Israeli apartheid

The West Bank Barrier, a structure that has been called an "apartheid wall" by critics of Israeli policy. Israeli officials describe the partition, constructed in 2002, as a security barrier or fence.

The State of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians has been likened by many to a system of apartheid, analogous to South Africa's treatment of non-whites during South Africa's apartheid era. Those who use this analogy argue that a system of control including separate roads, inequities in infrastructure, legal rights, and access to land and resources between Palestinians and Israeli residents in the Israeli-occupied territories constitutes an apartheid system. Certain Israeli commentators and Palestinian rights advocates extend this analogy to include Arab citizens of Israel, describing their citizenship status as second-class. Other users of the analogy use it in relation to the special status that Israel accords to Jews (or to Orthodox Jews) without reference to Palestinians.

Opponents of the usage argue that Arab citizens of Israel have the same rights as all other Israeli citizens, and that the State of Israel's treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories is driven by security considerations, not racism. They state that the analogy is merely a slanderous epithet, reflecting a double standard applied to Israel but not to its undemocratic neighbours in the Arab world.

Examples of apartheid-like policies and conditions in Israel and the Palestinian territories

Many critics of Israel accuse Israel of practicing Apartheid-like policies, especially within the occupied territories. The table below summarizes some of the issues raised by these critics.

South African Apartheid	Allegation Against Israel	Rebuttals
Apartheid based on notion of racial superiority	Israel's policies based on notion that the Jewish people are exclusively entitled to the Promised Land
Blacks were forcibly concentrated in homelands	Many Palestinians concentrated in Gaza and West Bank after an abortive war of conquest
Whites stole land from Blacks (who stole that land from other Blacks a few decades earlier)	Israel allegedly took land from some Palestinians illegally	Israel became a country just as America did, by declaring its independence and winning a war following that. A war instigated by the Palestinians and their Arab allies, no less.
Whites displaced Blacks from their homeland	Many Palestinians evicted from original homes and became refugees	Very few Palestinians were forcibly evicted. Many were encouraged to leave by the Palestinian leadership and the Egyptian government, promising them they would repossess the areas.
Blacks performed most menial labor	Many menial jobs in Israel are performed by Arabs	After a large wave of suicide bombings, Israel has begun to import a large workforce from Southeast Asia. The end result is that Arabs are now free from the racist burden of employment for unskilled labour.
Blacks were economically disadvantaged	Vast disparity in wealth between Jews and Palestinians	Until 1967, Palestinians were part of the considerably weaker Jordanian and Egyptian economies. Afterwards, the repeated infitadas further marginalized Palestinians from the Israeli economy. The expectation of parity between the two economic groups, particularly when one refuses to co-operate with the other, is unrealistic.
Blacks were excluded from educational opportunities	Israeli educational system does not encourage Arab students	In Israel, education is segregated to guard against violence. Arabs can attend any university they please, even non-Arab ones.
National Identity cards specified race	Israeli national identity cards indicate Jewish vs Palestinian ethnicity (for example, due to birthdate format)	Identity cards help prevent terrorism by identifying hostiles and civilians. Moreover, they form the initial phase of Palestinian independence (Palestinians are not Israeli citizens).
Citizenship rules favor White immigration	Jews have greater opportunities to become citizens than Arabs	Many countries have their own "right of return" laws, favoring the majorities, including all Arab countries and many European ones.
Whites dominated political decision-making	Arab minority in Israel has little political power	"...the Arab minority are full citizens with voting rights and representation in the government"
Blacks received lower-quality medical care	Jews receive higher quality medical care than Palestinians	Arabs in Israel get the same doctors and hospitals as Jews.
Blacks and Whites were segregated	Explicit segregation in the West Bank, implicit segregation within Israel	Segregation in Israel was created due to violence between Jews and Arabs.
Right of travel was unequal	Travel by Palestinians is restricted	Palestinian travel is restricted due to a continued assertion that the Palestinians have a right to attack Israeli civilians.
Whites tortured Black prisoners	Israel tortures Palestinian prisoners	Israel's torture is for interrogation, while in South Africa, all blacks were tortured. Israel's torture is not as extreme as South African torture, or even American methods for that matter. The Israeli Supreme Court has at large prohibited torture.

Marriage law

The measure known as the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law, passed by the Knesset on 31 July 2003, forbids a Palestinian from the West Bank or Gaza Strip from becoming an Israeli resident via marriage. The law does allow children from such marriages to live in Israel until age 12, at which age the law requires them to emigrate. This applies equally to a Palestinian spouse of any Israeli citizen, whether Arab or Jewish, but in practise more Israeli Arabs than Israeli Jews marry Palestinians. The law was originally enacted for one year and has been extended, with minor amendments on 21 July 2004, on 31 January 2005, on 27 July 2005 until 31 March 2006, until January, 2007, and until 31 July 2008.

The law was upheld in May 2006, by the Supreme Court of Israel on a six to five vote. Israel's Chief Justice, Aharon Barak, sided with the minority on the bench, declaring: "This violation of rights is directed against Arab citizens of Israel. As a result, therefore, the law is a violation of the right of Arab citizens in Israel to equality." Zehava Gal-On, a founder of B'Tselem and a Knesset member with the Meretz-Yachad party, stated that with the ruling "The Supreme Court could have taken a braver decision and not relegated us to the level of an apartheid state." The law was also criticized by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

Adam and Moodley cite the marriage law as an example of how Arab Israelis "resemble in many ways 'Colored' and Indian South Africans." They write: "Both Israeli Palestinians and Colored and Indian South Africans are restricted to second-class citizen status when another ethnic group monopolizes state power, treats the minorities as intrinsically suspect, and legally prohibits their access to land or allocates civil service positions or per capita expenditure on education differentially between dominant and minority citizens."

In June 2008 after the law was renewed once again, Amos Schocken, the publisher of the Israeli daily Ha'aretz wrote that the law "severely discriminates when comparing the rights of young Israeli Jewish citizens and young Israeli Arab citizens," who marry, and that "Its existence in the law books turns Israel into an apartheid state."

Political rights, voting and representation

Israeli citizenship law does not differentiate between Israeli citizens based on ethnicity. Formally therefore, Arab citizens of Israel have the same rights as all other Israeli citizens, including suffrage, political representation, and recourse to the courts. The Knesset (Israel's legislature) includes Arab members and Arab parties. Although Arab parties allied to Mapai were members of the first and second government coalitions in Israel, no independent Arab party has ever been part of a coalition government.

Arabs living in Gaza, the West Bank, and some of those in East Jerusalem are not Israeli citizens. They carry Palestinian identity cards issued by the Palestinian Authority with Israeli approval and elect members of the governing Palestinian Authority.

Palestinians living in the non-annexed portions of the West Bank do not have Israeli citizenship or voting rights in Israel, but are subject to the policies of the Israeli government. Israel has created roads and checkpoints in the West Bank with the stated purpose of preventing the uninhibited movement of suicide bombers and militants in the region. The human rights NGO B'Tselem has indicated that such policies have isolated some Palestinian communities. Marwan Bishara, a teacher of international relations at the American University of Paris, has claimed that the restrictions on the movement of goods between Israel and the West Bank as "a defacto apartheid system".

Ehud Olmert, then Deputy Prime Minister of Israel, commented in April 2004 that "More and more Palestinians are uninterested in a negotiated, two-state solution, because they want to change the essence of the conflict from an Algerian paradigm to a South African one. From a struggle against 'occupation,' in their parlance, to a struggle for one-man-one-vote. That is, of course, a much cleaner struggle, a much more popular struggle - and ultimately a much more powerful one. For us, it would mean the end of the Jewish state." Olmert made a similar remark in November 2007: "If the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights, then the State of Israel is finished."

Ethnicity specified on national identification cards

The Israeli identity card, or Teudat Zehut, required of all residents over the age of 16, indicates whether holders are Jewish or not by adding the person's Hebrew date of birth. Chris McGreal, The Guardian's former chief Israel correspondent, reports that the ID system determines: "where [Arabs and Jews] are permitted to live, access to some government welfare programmes, and how they are likely to be treated by civil servants and policemen." In the same article McGreal, also the chief South Africa correspondent during the Apartheid years, compared Israel's Population Registry Act, which calls for the gathering of ethnic data, to South Africa's Apartheid-era Population Registration Act.

Laws that allegedly discriminate based on religion

Former Israeli cabinet minister Yossi Paritzky uses the Apartheid analogy, based on "[t]hree racist, discriminatory decisions" by the Israeli government, one of which is the policy that military service is compulsory for most citizens of Israel, but an exception is made for ultra-orthodox Jews. However, Muslims are also allowed to avoid the draft.

Segregation

In 2000, Israeli police enforced a travel-permit policy, which The Guardian called "beach apartheid" in Tel Aviv-Yafo. Reporting for the Guardian, Suzanne Goldenberg alleged that Palestinians were prevented from using beaches frequented by Jews, that police sometimes detained Palestinians, or required them to swim in the beaches of Jaffa, where the city's Arab population is sizable. Meanwhile, Jews were permitted to frequent the same beaches without harassment or hindrance.. Goldenberg's claims were disputed by human rights activist and journalist Tom Gross, who wrote "As someone who lives in Tel Aviv, and goes to the beach most days, I have never seen anything of the kind. Jews and Arabs mix freely on the beach, and did so when the article was written in June 2000, as any resident of Tel Aviv will confirm."

Critics of Israel identify segregation in support of their use of the apartheid analogy.

Torture

Rumy Hasan, a senior lecturer at Sussex University, which makes use of the apartheid analogy relies on allegations of torture towards Palestinian prisoners in support of the analogy.

Health and Medical Services

Some critics of Israel that use the apartheid analogy rely on the relatively poor quality of health care available to Palestinians in support of the analogy.

Education

Some critics of Israel that use the apartheid analogy rely on the relatively poor quality of education available to Palestinians in support of the analogy.

Land and infrastructure

93% of the land inside the Green Line is not held by private owners and is managed as public property. 79.5% of the land is owned by the Israeli Government through the Israel Land Administration, and between 11-14% is privately owned by the Jewish National Fund (11% according to the Jewish National Fund {JNF}, 13% according to Haaretz, and 14% according to CAMERA). Under the 1952 World Zionist Organisation - Jewish Agency Status Law, and the 1954 Covenant between the state of Israel and the Jewish Agency, administration of state lands was handed to the JNF, which states explicitly on its website that the "Jewish National Fund is the caretaker of the land of Israel, on behalf of its owners - Jewish people everywhere." In 1960, the Knesset adopted the Basic Law -- Israel Lands, which formalised this. In proposing the law in the Knesset, religious affairs minister Zerah Warhaftig explained how the law enabled structural discrimination against non-Jews, without writing this in explicit terms:

"Concerning the name, we gave this law the name Basic Law: Israel Lands. There were a number of proposals about the name. MK Harari proposed to name it "The People's Lands". On the face of it, I do not see any great difference between the two names. I admit that neither name hits the target. What is it that we want? What we want is difficult to define. We want to make it clear that the land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel. The "people of Israel" is a concept that is broader than that of the "people resident in Zion", because the people of Israel live throughout the world. On the other hand, every law that is passed is for the benefit of all the residents of the state, and all the residents of the state include also people who do not belong to the people of Israel, the worldwide people of Israel".

Menahem Begin (Herut Movement): "This is not expressed [i.e. made explicit in the law]".

Wahrhaftig: "We cannot express this. Whatever we write, Israel-lands or people's lands, from the strictly legal point of view, the reference is necessarily to the people resident in Zion only. Every law is valid only in the area under the jurisdiction of the state, and therefore it makes no difference what we write... We thought it would be better to write "Israel" rather than "people". It is also a question of tradition, of habit... MK Meridor was wrong when he said that there is no legal innovation in the law. There is therein a very significant legal innovation: we are giving legal garb to the Memorandum of Association of the JNF. . . As for the JNF, the legal innovation is enormous; it gives legal garb to a principle that thus far was incorporated only in the JNF's Memorandum".

Under Israeli law, both ILA and JNF lands may not be sold, and are leased under the administration of the ILA.

Chris McGreal of The Guardian states that as a result of the government's control over most of the land in Israel, the vast majority of land in Israel is not available to non-Jews. In response, Alex Safian of the pro-Israel media media-monitoring group CAMERA has argued that this is not true -- according to Safian, the 79.5% of Israeli land owned directly by the ILA is available for lease to both Jews and Arabs, sometimes on beneficial terms to Arabs under Israeli affirmative action programs. While Safian concedes that the 14% of Israeli land owned by the JNF is not legally available for lease to Israel's Arab citizens, he argues that the ILA often ignores this restriction in practice.

Safian also noted that although there are formal restrictions on the lease of JNF land, which is privately owned by the JNF, "in practice JNF land has been leased to Arab citizens of Israel, both for short-term and long-term use. To cite one example of the former, JNF-owned land in the Besor Valley (Wadi Shallaleh) near Kibbutz Re'em has been leased on a yearly basis to Bedouins for use as pasture."

Representative of a dissenting view is that of Leila Farsakh, associate professor of Political Science at University of Massachusetts Boston, according to whom, after 1977, "[t]he military government in the West Bank and Gaza Strip (WBGS) expropriated and enclosed Palestinian land and allowed the transfer of Israeli settlers to the occupied territories: they continued to be governed by Israeli laws. The government also enacted different military laws and decrees to regulate the civilian, economic and legal affairs of Palestinian inhabitants. These strangled the Palestinian economy and increased its dependence and integration into Israel." Farsakh holds that "[m]any view these Israeli policies of territorial integration and societal separation as apartheid, even if they were never given such a name." Along similar lines, B'Tselem wrote in 2004 that "Palestinians are barred from or have restricted access to 450 miles of West Bank roads, a system with 'clear similarities' to South Africa's former apartheid regime".

In October 2005 the Israel Defense Force stopped Palestinians from driving on the main road through the West Bank; B'Tselem described this as a first step towards "total 'road apartheid'". Criticism of Israeli policies on similar grounds has arisen from, among others, Haggai Alon, a senior defence advisor.

Describing Israel's creation of separate roads for Palestinians, its discrimination in allocation of water, ongoing settlement construction, and differences in per capita income between Israeli Jews and Palestinians, Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian physician, legislator and former presidential candidate, said, "some people get angry because we use the word apartheid. They think it’s an exaggeration." He added, "If you have this situation, what would you call it if you don’t call it apartheid? What other term could one use?" He also asserted that the US-sponsored peace process "was a process that eventually led to giving Israel the time it needs to continue settlements building, to continue having the checkpoints and restrictions, to continue creating this apartheid system while the United States administration was conceived or perceived to be practicing peace in the region."

High Court decision on public land

In March 2000, Israel's High Court ruled in Qaadan v. Katzir that the government's use of the JNF to develop public land was discriminatory due to the agency's prohibition against leasing to non-Jews. According to Alexandre Kedar of the Haifa University Law School "Until the Supreme Court Qaadan v. Katzir decision, Arabs could not acquire land in any of the hundreds of settlements of this kind existing in Israel.

Travel and movement

A permit and closure system was introduced in 1990. Leila Farsakh maintains that this system imposes "on Palestinians similar conditions to those faced by blacks under the pass laws. Like the pass laws, the permit system controlled population movement according to the settlers’ unilaterally defined considerations." In response to the al-Aqsa intifada, Israel modified the permit system and fragmented the WBGS [West Bank and Gaza Strip] territorially. "In April 2002 Israel declared that the WBGS would be cut into eight main areas, outside which Palestinians could not live without a permit." John Dugard has said these laws "resemble, but in severity go far beyond, apartheid's pass system".

In 2003, a year after Operation Defensive Shield, the Israeli government announced a project of "fences and other physical obstacles" to prevent Palestinians crossing into Israel. Several figures, including Mohammad Sarwar, John Pilger, and Mustafa Barghouti and others have described the resultant West Bank barrier as an "apartheid wall".

Supporters of the West Bank barrier consider it to be largely responsible for reducing incidents of terrorism by 90% from 2002 to 2005. Israel's foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, stated in 2004 that the barrier is not a border but a temporary defensive measure designed to protect Israeli civilians from terrorist infiltration and attack, and can be dismantled if appropriate. The Supreme Court of Israel ruled that the barrier is defensive and accepted the government's position that the route is based on security considerations.

Use of apartheid analogy in political discourse

The idea of "Israeli Apartheid" emerged in the final years of the white South African regime (in the early 1990s), when Palestinians opposed to South African apartheid drew the link between Israel and South Africa. Comparisons between Israeli policies and apartheid have been made by groups and individuals, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and other South African anti-apartheid leaders, Jimmy Carter, former President of the United States, former United States National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, Israeli journalists, the Syrian government, pro-Palestinian student groups in the UK, U.S., and Canada, the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, and Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem. Contemporary global political discourse regarding Israel incorporates usages of, and controversy over, the phrase "Israeli apartheid" and its variations.

Use of apartheid analogy in relation to the Israeli disengagement plan

In January 2004, Ahmed Qureia, then the Palestinian Prime Minister, said that the building of the West Bank barrier, and the associated Israeli absorption of parts of the West Bank, constituted "an apartheid solution to put the Palestinians in cantons." Colin Powell, then U.S. Secretary of State, commented on Queria's statements by affirming U.S. commitment to a two-state solution while saying, "I don't believe that we can accept a situation that results in anything that one might characterize as apartheid or Bantuism."

An academic paper by Professor Oren Yiftachel, Chair of the Geography Department at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev, predicted that Israel's unilateral disengagement plan will result in "creeping apartheid" in the West Bank, Gaza, and in Israel itself. Yiftachel argues that, "Needless to say, the reality of apartheid existed for decades in Israel/Palestine, but this is the first time a Prime Minister spells out clearly the strengthening of this reality as a long-term political platform.". Yiftachel argued that the plan would entrench a situation that can be described as "neither two states nor one," separating Israelis from Palestinians without giving Palestinians true sovereignty.

Meron Benvenisti, an Israeli political scientist and the former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, predicted that the interim disengagement plan would become permanent, with the West Bank barrier entrenching both the isolation of Palestinian communities and the existence of Israeli settlements. He warned that Israel is moving towards the model of apartheid South Africa through the creation of "Bantustan" like conditions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The Economist, in an article on the debate over withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, asserted that "Keeping the occupied land will force on Israel the impossible choice of being either an apartheid state, or a binational one with Jews as a minority."

Michael Tarazi, a Palestinian proponent of the binational solution has argued that it is in Palestine's interest to "make this an argument about apartheid," even to the extent of advocating Israeli settlement: "The longer they stay out there, the more Israel will appear to the world to be essentially an apartheid state".

Use of apartheid analogy by notable authors

Geoffrey Wheatcroft has noted that, historically, Israeli officials had mulled the possibility of adopting the South African apartheid model as one that the state of Israel itself might emulate. In the late 1970s "(t)hey didn't wish to copy what was once called 'petty apartheid', the everyday harassment of black South Africans, but 'grand apartheid', the Nationalists' attempt to conjure away the problem of minority rule by dividing the country into supposedly autonomous cantons or 'homelands'."

Uri Davis wrote in 1987 that apartheid in Israel is a legal reality, even though it has a different legal structure than in the Republic of South Africa. He asserts that where the Republic of South Africa had an official value system of apartheid and made a key legal distinction between "white", "coloured", "Indian" and "black", Israel has an official value system of Zionism and makes a key legal distinction between "Jew" and "non-Jew". He suggests that this distinction is made in a two-tier structure that had concealed Israeli apartheid legislation for "almost four decades" at the time when he wrote.

Uri Avnery applies parts of the analogy to "the reality in the occupied Palestinian territories" which he describes as "in many respects similar to reality under the apartheid regime," but warns that there are also important differences between the two conflicts.

Use of apartheid analogy by Adam and Moodley

File:Adam Moodley book.jpg

Adam and Moodley apply lessons learned in South Africa to the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Heribert Adam of Simon Fraser University and Kogila Moodley of the University of British Columbia, in their 2005 book-length study Seeking Mandela: Peacemaking Between Israelis and Palestinians, apply lessons learned in South Africa to resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They divide academic and journalistic commentators on the analogy into three groups:

• "The majority is incensed by the very analogy and deplores what it deems its propagandistic goals."
• "'Israel is Apartheid' advocates include most Palestinians, many Third World academics, and several Jewish post-Zionists who idealistically predict an ultimate South African solution of a common or binational state."
• A third group which sees both similarities and differences, and which looks to South African history for guidance in bringing resolution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

Adam and Moodley also suggest that political actors such as former Israeli Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Barak used the analogy "self-servingly in their exhortations and rationalizations" and that such actors "have repeatedly deplored the occupation and seeming 'South Africanization' but have done everything to entrench it."

Adam and Moodley argue that notwithstanding universal suffrage within Israel proper "if the Palestinian territories under more or less permanent Israeli occupation and settler presence are considered part of the entity under analysis, the comparison between a disenfranchised African population in apartheid South Africa and the three and a half million stateless Palestinians under Israeli domination gains more validity."

In part, analysts like Adam and Moodley argue, this controversy over terminology arises because Israel as a state is unique in the region. Israel is perceived as a Western democracy and is thus likely to be judged by the standards of such a state. Western commentators, too, may feel "a greater affinity to a like minded polity than to an autocratic Third World state." Israel also claims to be a spiritual home for a worldwide Jewish diaspora and a strategic outpost of the Western world which "is heavily bankrolled by U.S. taxpayers" who can be viewed as sharing a collective responsibility for its behaviors. Radical Islamists, according to some analysts, "use Israeli policies to mobilize anti-Western sentiment", leading to a situation in which "(u)nconditional U.S. support for Israeli expansionism potentially unites Muslim moderates with jihadists." As a result of these factors, according to this analysis, the West Bank Barrier — nicknamed the "apartheid wall" — has become a critical frontline in the War on Terrorism.

At the same time, Adam and Moodley note that Jewish historical suffering has imbued Zionism with a subjective sense of moral validity that the whites ruling South Africa never had: "Afrikaner moral standing was constantly undermined by exclusion and domination of blacks, even subconsciously in the minds of its beneficiaries. In contrast, the similar Israeli dispossession of Palestinians is perceived as self-defense and therefore not immoral." They also suggest that academic comparisons between Israel and apartheid South Africa that see both dominant groups as "settler societies" leave unanswered the question of "when and how settlers become indigenous," as well as failing to take into account that Israeli's Jewish immigrants view themselves as returning home. "In their self-concept, Zionists are simply returning to their ancestral homeland from which they were dispersed two millennia ago. Originally most did not intend to exploit native labor and resources, as colonizers do." Adam and Moodley stress that "because people give meaning to their lives and interpret their worlds through these diverse ideological prisms, the perceptions are real and have to be taken seriously."

Adam and Moodley also argue that "apartheid ideologues" who justified their rule by claiming self-defense against "African National Congress(ANC)-led communism" found that excuse outdated after the collapse of the Soviet Union, whereas "continued Arab hostilities sustain the Israeli perception of justifiable self-defense."

Adam and Moodley argue that notwithstanding universal suffrage within Israel proper, "if the Palestinian territories under more or less permanent Israeli occupation and settler presence are considered part of the entity under analysis, the comparison between a disenfranchised African population in apartheid South Africa and the three and a half million stateless Palestinians under Israeli domination gains more validity."

Adam and Moodley contend that the relationship of South African apartheid to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been misinterpreted as "justifying suicide bombing and glorifying martyrdom." They argue that the ANC "never endorsed terrorism," and stress that "not one suicide has been committed in the cause of a thirty-year-long armed struggle, although in practice the ANC drifted increasingly toward violence during the latter years of apartheid."

Use of apartheid analogy by the United Nations

Israel has been accused by Palestinian organizations and their supporters of the crime of apartheid under international law. For example, in 2006, at the UN-sponsored International Conference of Civil Society in Support of the Palestinian People, Phyllis Bennis, co-chair of the International Coordinating Network on Palestine, opened the speeches of the civil society at the first plenary of the conference by alleging "Once again, the crime of apartheid [is] being committed by a United Nations Member State [Israel]."

The crime of apartheid first became part of international law in 1973 when the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (ICSPCA) was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. It defined it as "inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group ... over another racial group ... and systematically oppressing them." Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States refused to ratify it. At the outset the US stated: "[W]e cannot...accept that apartheid can in this manner be made a crime against humanity. Crimes against humanity are so grave in nature that they must be meticulously elaborated and strictly construed under existing international law..."

In 2002, a different definition of the crime of apartheid was provided by Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The crime of apartheid was listed as one of several crimes against humanity, and was defined as including inhumane acts such as torture, murder, forcible transfer, imprisonment, or persecution of an identifiable group on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, or other grounds, "committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime." This change to defining the crime of apartheid as discrimination on the grounds of national, ethnic or cultural group rather than racial group alone increased the applicability of the law to Israeli policy in the West Bank.

No mechanism exists to prosecute any state for the crime of apartheid except referral from the UN Security Council to the International Criminal Court, and no such referral has ever taken place.

Other UN-related allegations of Israeli apartheid

John Dugard, a South African professor of international law and an ad hoc Judge on the International Court of Justice, serving as the Special Rapporteur for the United Nations on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories described the situation in the West Bank as "an apartheid regime ... worse than the one that existed in South Africa." In 2007, in advance of a report from the United Nations Human Rights Council, Dugard wrote that "Israel's laws and practices in the OPT [occupied Palestinian territories] certainly resemble aspects of apartheid." Referring to Israel's actions in the occupied West Bank, he wrote, "Can it seriously be denied that the purpose [...] is to establish and maintain domination by one racial group (Jews) over another racial group (Palestinians) and systematically oppressing them? Israel denies that this is its intention or purpose. But such an intention or purpose may be inferred from the actions described in this report."

Danny Rubinstein, a columnist at Ha'aretz also reportedly likened Israel to apartheid South Africa during a United Nations conference at the European Parliament in Brussels on 30 August 2007, stating: "Israel today was an apartheid State with four different Palestinian groups: those in Gaza, East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Israeli Palestinians, each of which had a different status."

Use of apartheid analogy by academic and media figures

Jimmy Carter, former President of the United States, Camp David Accords negotiator, Nobel Peace Prize winner, and author of the 2006 book entitled Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, maintained in that book that Israel's options included a "system of apartheid, with two peoples occupying the same land but completely separated from each other, with Israelis totally dominant and suppressing violence by depriving Palestinians of their basic human rights. This is the policy now being followed ..." Carter has also argued that the Israeli system is in some cases more onerous than that of the apartheid government of South Africa. Carter's use of the term "apartheid" has been calibrated to avoid specific accusations of racism against the government of Israel, and has been carefully limited to the situation in Gaza and the West Bank. For instance, in a news release, Carter described discussing his book and his use of the word "apartheid" with the Board of Rabbis of Greater Phoenix, and noted, "I made clear in the book's text and in my response to the rabbis that the system of apartheid in Palestine is not based on racism but the desire of a minority of Israelis for Palestinian land and the resulting suppression of protests that involve violence."

Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Agency (NSA) advisor to President Carter commented that the absence of a resolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict is likely to produce a situation which de facto will resemble apartheid.

University of Chicago political science professor John Mearsheimer stated in June 2008 that, "Five, 10 or 15 years ago, it was unthinkable to mention ‘apartheid’ in relation to Israel. Now [Jimmy] Carter has used it in the title of his book,” "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid". Mearsheimer added, "Israel is, in effect, creating an apartheid state."

Bill Fletcher, Jr., former president of the TransAfrica Forum, which led the U.S. movement to overthrow apartheid in South Africa during the 1980s, published an article in the San Jose Mercury News headlined, "Tactics that ended apartheid in S. Africa can end it in Israel," calling for support for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel.

Yakov Malik, the Soviet Ambassador to the United Nations accused Israel--an ally of the US in the Cold War against the Soviets-- of promulgating a "racist policy of apartheid against Palestinians" following the imposition of Israeli rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip after the Six-Day War of 1967. Israel accused the Soviet Union of publishing anti-Zionist tracts.

Raja G. Khouri, a member of the Ontario Human Rights Commission and former president of the Canadian Arab Federation, supports the apartheid analogy, and holds that the Israeli policies in question are not motivated by racism.

British journalist Melanie Phillips has criticized Desmond Tutu for comparing Israel to Apartheid South Africa. Having made the comparison in an article for The Guardian in 2002, Tutu stated that people are scared to say the "Jewish lobby" in the U.S. is powerful. "So what?" he asked. "The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosevic and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust." Phillips wrote of Tutu's article: "I never thought that I would see brazenly printed in a reputable British newspaper not only a repetition of the lie of Jewish power but the comparison of that power with Hitler, Stalin and other tyrants. I never thought I would see such a thing issuing from a Christian archbishop ... How can Christians maintain a virtual silence about the persecution of their fellow worshippers by Muslims across the world, while denouncing the Israelis who are in the front line against precisely this terror?"

In December, 2006, Maurice Ostroff of the Jerusalem Post criticized Tutu for being well-intentioned, but ultimately misguided: "If he took the opportunity during his forthcoming visit to impartially examine all the facts, he would discover - to his pleasant surprise - that accusations of Israeli apartheid are mean-spirited and wrong-headed... He would find that whereas the apartheid of the old South Africa was entrenched in law, Israel's Declaration of Independence absolutely ensures complete equality of social and political rights to all inhabitants, irrespective of religion, race, or gender.

Political scientist Norman Finkelstein, an outspoken opponent of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians and author of numerous books relating to the Arab-Israeli conflict, defends Carter's analysis in Palestine Peace Not Apartheid as in his view both historically accurate and non-controversial outside the United States: "After four decades of Israeli occupation, the infrastructure and superstructure of apartheid have been put in place. Outside the never-never land of mainstream American Jewry and U.S. media, this reality is barely disputed." In claiming the apartheid comparison "is a commonplace among informed commentators", Finkelstein cited such a comparison by historian Benny Morris, a widely quoted scholar on the Arab-Israeli conflict (whom Finkelstein has also fiercely criticized in other contexts). Morris responded to the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America that

"Norman Finkelstein is a notorious distorter of facts and of my work, not a serious or honest historian. ... As to the occupied territories, Israeli policy is fueled by security considerations (whether one agrees with them or not, or with all the specific measures adopted at any given time) rather than racism (though, to be sure, there are Israelis who are motivated by racism in their attitude and actions towards Arabs) — and indeed the Arab population suffers as a result. But Gaza's and the West Bank's population (Arabs) are not Israeli citizens and cannot expect to benefit from the same rights as Israeli citizens so long as the occupation or semi-occupation (more accurately) continues, which itself is a function of the continued state of war between the Hamas-led Palestinians (and their Syrian and other Arab allies) and Israel."

Adrian Guelke, Professor of Comparative Politics at Queen's University Belfast and Director of the Centre for the Study of Ethnic Conflict wrote that "Comparison of Israel's policies with the South African policy of apartheid has become a very common theme of Palestinian discourse at both an analytical and polemical level and, it should be noted, use of the analogy is by no means confined to Palestinians." Since the breakdown of the peace process in 2000, he observed, "the use of this analogy has mushroomed."

Fifty-three Stanford University faculty from various fields other than Middle East, Palestine or Israel studies, as well as staff from Stanford's conservative think tank, the Hoover Institution signed a letter expressing the view that "Israel is not an Apartheid State" and that "the State of Israel has nothing in common with apartheid"; that within its national territory Israel is a liberal democracy in which Arab citizens of Israel enjoy civil, religious, social, and political equality. They alleged that likening Israel to apartheid South Africa was a "smear," part of a campaign of "malicious propaganda."

Ian Buruma has argued that even though there is social discrimination against Arabs in Israel and that "the ideal of a Jewish state smacks of racism", the analogy is "intellectually lazy, morally questionable and possibly even mendacious", as "[n]on-Jews, mostly Arab Muslims, make up 20% of the Israeli population, and they enjoy full citizen's rights" and "[i]nside the state of Israel, there is no apartheid".

Use of apartheid analogy by South Africans

In 2002 Anglican Archbishop and Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu wrote a series of articles in major newspapers, comparing the Israeli occupation of the West Bank to apartheid South Africa, and calling for the international community to divest support from Israel until the territories were no longer occupied.

Other prominent South African anti-apartheid activists have used apartheid comparisons to criticize the occupation of the West Bank, and particularly the construction of the separation barrier. These include Farid Esack, a writer who is currently William Henry Bloomberg Visiting Professor at Harvard Divinity School, Ronnie Kasrils, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Dennis Goldberg, and Arun Ghandhi,

On 15 May 2008, 34 leading South African activists published an open letter in The Citizen, under the heading "We fought apartheid; we see no reason to celebrate it in Israel now!". The signatories, who included Kasrils and several other government ministers, COSATU General Secretary Zwelinzima Vavi, Ahmed Kathrada, Sam Ramsamy and Blade Nzimande, wrote

We, South Africans who faced the might of unjust and brutal apartheid machinery in South Africa and fought against it with all our strength, with the objective to live in a just, democratic society, refuse today to celebrate the existence of an Apartheid state in the Middle East... Apartheid is a crime against humanity. It was when it was done against South Africans; it is so when it is done against Palestinians!

On 6 June 2008, Mr. Kgalema Motlanthe, the Deputy President of the African National Congress, who had recently visited the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, told a delegation of Arab Knessed members visiting South Africa to study its democratic constitution that conditions for Palestinians under occupation were "worse than conditions were for Blacks under the Apartheid regime."

In a letter to the President of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), Ontario, Willie Madisha, the President of COSATU wrote, "As someone who lived in apartheid South Africa and who has visited Palestine I say with confidence that Israel is an apartheid state. In fact, I believe that some of the atrocities committed against the South Africans by the erstwhile apartheid regime in South Africa pale in comparison to those committed against the Palestinians."

Hendrik Verwoerd, then prime minister of South Africa and the architect of South Africa's apartheid policies, said in 1961 that "The Jews took Israel from the Arabs after the Arabs had lived there for a thousand years. Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state." Israel was critical of apartheid through the 1950s and 60s as it built alliances with post-colonial African governments." For example, also in 1961, Israel voted for the General Assembly censure of Eric Louw's speech defending apartheid.

Former deputy mayor of Jerusalem Meron Benvenisti relates in his 1986 book Conflicts and Contradictions that during the 1970s, an official of the South African apartheid compared Israeli-Palestinian relations to South African policy for the Transkei in a meeting. The Israeli officials present expressed shock at the comparison, and the South African official said "I understand your reaction. But aren't we actually doing the same thing? We are faced with the same existential problem, therefore we arrive at the same solution. The only difference is that yours is pragmatic and ours is ideological."

In 2008 a delegation of ANC veterans visited Israel and the Occupied Territories, and said that in some respects it was worse than apartheid. One member said "The daily indignity to which the Palestinian population is subjected far outstrips the apartheid regime." Another member, human rights lawyer Fatima Hassan, cited the separate roads, different registration of cars, the indignity of having to produce a permit, and long queues at checkpoints as worse than what they had experienced during apartheid. But she also thought the apartheid comparison was a potential "red herring". Andrew Feinstein, a former ANC parliament member, was shocked to see footage of teenagers heaping abuse on and throwing stones at Palestinian children, especially done in the name of Judaism. The delegation's final formal statement made no mention of comparisons with apartheid and Dennis Davis, a high court judge, said he thought the use of the term in the Middle East context was "very unhelpful".. Davis also noted that "There's no racial superiority here. There's no pervading ideology that confirms the inferiority of Palestinians." and concluded "But I think it's incredibly unhelpful to say you can simply take this to be apartheid and therefore the South African struggle is the same and the South African solution is the same. That's a very lazy form of reasoning." One of the Jewish members of the delegation said that the comparison with apartheid is very relevant and that the Israelis are even more efficient in implementing the separation-of-races regime than the South Africans were, and that if he were to say this publicly, he would be attacked by the members of the Jewish community..

Use of apartheid analogy by Israelis

Jamal Zahalka, an Israeli-Arab member of the Knesset argued that an apartheid system has already taken shape in that the West Bank and Gaza Strip are separated into "cantons" and Palestinians are required to carry permits to travel between them. Azmi Bishara, a former Knesset member, argued that the Palestinian situation had been caused by "colonialist apartheid."

Michael Ben-Yair, attorney-general of Israel from 1993 to 1996 referred to Israel establishing, "an apartheid regime in the occupied territories", in an essay published in Haaretz.

Some Israelis have compared the separation plan to apartheid, such as political scientist Meron Benvenisti, and journalist Amira Hass. Ami Ayalon, Israeli admiral and former leader of the Israel Security Agency criticized the model, claiming it "ha[d] some apartheid characteristics." Shulamit Aloni, former education minister, Israel Prize winner, and a former leader of Meretz, said that the state of Israel is "practicing its own, quite violent, form of Apartheid with the native Palestinian population."

Academic and political activist Uri Davis, an Israeli citizen who describes himself as an "anti-Zionist Palestinian Jew", has written several books on the subject, including Israel: An Apartheid State in 1987.

The Movement Against Israeli Apartheid in Palestine, a campaigning group based in Israel, has established a web-based petition in which Palestinians & Israeli Jews Call for Boycotting of Apartheid Israel.

Israeli politician and former Knesset member Yossi Sarid explicitly compared an array of Israeli practices to apartheid in a Ha'aretz column entitles "Yes, It's apartheid" on April 25, 2008. Sarid wrote,'And what acts like apartheid, is run like apartheid and harasses like apartheid, is not a duck - it is apartheid. Nor does it even solve the problem of fear' and added, 'One essential difference remains between South Africa and Israel: There a small minority dominated a large majority, and here we have almost a tie. But the tiebreaker is already darkening on the horizon.'

Daphna Golan-Agnon, co-founder of B'Tselem and founding director of Bat Shalom writes in her 2002 book Next Year in Jerusalem, "I'm not sure if the use of the term apartheid helps us to understand the discrimination against Palestinians in Israel or the oppression against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. I'm not sure the discussion about how we are like or unlike South Africa helps move us forward to a solution. But the comparison reminds us that hundreds of laws do not make discrimination just and that the international community, the same international community we want to belong to, did not permit the perpetuation of apartheid. And it doesn't matter how we explain it and how many articles are written by Israeli scholars and lawyers -- there are two groups living in this small piece of land, and one enjoys rights and liberty while the other does not."

Counterarguments to the apartheid analogy

Israel policies are unlike South African polices

Conversely, StandWithUs, a pro-Israel advocacy organization, argues that apartheid in the Republic of South Africa was an official policy of discrimination against blacks enforced through police violence, based on minority control over a majority population who could not vote. They contend that in contrast, Israel is a majority-rule democracy with equal rights for all citizens including Arab citizens of Israel. Israel contends with prejudice in its population as all societies do, but such prejudices are opposed by law. They argue that the West Bank and Gaza are not governed by Israel.

Unlike South Africa, where Apartheid prevented Black majority rule, within Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip -- the territory Israel controls -- there is currently a Jewish plurality with Jews forming just over 48 percent of the population.

Criticising the use of the analogy, Israeli anti-Zionist activist Professor Moshé Machover states "... talk of Israeli 'apartheid' serves to divert attention from much greater dangers. For, as far as most Palestinians are concerned, the Zionist policy is far worse than apartheid. Apartheid can be reversed. Ethnic cleansing is immeasurably harder to reverse; at least not in the short or medium term."

The motivation(s) of Israeli policies

Critics of the claim that Israel is motivated by racism argue that, unlike apartheid, Israeli practices, even if they deserve to be criticized, are not prompted by racial hatred. Benjamin Pogrund writes:

"In any event, what is racism? Under apartheid it was skin colour. Applied to Israel that's a joke: for proof of that, just look at a crowd of Israeli Jews and their gradations in skin-colour from the "blackest" to the "whitest"... Occupation is brutalising and corrupting both Palestinians and Israelis... [b]ut it is not apartheid. Palestinians are not oppressed on racial grounds as Arabs, but, rather, as competitors — until now, at the losing end — in a national/religious conflict for land."

Michael Kinsley's article "It's Not Apartheid", published in Slate and the Washington Post, states that Carter "makes no attempt to explain [the use of the word 'apartheid']" and refers to Carter's usage of the term as "a foolish and unfair comparison, unworthy of the man who won -- and deserved -- the Nobel Peace Prize..."

"To start with, no one has yet thought to accuse Israel of creating a phony country in finally acquiescing to the creation of a Palestinian state. Palestine is no Bantustan... Furthermore, Israel has always had Arab citizens.... No doubt many Israelis have racist attitudes toward Arabs, but the official philosophy of the government is quite the opposite, and sincere efforts are made to, for example, instill humanitarian and egalitarian attitudes in children. That is not true, of course, in Arab countries, where hatred of Jews is a standard part of the curriculum."

Citing what he calls "the most tragic difference," Kinsley concludes: "If Israel is white South Africa and the Palestinians are supposed to be the blacks, where is their Mandela?"

Criticism of the "Israeli apartheid" usage for its inherent implication of racism has been widespread. In 2003, South Africa's minister for home affairs Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi said that "The Israeli regime is not apartheid. It is a unique case of democracy". According to Fred Taub, the President of Boycott Watch, "[t]he assertion ... that Israel is practicing apartheid is not only false, but may be considered libelous. ... The fact is that it is the Arabs who are discriminating against non-Muslims, especially Jews." Similarly, in 2004, Jean-Christophe Rufin, former vice-president of Médecins Sans Frontières and president of Action Against Hunger, recommended in a report about anti-Semitism commissioned by French Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin that the charge of apartheid and racism against Israel be criminalized in France. He wrote:

"[T]here is no question of penalising political opinions that are critical, for example, of any government and are perfectly legitimate. What should be penalised in the perverse and defamatory use of the charge of racism against those very people who were victims of racism to an unparalleled degree. The accusations of racism, of apartheid, of Nazism carry extremely grave moral implications. These accusations have, in the situation in which we find ourselves today, major consequences which can, by contagion, put in danger the lives of our Jewish citizens. It is why we invite reflection on the advisability and applicability of a law ... which would permit the punishment of those who make without foundation against groups, institutions or states accusations of racism and utilise for these accusations unjustified comparisons with apartheid or Nazism."

The idea that "Israeli apartheid" implies a policy of racial or other discrimination against Arabs or Muslims has been rejected by other prominent figures. In 2004's The Trouble with Islam Today, Irshad Manji argues that the allegation of apartheid in Israel is deeply misleading, noting that there are in Israel several Arab political parties; that Arab-Muslim legislators have veto powers; and that Arab parties have overturned disqualifications. She also points to Arabs like Emile Habibi, who have been awarded prestigious prizes. She also observes that Israel has a free Arab press; that road signs bear Arabic translations; and that Arabs live and study alongside Jews. She also claims that Palestinans commuting from the West Bank are entitled to state benefits and legal protections.

Policies in Israel compared to the West Bank and Gaza

Historian Benny Morris told CAMERA:

"Israel is not an apartheid state — rather the opposite, it is easily the most democratic and politically egalitarian state in the Middle East, in which Arabs Israelis enjoy far more freedom, better social services, etc. than in all the Arab states surrounding it. Indeed, Arab representatives in the Knesset, who continuously call for dismantling the Jewish state, support the Hezbollah, etc., enjoy more freedom than many Western democracies give their internal Oppositions. (The U.S. would prosecute and jail Congressmen calling for the overthrow of the U.S. Govt. or the demise of the U.S.) The best comparison would be the treatment of Japanese Americans by the US Govt ... and the British Govt. [incarceration] of German émigrés in Britain WWII ... Israel's Arabs by and large identify with Israel's enemies, the Palestinians. But Israel hasn't jailed or curtailed their freedoms en masse (since 1966 [when Israel lifted its state of martial law]).

Morris later added: "Israel ... has not jailed tens of thousands of Arabs indiscriminately out of fear that they might support the Arab states warring with Israel; it did not do so in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973 or 1982 — despite the Israeli Arabs' support for the enemy Arab states."

"As to the occupied territories, Israeli policy is fueled by security considerations (whether one agrees with them or not, or with all the specific measures adopted at any given time) rather than racism (though, to be sure, there are Israelis who are motivated by racism in their attitude and actions towards Arabs) — and indeed the Arab population suffers as a result. But Gaza's and the West Bank's population (Arabs) are not Israeli citizens and cannot expect to benefit from the same rights as Israeli citizens so long as the occupation or semi-occupation (more accurately) continues, which itself is a function of the continued state of war between the Hamas-led Palestinians (and their Syrian and other Arab allies) and Israel."

President Carter has frequently reiterated the point that his "use of 'apartheid' does not apply to circumstances within Israel." Regarding the title of his book Carter has said:

"It's not Israel. The book has nothing to do with what's going on inside Israel which is a wonderful democracy, you know, where everyone has guaranteed equal rights and where, under the law, Arabs and Jews who are Israelis have the same privileges about Israel. That's been most of the controversy because people assume it's about Israel. It's not.

"I've never alleged that the framework of apartheid existed within Israel at all, and that what does exist in the West Bank is based on trying to take Palestinian land and not on racism. So it was a very clear distinction."

In his review of Carter's book Joseph Lelyveld notes that South Africa's Apartheid policy was also about land as much as racism, and comments that the use of "apartheid" by Carter is "basically a slogan, not reasoned argument".

Petty apartheid does not exist in Israel

Benjamin Pogrund, author and member of the Israeli delegation to the United Nations World Conference against Racism, has argued that petty apartheid does not exist within Israel:

"The difference between the current Israeli situation and apartheid South Africa is emphasized 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."

The Israeli government has established a committee to consider, among other issues, policies of affirmative action for housing Arab citizens. The city of Jerusalem gives Arab residents free professional advice to assist with the house permit process and structural regulations, advice which is not available to Jewish residents on the same terms.

In an op-ed for the Jerusalem Post, Gerald Steinberg, Professor of Political Studies at Bar Ilan University, argued that "Black labor was exploited in slavery-like conditions under apartheid; in contrast, Palestinians are dependent on Israeli employment due to their own internal corruption and economic failures."

Suggestion to criminalize the analogy in France

French activist Jean-Christophe Rufin, in a report prepared for French Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin, mooted the idea of amending the Gayssot Law, which criminalizes Holocaust denial, to forbid allegations of Israeli apartheid "which might, by contagion, threaten the lives of our fellow Jews:"

Radical anti-Zionism locks the Jews in a terrible trap [...] It would be a great cowardice to leave the Jewish community to struggle alone on these shifting sands. [...] Certainly, there is no question of penalising political opinions that are critical, for example, of any government and are perfectly legitimate. What should be penalised is the perverse and defamatory use of the charge of racism against those very people who were victims of racism to an unparalleled degree. [...] We invite reflection on the advisability and applicability of a law [...] which would permit the punishment of those who make without foundation against groups, institutions, or states accusations of racism and utilise for these accusations unjustified comparisons with apartheid or Nazism.

See also

• Academic boycotts of Israel
• Hafrada (Separation)
• Anti-Zionism
• Israeli West Bank barrier
• South Africa under apartheid
• Israeli Apartheid Week
• Apartheid wall

External links

Endorse the Analogy

• Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid
• Israeli Apartheid Week site
• Exposing Israeli Apartheid site
• Socialist Worker site on Israeli Apartheid
• "Stop the Wall" anti-apartheid campaign site
• Campaign to End Israeli Apartheid
• Palestine History: The Apartheid Wall
• Zionism Explained

Counter the Analogy

• Zionism on the Web
• Anti-Defamation League: The Apartheid Lie
• CAMERA: The Apartheid Canard
• Myths & Facts: Human Rights in Israel and the Territories
• Israel Apartheid Resource Guide

Further reading

• "No apartheid in the Middle East" The Guardian February 27, 2007
• Adam, Heribert and Kogila Moodley. Seeking Mandela : peacemaking between Israelis and Palestinians. Politics, history, and social change. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2005. ISBN 1592133959; 1592133967.
• Bard, Mitchell. "Myths & Facts Online. Human Rights in Israel and the Territories", American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise.
• Barghouti, Omar. "Israeli Apartheid - Time for the South African Treatment".
• Buruma, Ian. "Do not treat Israel like apartheid South Africa", The Guardian, July 23, 2002.
• Carey Ron et al. The New Intifada: Resisting Israel's Apartheid. Verso, 2001. ISBN 1-85984-377-8
• Carter, Jimmy. Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Simon & Schuster, 2006. ISBN 0-7432-8502-6
• Collins, Frank. "Israel Prepares The Ground for An Apartheid Autonomy in The Territories" in Washington Report on Middle East Affairs October/November 1995, pg. 10 web archive
• Davis, Uri. Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within. Zed Books, 2004. ISBN 1-84277-339-9
• Dugard, John. Template:PDFlink 59th Session of the General Assembly Third Committee, Item 105, 28 October 2004
• Farsakh, Leila: "Israel an apartheid state?", Le Monde diplomatique, November 2003
• __________. "Independence, Cantons, or Bantustans: Whither the Palestinian State?" in The Middle East Journal, 59:2, April 2005, pp. 230-245
• Falkson, Jock L. "An Apartheid State? Or The Greatest Lie Ever Told?"
• Herman, Edward "Israeli Apartheid And Terrorism" in Zmag, May 1994 Zmag archive
• Giraut F., 2004, “Apartheid et Israël/Palestine, enseignements et contresens d’une analogie”, Cybergéo (Revue Européenne en ligne de Géographie) Points Chauds, 20 p, web version
• Giraut F., 2004, “Apartheid et Israël/Palestine, analogie et contresens”,Outre-Terre 9, pp. 145-154. web version
• Glaser, D. J. "Zionism and Apartheid: a moral comparison" in Ethnic and Racial Studies, 26:3 2003
• Lewan, Kenneth M. Ist Israel Südafrika? Tossens: Dura-Verlag, 1993. ISBN 3926703024.
• Ornan, Uzi. (Hebrew article on Israel and apartheid laws) in Ha'aretz May 17, 1991
• Pogrund, Benjamin. "Apartheid? Israel is a democracy in which Arabs vote", MidEastWeb.
• Shahak, Israel. "Israeli apartheid and the intifada" in Race & Class, 30:1, 1-12 (1988)
• Siegel, Jennifer. "Carter Book Slaps Israel With ‘Apartheid’ Tag, Provides Ammo to GOP", The Forward, October 17, 2006.
• Shimoni, Gideon. "Deconstructing Apartheid Accusations Against Israel", Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, September 2, 2007.
• Tutu, Desmond & Urbina Ian. Against Israeli apartheid.
• Yiftachel, O. "From Fragile ‘Peace’ to Creeping Apartheid: Notes on the Recent Politics of Israel/Palestine" Arena Journal (New Series) 16(1), 13-25, 2001 [6]
• Yiftachel, O. “Between Apartheid and Peace: Can Israel Learn from International Experience?”, Tikkun Magazine, Jan/Feb 2001, [7]

• Template:PDFlink, United Nations, January 2006.
• This Road is for Jews Only. Yes, There is Apartheid in Israel. By SHULAMIT ALONI
• "Labor MK Raleb Majadele to be appointed first Arab minister" By Yoav Stern, Haaretz
• Muslims in Europe - Discrimination
• An Old Story: Anti-Semitism, past and present by Jack Schwartz, NRO December 4 2001
• Israeli Apartheid Week 2008
• Is Israel an Apartheid State ?
• Israel Is Not An Apartheid State
• It's Not Apartheid
• Cheerleading genocide
• 'This is like apartheid': ANC veterans visit West Bank
• The "Israel Apartheid Week" libel (Jerusalem Post editoral)
• David Hoffman, "Zionism is not a 'settler-colonial undertaking'