FEBRUARY 10 • 2022 | 5

opinion

The Apartheid Libel
I

t was so absurd, I thought 
it might have been a 
prank. When Amnesty 
International released a report 
singling out Israel as an apart-
heid state on 
Rosh Chodesh 
Adar — the head 
of the month cel-
ebrating Purim 
— I had to check 
if I was reading 
The Onion or 
some other satir-
ical news outlet. 
Tragically, the untruthful 
report was real. Not surpris-
ingly, the irony was lost on 
Amnesty International that 
their report targeting the Jewish 
State had been released just 
as the Jewish community was 
turning its attention to our holi-
day marking the singling out of 
the Jewish community for defa-
mation and persecution.
The charge that Israel is 
the South Africa of the 21st 
century, and is somehow an 
apartheid state, has been one of 
the most effective arguments 
from the anti-Israel camp. 
This report from Amnesty 
International may be the most 
blatant and dishonest example 
yet, but it did not appear in 
a vacuum. From the former 
head of the Black Lives Matter 
movement to the Labour Party 
in England to countless col-
lege student unions, a frightful 
number of mainstream groups 
have amplified this lie. 
Alarmingly, even our rab-
binic seminaries are jumping 
on the bandwagon, with a 
recent letter signed by nearly a 
hundred students claiming that 
support for Israel was “enabling 
apartheid.
” Many younger 

Americans have now heard this 
ugly distortion so many times 
that they take it as truth. A clear 
and vocal response is needed 
from any supporter of Israel 
who comes across the charge 
that Israel is an apartheid 
regime.

COUNTERARGUMENTS 
AGAINST THE ‘APARTHEID’ 
LIBEL
First, the obvious: Apartheid 
was a government policy of 
segregation and discrimination 
against the nonwhite majority 
in South Africa. Israel’s approx-
imately 1.9 million non-Jewish 
Arab citizens have every civil 
right that Israel’s Jewish citizens 
enjoy. Non-Jewish Arab Israelis 
serve in parliament, work in 
every profession, can own a 
home anywhere in Israel, vote 
in every election, and even 
have an Islamist party in the 
current ruling coalition. So, the 
comparison to apartheid South 
Africa is a lie on its face and to 
its core. 
To highlight the fatuousness 
of the charge, the majority of 
Israeli Jews are, in fact, people 
of color. Only 44% of Israeli 
Jews are Ashkenazi. Many of us 
take issue with the stripping of 
Jews of our minority status in 
America and painting us as part 
of a system of white privilege. 
But extending that thinking 
to Israel — not even a white 
majority country — moves 
from the questionable to the 
surreal. 
Some will ask: But what 
about the nearly 2 million 
Arabs living in the Gaza Strip as 
well as the just over 2 million in 
the other disputed areas? When 
Israeli Jews in West Bank villag-

es, who are essentially governed 
by Israeli law and can vote in 
Israel’s elections, are living next 
to Palestinian towns that have 
no access to Israeli courts and 
no voting rights, isn’t that a 
form of apartheid? 
Certainly not. Although that 
is the key argument voiced on 
campuses and think tanks, no 
country is obligated to extend 
citizenship to residents of a dis-
puted territory — and undoubt-
edly not in the case where the 
local population has been mili-
tarily hostile. 
Gaza is no longer under any 
kind of Israeli jurisdiction. It is 
free to hold its own elections 
and has zero Jewish residents 
since Israel itself withdrew in 
2005. The West Bank has its 
own elected authority as well, 
who are free to hold future 
elections if their constituents 
truly insist. Furthermore, Israel 
is far from alone in maintaining 
an ambiguous arrangement 
around a disputed territory. The 
world is full of populations and 
regions kept in irregular status-
es that raise no objection from 
those crying foul in the case of 
Palestinian territories.

EXAMPLES TO CONSIDER
Take, for instance, our own 
country. Our many undocu-
mented residents are a hot-but-
ton issue, but I have yet to 
hear anyone label America an 
apartheid state. An estimated 10 
million undocumented immi-
grants, mainly people of color, 
live and work in our land with 
no voting rights, limited access 
to government services and a 
precarious legal status. That is 
more than the entire population 
of Israel living in our country 

under decades of discrimina-
tion. Yet anti-Israel actors across 
the country will call for an end 
to “apartheid Israel” while eat-
ing food picked and processed 
by, living in homes built by or 
vacationing at a destination 
staffed by fellow residents of 
our country who live under a 
different legal system.
For an example of a country 
maintaining sovereignty over 
land without formal inclusion, 
we also need not look outside 
our own American borders. 
Puerto Rico, for instance, is 
an unincorporated territory of 
the U.S. It lacks the status of 
either a sovereign country or a 
state. Puerto Ricans cannot vote 
for the U.S. president or elect 
senators or representatives to 
congress. Yet they pay taxes and 
are a territory belonging to the 
United States. If we are willing 
to turn a blind eye to more than 
3 million peaceful and loyal 
Americans who have lacked 
voting rights since America 
captured Puerto Rico in 1898, it 
seems farcical for us to libel the 
Jewish state for how it is man-
aging its own territorial issues 
with a Palestinian population 
that has been continually hos-
tile since the founding of Israel. 
What makes this ugly charge 
even more Orwellian is that 
the Middle East does in fact 
have an apartheid problem — 
just not the manufactured one 
Amnesty International is falsely 
promoting. Many Arab states 
across the region had robust 
Jewish populations dating back 
centuries or even millennia. 
After Israel was established in 
1948, Arab countries pushed 
their Jewish communities out 
through a combination of 

Cantor 
Michael 
Smolash

continued on page 7

