2004
Machover argues that using the term apartheid to describe Israel can be dangerously misleading.
6. Israel and the apartheid lie
Benjamin Pogrund
Saying that apartheid lives on in Israel is a potent but vicious lie that could diminish the value of the term
Guardian, Monday, Oct 25, 2004
5. The situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem
John Dugard, Special Rapporteur, Commission on Human Rights
United Nations African Meeting in Support of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, Cape Town, 29 and 30 June 2004
4. Zionist Ideology, the Non-Jews and the State of Israel
Report by Ur Shlonsky
'A new ethnic definition of a Jew was introduced in 1995 by the Israeli statistical bureau introduced the parameter "population group", a category with two values: "Jews and Others" and "Arabs"...'
c. 2,600 words
3. A Jewish Demographic State
Uri Avnery
Gush Shalom, 12 October 2002
c. 1,100 words
'In reality, this is not a "Jewish democratic state" but a "Jewish demographic state". Demography overcomes democracy in all fields of action. An Arab citizen feels at every turn, since childhood, that he has no part in the state, that he is, at most, a tolerated resident.'
2. The Analogy to Apartheid
Ian UrbinaMiddle East Report 223, Summer 2002
1. Apartheid in the Holy Land
Desmond Tutu
The Guardian, April 29, 2002
