Israeli apartheid.If it looks like a duck, walks and talks like a duck, it is a duck

Feb 14, 2022

While hard-line Israeli lobbyists defend their beloved colonial regime and continue their denial that Israel is an apartheid state, Israeli politicians, Knesset members, writers, journalists… are admitting that Israel is an apartheid state.

Mainstream Israeli newspapers, such as Haaretz, in their editorials and articles point to that fact and criticise Israel’s racial discrimination laws and practice against the Palestinians.

Yossi Sarid, a former Israeli cabinet minister, ex-leader of the opposition, and member of the Knesset for 32 years, said “What acts like apartheid, is run like apartheid and harasses like apartheid, is not a duck – it is apartheid.”

Israel’s leading human rights group, B’Tselem, published a ground-breaking report last year that described “a regime of Jewish supremacy” over Palestinians that amounted to apartheid. And Yesh Din, gave a legal opinion that “the crime against humanity of apartheid is being committed in the West Bank”.

Sitting in their comfortable chairs with lucrative salaries, in Melbourne, Sydney, London and New York, Israeli lobbyists will continue doing their propaganda job; beautifying Israel’s ugly face, defending their beloved colonial regime’s crimes against humanity to the last Israeli and Palestinian.

It is time decent members of in the Jewish community break their silence and appeasement, hold Israel to account for its systematic violations and join with other Jews, Israelis and the rest of the world and say NO to Israeli colonialism and apartheid. They should not accept the crimes, discrimination, and violations being practiced by Israel in the name of the Jewish people, against the Palestinians.

In addition to the Israeli, Palestinian and international reports that prove the Israeli regime’s practice of apartheid, I, and the five million Palestinians who were ethnically cleansed by Zionist gangs, and refused our right to return to our homeland just because we are not Jews at a time when it receives any Jew from anywhere and grants him citizenship upon arrival, are living examples of Israeli apartheid.

Palestinians deserve to return to their homeland, to be free and equal in their own country, without which there will never be peace and security. Seventy-four years of the Nakba, continuous conflict and bloodshed is enough.

Israelis and Jews admit the fact that Israel is an apartheid regime, here are some examples of what they say. If all this does not convince some, nothing will.

  • “When a discussion of whether Israel is an apartheid state arises, and its propagandists claim that it isn’t, they cite as proof the absence of any racist laws in the country’s lawbooks. The law that will most likely be reaffirmed this week, for the 18th consecutive time, is definitive proof of the fact that not only are there apartheid practices in this country, there are apartheid laws here as well. “It’s best not to avoid the truth: Its existence in the lawbooks makes Israel an apartheid state,” wrote Haaretz publisher Amos Schocken in 2008. Thirteen years have passed, and this statement is truer than ever.”

Gideon Levy, “Israeli Apartheid? Look No Further Than This Racist Law”, Haaretz, 20.6.2021.

  • “We do not have to identify the characteristics of South African apartheid in the civil rights discrimination in Israel in order to call Israel an apartheid state. It is best that we not try to evade the truth: The Citizenship Law’s existence turns Israel into an apartheid state.”

Amos Schocken, Haaretz publisher, “Citizenship Law Makes Israel an Apartheid State”, Haaretz, 27.6.2008.

  • “I was horrified. My heart beat fast as tears rolled down my face. As a child growing up in apartheid South Africa, I was intimately familiar with separate beaches, buses, cabs, entrances to post offices and public benches with ‘whites only’ signs. But even in Apartheid South Africa, there were no ‘sterile streets’ that only white people could walk on.”

Rabbi Brian Walt, ‘Increasingly, Jewish Critics of Israeli Policies Are Using The Term “Apartheid”’, Washington Report on the Middle East, May 2021, pp. 13-15.

  • “Zionism in Israel today means only one thing: racism!”

Avraham Burg, former chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, Speaker of the Knesset, and Interim President of Israel, “Yossi Beilin, There’s No Such Thing as a Jewish State”, Haaretz, 15.3.2020.

  • “Israel practices a distinct and even violent form of apartheid against the native Palestinian population in the West Bank.”

Shulamit Aloni, former Education Minister and Israel Prize laureate, “Indeed, apartheid in Israel”, Ynet, 31.12.2006. also quoted in Haaretz, “Israeli Leaders Talk About Israel and Apartheid. So Why Can’t We?”, 8.3.2016.

  • “It is well past time for ethical Jews to accept the inherent racist and anti-Jewish nature of Zionism, which has manipulated the Jewish religion to morally justify seventy years of settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing and apartheid of indigenous Palestinians.

With its new ‘The Nation State of the Jewish people law’, Israel seeks to completely merge Zionism with Judaism … if Jews as Jews are to maintain any moral legitimacy and participate in the fight against the global surge of neo-fascism, they must confront and categorically reject in large and increasing numbers all forms of Zionism.”

Yoav Litvin, Ethical Jews reject Zionism”, Mondoweiss, 1.8.2018.

  • “As a progressive Jew, I find that many of my family members and friends are still what we call ‘PEP’ — progressive except Palestine. Amid ever-worsening injustices created by the Israeli system of apartheid and Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian lands, it is past time for this to change.”

Marjorie Cohn, “Michelle Alexander Is Right About Israel-Palestine”, Marjorie Cohn, 25.1.2019.

  • ‘South Africa sought to demonize opposition to its racist policies by dubbing anti-apartheid activists as “terrorists” or “Communists.” Israel uses a similar rhetorical tactic by branding its critics and activists as “anti-Semites.”’

Richard Falk, Trump’s ‘deal of the century’ is demand that Palestinians abandon their rights and dreams”, Mondoweiss, 2.8.2018.

  • “[T]he occupation is not temporary, and there is not the political will in the Israeli government to bring about its end…. It is time for the world to recognize that what we saw in South Africa decades ago is happening in the occupied Palestinian territories too. And just as the world joined the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, it is time for the world to take decisive diplomatic action in our case as well and work towards building a future of equality, dignity, and security for Palestinians and Israelis alike.”

Ilan Baruch and Alon Liel, Israeli ambassadors to South Africa, “It’s apartheid, say Israeli ambassadors to South Africa”, GroundUp, 8.6.2021.

  • “Israel today is an apartheid State with four different Palestinian groups: those in Gaza, East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Israeli Palestinians, each of which has a different status.”

Danny Rubinstein, an Israeli journalist, in a speech at a UN conference in Brussels, “Israeli refusers follow South African footsteps in the struggle against apartheid”, Mondoweiss, 21.10.2009.

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