# Israel and apartheid

Israel and apartheid Israel's policies and actions in its ongoing occupation of the Palestinian territories have drawn accusations that it is committing the crime of apartheid. Leading Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights groups have said that the totality and severity of the human rights violations against the Palestinian population in the occupied territories, and by some in Israel proper, amount to the crime against humanity of apartheid. Israel and some of its Western allies have rejected the accusation, with the former often labeling the charge antisemitic.
Arranged alphabetically by author or source: A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · J · K · L · M · N · O · P · Q · R · S · T · U · V · W · X · Y · Z · See also · External links

## B

* [Israel] is an apartheid state brazenly pursuing a settler-colonial agenda on every level, from its marauding settlers to its supreme court.
** Tareq Baconi, Enforcing Apartheid in the West Bank (March 3, 2023). New York Review of Books.
* We now have a law that confirms the Arab population as second-class citizens. It therefore is a very clear form of apartheid. I don’t think the Jewish people survived for 20 centuries, mostly through persecution and enduring endless cruelties, in order to now become the oppressors, inflicting cruelty on others. This new law does exactly that. That is why I am ashamed of being an Israeli today.
** Daniel Barenboim on the Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People, Today, I Am Ashamed to Be an Israeli (July 22, 2018), Haaretz.
* I used to be one of those people who took issue with the label of apartheid as applied to Israel. I was one of those people who could be counted on to argue that, while the country's settlement and occupation policies were anti-democratic and brutal and slow-dose suicidal, the word apartheid did not apply. I'm not one of those people any more.
** Bradley Burston, It's Time to Admit It. Israeli Policy Is What It Is: Apartheid , Haaretz (August 17, 2015)
* What does apartheid mean, in Israeli terms? Apartheid means fundamentalist clergy spearheading the deepening of segregation, inequality, supremacism, and subjugation.
** Bradley Burston, It's Time to Admit It. Israeli Policy Is What It Is: Apartheid , Haaretz (August 17, 2015)
* Only under a system as warped as apartheid, does a government need to label and treat non-violence as terrorism.
** Bradley Burston, It's Time to Admit It. Israeli Policy Is What It Is: Apartheid , Haaretz (August 17, 2015)

## C

* I think some of the frustration that certain, certain people feel about the lack of African American support for this war comes from this notion that we should have people’s back as they drop bombs to try to defend a segregationist apartheid regime. We shouldn’t do that. And we haven’t done that. That’s the history that you allude to, I mean, going back to Angela Davis, to SNCC, to Black Lives Matter. I stand here, or I sit here, very, very humbly as a latecomer to the cause, but someone who has come to the cause nonetheless.
** Ta-Nehisi Coates, as quoted in "Ta-Nehisi Coates Speaks Out Against Israel’s “Segregationist Apartheid Regime” After West Bank Visit" (2 November 2023), Democracy Now!
* Israel and its defenders often claim that it is the "only democracy in the Middle East." But what I saw was an ethnocracy, where half the people are first-class citizens, and the other half are something less. And this is a system sponsored and endorsed by the United States of America. The endorsement is not contradictory. For most of its history, America too was an ethnocracy in democratic clothing.
** Ta-Nehisi Coates, as stated in "A Palestinian American’s Place Under the Democrats’ Big Tent?" (21 August 2024), Vanity Fair
* As somebody who understands the pervasive evil of apartheid, to say 'Israel is an apartheid state' is not only false and prejudicial to Israel, but it undermines the real struggle against apartheid and the integrity of that movement.
** Irwin Cotler, as quoted in The Jewish Chronicle (27 November 2015), p.34

## D

* This is a state of apartheid. It's taken me less than a week to lose impartiality. In doing so, I may as well be throwing stones at tanks.
** Daniel Day-Lewis, Authors in the Frontline, March 20, 2005
* You have Palestinians living in Israel with full political rights. You don’t have discriminatory laws against them, I mean not letting them swim on certain beaches or anything like that. I think it’s unfair to call Israel an apartheid state. If Kerry did so, I think he made a mistake.
** F. W. de Klerk, as quoted in "South Africa's de Klerk: Israel not an apartheid state", The Times of Israel , May 27, 2014.
* There are no discriminatory laws in Israel and while there are certain practices that may be interpreted as segregation, in fact they are not. ... the Government does not prevent Arab children from attending the bredominantly Jewish schools. ... In the Knesset, the official languages are Arabic and Hebrew, but the Israeli-Arab MKs mostly address the house in Hebrew. This is an indication that there are no major racial divisions in Israel. The quality of life and civil liberties enjoyed by Israeli Arabs are far better than in much of the Middle East. ... Unfortunately, due to propaganda and unprincipled leadership, the majority of ordinary people in the territories still yearn for Jews to leave the region or 'be pushed to the sea'. This is the challenge facing Israel. It is all the more remarkable, therefore, that any allegation of 'apartheid state' can be so easily refuted.
** Report of South African Study Tour to Israel and Palestine, February 2016
** Summarised by tour member Rabelani Dagada in "Israel not apartheid state - and we should know", Jewish Chronocle, 3 June 2016 p.24

## E

* Although I was born in Israel, I grew up in South Africa from the age of six and only returned here a decade ago. This gives me a different view of the world, and at the moment I see too many social similarities between South Africa during apartheid and present-day Israel.
** Avi Eyal, "I see too many social similarities between South Africa during apartheid and present-day Israel", 17 August 2023

## G

* I loved South Africa, but I loathed the apartheid system. In Israel, I saw a fresh start for a people rising from the ashes of the Holocaust, a place of light and justice, as opposed to the darkness and oppression of apartheid South Africa.
** Hirsh Goodman, Losing the Propaganda War (31 January 2014), New York Times.
* I have long argued that Israel, despite the occupation, which has now lasted more than 50 years, was not an apartheid state. If annexation goes ahead, with Israeli sovereignty and law extended only to the Israeli residents of the areas involved, but not to the Palestinians, I am not sure I will be able to make that case in the future.
** Hirsh Goodman, Annexation, Apartheid, and Me (3 July 2020), The Atlantic.
* However, in contrast to both residents of the OPT and the apartheid Bantustans, Israel has allowed its Arab minority (comprising about 21% of its population) to take up Israeli citizenship. Arab Israelis have their own political parties and many have become notable citizens, taking up positions in the Knesset, cabinet, Supreme Court, foreign service, police and Israeli Defence Force (IDF), as well as the Israeli men’s national football team. Thus Israeli Arabs today enjoy far more rights than blacks ever did within apartheid South Africa.
** Elliott Green, Associate professor, London School of Economics; blog, November 2014

## H

* The situation is like that of South Africa before 1990 and cannot continue.
** Stephen Hawking, Stephen Hawking joins academic boycott of Israel (7 May 2013), The Guardian.

## J

* The South African state offered to trade Israel the materials needed for their illegal nuclear weapons program in exchange for international Jewry shielding the country from bad publicity. Once the Israelis got what they wanted, Jews suddenly turned their back on the country and politically isolated it via the United States and Britain. Anti-Apartheid activists, both on the left and the right, were overwhelmingly Jewish, and often pro-Israel as well.
** Joseph Jordan, Third Worldism, Littoria, April 4th 2024

## K

* I was shocked to see these walls, it's a new apartheid, barbaric behavior: How can you impose such a collective punishment and separate people?
** Kennedy, Nigel First violin / Prelude to dialogue. Ha'aretz, December 24, 2007.

## M

* The "Left" repeatedly calls for boycotts of Israel because it is, they claim, "an apartheid state." Israel is so totally free of apartheid that anyone who has spent ten minutes there knows the accusation to be an outright lie. So why keep on saying something untrue? That is anti-Semitism.
** Denis MacEoin, Distinguished Senior Fellow, Gatestone Institute Gatestone website, May 4, 2016
* I grew up in South Africa, so believe me when I say: Israel is not an apartheid state ... The difference between the two countries could scarcely be more stark. Under apartheid, a legal structure of racial hierarchy governed all aspects of life. Black South Africans were denied the vote. They were required by law to live, work, study, travel, enjoy leisure activities, receive medical treatment and even go to the lavatory separately from those with a different colour of skin. Interracial relationships and marriages were illegal. It was subjugation in its rawest form. Contrast that with Israel, a country whose Arab, Druze, Bedouin, Ethiopian, Russian, Baha’i, Armenian and other citizens have equal status under the law. Anyone who truly understands what apartheid was cannot possibly look around Israel today and honestly claim there is any kind of parity.
** Ephraim Mirvis, New Statesman, 24 February 2016
* Pluralistic democracies that respect human rights do not find themselves resorting to using lethal force against demonstrators. That’s what apartheid states do. But Israel has sold itself to the world as something else, a beacon of liberalism and democracy. Few things expose this image as a sham as well as massive non-violent mobilizations or civil disobedience.
** Yousef Munayyer on the events of Land Day 2018, In Gaza, Israel Aims To Massacre Hope (2 April 2018), HuffPost.
* Israel, since its inception, has relied on external support, particularly from the Western world, for justification of its policies in Gaza and the West Bank. These relationships are contingent on many things, including values the West claims to hold dear like freedom, democracy, civil rights and equality. The prospect of a negotiated agreement based on two-states has allowed Israel to stave off the confrontation between the myth of these values and the reality on the ground. But as the notion of a two-state agreement fades firmly into history, the apartheid reality becomes impossible to ignore, and further episodes where Israel will confront masses of mobilized Palestinians demanding their rights will continue to highlight this contradiction.
** Yousef Munayyer on the events of Land Day 2018, In Gaza, Israel Aims To Massacre Hope (2 April 2018), HuffPost.

## O

* No apartheid law will erase the fact that in this homeland there are two nations.
** Ayman Odeh, about the Basic Law proposal: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People. As quoted in Opposition warns of ‘apartheid’ as Knesset starts ‘Jewish state bill’ debates (26 July 2017) by Marissa Newman, The Times of Israel.

## P

* We know people cannot own property and it can be seized without any compensation, which is what we experienced in our own country. People have to carry identity documents that reflect their ethnicity rather than citizenship. All of this is part of the apartheid feature.
** Pandor, Naledi. "Time to stop this ‘crime against humanity’: South Africa", Al Jazeera, 15 November, 2023.
* The difference between the current Israeli situation and apartheid South Africa is emphasised at a very human level: Jewish and Arab babies are born in the same delivery room, with the same facilities, attended by the same doctors and nurses, with the mothers recovering in adjoining beds in a ward. Two years ago I had major surgery in a Jerusalem hospital: the surgeon was Jewish, the anaesthetist was Arab, the doctors and nurses who looked after me were Jews and Arabs. Jews and Arabs share meals in restaurants and travel on the same trains, buses and taxis, and visit each other’s homes. Could any of this possibly have happened under apartheid? Of course not.
** Pogrund, Benjamin. "Apartheid? Israel is a democracy in which Arabs vote", MidEastWeb. First published in Focus 40 (December 2005). Accessed December 29, 2006.
* I know about apartheid. I was born in South Africa and spent 26 years as a journalist specialising in reporting apartheid; I have also written several books about it. I only left South Africa because my newspaper, the Rand Daily Mail, of which I was then deputy editor, was closed down by its commercial owners under pressure from the government. We paid the price for being the country's leading voice against apartheid. I also am familiar with Israel. I have lived in Jerusalem since 1997 and for more than 12 years was founder director of the Yakar Center for Social Concern whose purpose was to promote dialogue between Jews and Christians, Jews and Muslims, and Israelis and Palestinians. ... Why do I dismiss the apartheid analogies so emphatically? Because I straddle both apartheid South Africa and Israel today and have knowledge of the good and the ill in both societies.
** Pogrund, Benjamin. "Israel has moved to the right, but it is not an apartheid state", The Guardian, Friday 26 October 2012
* In Israel, I am now witnessing the apartheid with which I grew up.
** Pogrund, Benjamin. "For Decades, I Defended Israel From Claims of Apartheid. I No Longer Can", Haaretz, 10 August 2023

## S

* Since 1967, Israel has built more than 130 settlements (and helped build about 140 settler outposts) in the West Bank...Israeli settlers, who have full civil and political rights and are seamlessly connected to Israel’s infrastructure and resources, reside alongside millions of Palestinians subject to Israeli military rule who have zero say over how they are governed. Numerous leading Israeli and international nongovernmental organizations have likened this bifurcated system to apartheid.
** Michael Sfard in "Israel Is Officially Annexing the West Bank," Foreign Policy (8 June 2023)
* Those who use the apartheid accusation employ the old anti-Zionist arguments. These constitute a multi-layered construct of fundamental ideological positions and analytical constructs, one of which is the purposeful displacement of the real nationalist context for historical comprehension of Zionism with the vilifying label of colonialism. Many anti-Zionists, but not necessary all of them, apply identifiable double standards of judgment to Israel traceable to the characteristic anti-Semitic premise that all things Jews do are inherently evil, including their nationalism.
** Shimoni, Gideon. Deconstructing Apartheid Accusations Against Israel (September 2, 2007).
* Comparing Israel to apartheid, which most consider slander and simply part of the assault on Israel, is especially sensitive in South Africa where apartheid was born, grew and died.
** Geoff Sifrin, The Jewish Chronicle (28 February 2014), p. 36.

## T

* It reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about. Many South Africans are beginning to recognize the parallels to what we went through.
** Desmond Tutu, Speech in Boston (2002).

## V

* Israel is not consistent in its new anti-apartheid attitude... they took Israel away from the Arabs after the Arabs lived there for a thousand years. In that, I agree with them. Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state.
** Hendrik Verwoerd, quoted in The Empire's New Walls: Sovereignty, Neo-liberalism, and the Production of Space in Post-apartheid South Africa and Post-Oslo Palestine/Israel. Andrew James Clarno. 2009. p. 66–67

## W

* I think my appointment is the example and answer for those who accuse Israel of being an apartheid state. It shows minorities have equal rights and we are part of the government, the state and the parliament.
** Arab Kadima Knesset member Majalli Wahabi, Acting President of Israel Librarians for Fairness (3 March 2007).

## See also

* Arab-Israeli conflict
* Basic Law proposal: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People
* Jewish and democratic state
* Palestine
* Zionism