While Israel’s adversaries have always charged the country with many misdeeds, only relatively recently have these alleged transgressions coalesced into the so-called BDS movement (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions), modeled after the campaign against apartheid South Africa, and based on the allegation that Israel too is an apartheid state. An integral part of the BDS campaign is Israeli Apartheid Week on some college campuses, featuring speakers, demonstrations and street theater meant to illustrate the claim that Israel is, simply put, bad. So bad that, like apartheid South Africa, it is illegitimate and should cease to exist.
When examined in detail, however, the apartheid charges fall apart, since Israel is, in fact, a progressive and liberal democracy. Like other western democracies Israel is imperfect, but with checks and balances, mistakes and injustices are usually, in the end, rectified. Unlike neighboring Arab countries Israel has free elections, a free press, full religious freedom, and full rights for women and minorities, including gays. In Israel there are Arab legislators in the Knesset, Arab diplomats in the Foreign Ministry, Arab generals in the Israel Defense Forces, and also Arab judges. In fact, it was an Arab District Court judge (George Karra) who recently sentenced former Israeli President Moshe Katzav to jail, and an Arab Supreme Court Justice who upheld the sentence (Salim Joubran).
As with many anti-Israel sites, the ones focusing on alleged Israeli apartheid often include embarrassing quotations attributed to Israeli leaders, to make them seem like racist, bloodthirsty killers of innocent Arab women and children. Tracing these quotations to their sources shows that most are simply made up, while others are wrenched out of context.
And while it’s true that Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank who lived under Israeli rule didn’t have the same rights as Arabs or Jews in Israel, they also didn’t experience anything at all comparable to apartheid. In fact, in many ways they had more rights under Israeli rule than they have today under Hamas rule in Gaza, or under PA rule in the West Bank, and more rights also than the citizens of any Arab country.
Despite this, it is still worthwhile to look in detail at the apartheid charges to see what, if any, merit, they have, and to see what, if any, credibility should be granted to those who level such charges. Since most of the Israel-apartheid sites repeat virtually identical charges, what will be analyzed here is a representative sample of the most serious charges as they appear on the site ItisApartheid.org in its overview Israeli Apartheid in the Occupied Territories and in various fact sheets addressing specific topics.
