Apartheid debate

Simon KAPWEPWE (standing), Foreign Minister of Zambia, addressing the Seminar on Apartheid, Racial Discrimination and Colonialism. 4/Aug/1967 (UN Photo)

Unlike South Africa, the world is giving Israel a pass on apartheid

A UN Security Council resolution rejecting South Africa’s 1983 constitution shows that there is precedent and necessity to act against Israel’s Nation-State Law. In a referendum on November 2, 1983, White voters in apartheid South Africa approved a new constitution to restructure their political system. In addition to consolidating executive power with the presidency, a tricameral parliament…

By Amjad Iraqi July 26, 2019

A Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem walks into a checkpoint that separates the entirely walled-off neighborhood of Shuafat Refugee Camp, East Jerusalem, December 27, 2011. (Anne Paq/Activestills.org)

The ‘NY Times’ puts apartheid on page one

Netanyahu and the Israeli right’s alternative to the two-state solution appears to be taking shape. There are only so many ways of describing that shape, and the reality to which it leads. Out of the six times that the word apartheid has been used to describe Israel or Israeli policy on page A1 of the…

By Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man January 2, 2018

Border police officers stands in front of Palestinians as they wait to cross from Qalandiya checkpoint outside Ramallah, West Bank, into Jerusalem to attend the Ramadan Friday Prayers in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, July 26, 2013.

Beneath the illusion of a temporary occupation lies apartheid

By claiming that its control over Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza is temporary, despite lasting longer than South African Apartheid by any measure, Israel is able to justify a regime that denies one group political and civil rights while privileging another. By Fady Khoury The so-called temporary nature of Israel’s control over the…

By +972 Magazine December 13, 2017

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Israeli soldiers stand in front of the West Bank settlement of Beitar Illit, which was partially built on expropriated land belonging to the Palestinian village of Wadi Fukin, West Bank, September 26, 2014. (Ahmad al-Bazz/Activestills.org)

The incremental annexation of Palestine

Israel’s justice minister announces a plan to apply Israeli law to parts of the West Bank, or in other words, annexation. By taking an incremental approach, she stands a pretty good chance of succeeding. Success, however, will expose the true nature of Israel’s discriminatory regime. Each time a right-wing Israeli politician introduces a law that…

By Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man May 4, 2016

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem. (State Dept. Photo)

The blame game, then the shame game

Neither Israeli nor Palestinian leaders prepared their constituencies for the eventual historic change should Kerry have been successful. On the contrary, Netanyahu applied every trick up his sleeve to play the blame game, diverting maximum blame onto the Palestinians. By Ilan Baruch In his speech in Jerusalem a year ago, President Obama told us peace in…

By +972 Magazine May 12, 2014

Israeli Border police officers corral Palestinians as they wait to cross from Qalandiya checkpoint outside Ramallah, West Bank, into Jerusalem, July 26, 2013. (Photo: Yotam Ronen/Activestills.org)

On the Israel-apartheid analogy, yet again

The apartheid debate is no longer restricted to referencing specific South African practices. Instead, international law is increasingly becoming the guiding framework. By Ran Greenstein Thomas Mitchell raises an important methodological point in his article “Call it colonialism, call it occupation – just don’t call it ‘apartheid,’” which I address here. Unfortunately, in making this point…

By +972 Magazine May 8, 2014

Palestinians in Bethlehem checkpoint trying to attend the Ramadan Friday prayers in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, August 10, 2012 (Activestills)

Call it colonialism, call it occupation – just don’t call it ‘apartheid’

‘Apartheid’ is rapidly becoming the new political term of condemnation and delegitimization in international politics. But is it truly the best description of Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians? By Thomas Mitchell Is apartheid an appropriate term to describe Israel’s occupation of the West Bank? In an article published on +972 late last year, Ran Greenstein argued…

By +972 Magazine May 5, 2014

A Palestinian child sitting in front of a section of the Separation Wall in the refugee camp of Shuafat, East Jerusalem, December 27, 2011. (Photo: Anne Paq/Activestills.org)

The occupation doesn’t have an ‘image problem’

In a January 2014 New York Times op-ed that I somehow just noticed now, a South Africa-born Jew insists that Israel is not an apartheid state. Hirsh Goodman, a journalist and political commentator who immigrated to Israel in 1965, agrees that the occupation must end. Not because it’s evil to deprive a whole nation of…

By Lisa Goldman May 3, 2014

Oded Shoshani, pastor of the Hebrew congregation of King of Kings in Jerusalem, listens as Moss Ntha, General Secretary of the Evangelical Alliance in South Africa, speaks at the Christ at the Checkpoint conference in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, March 13, 2014. (photo: Ryan Rodrick Beiler/Activestills.org)

Who can say if it’s ‘apartheid’ or not?

Why does most coverage discussing Israel and the ‘A-word’ exclude the voices of black South Africans? Text and photo by: Ryan Rodrick Beiler/Activestills.org Noticeably absent from most coverage of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s use of the term “apartheid” are the voices most qualified to make the comparison. The Daily Beast article that broke…

By Activestills May 1, 2014

File photo of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, with State Department Spokesperson Jen Psaki in the background, conducting a press conference, February 18, 2014.(Photo: State Dept.)

State Department stumbles: If not apartheid, then what?

Asked what word Secretary Kerry would have used in place of ‘apartheid,’ his use of which stirred up a small storm in the U.S. this week, the State Department is hard pressed to give an answer. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and the State Department on Tuesday were scrambling to diffuse the storm that…

By Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man April 30, 2014

.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrives at NATO Headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, for ministerial meetings on April 1, 2014. (State Department photo)

Kerry apologizes for speculating that theoretically, in the distant future, Israel could do something bad

It took Secretary of State John Kerry exactly 24 hours after his “apartheid” comments were revealed by The Daily Beast to issue a comprehensive apology for the remarks. Despite demands from the American right, Kerry did not resign. The New York Times reports: In the statement that Mr. Kerry issued Monday, which bore the title “On…

By Noam Sheizaf April 29, 2014

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (State Dept. photo)

Kerry warns: Israel could become an apartheid state

The apartheid analogy is common among centrist Israeli politicians, but the U.S. administration has been careful not to use it in the past. Also: What makes Kerry think that Israel is not already ‘a unitary state?’ The Daily Beast’s Josh Rogin obtained a recording of a meeting in which Secretary of State John Kerry used the term…

By Noam Sheizaf April 28, 2014

Professor Alan M. Dershowitz. (photo: The Huntington/CC BY 2.0)

Ten reasons why the anti-Apartheid movement is immoral, hinders peace

Alan Dershowitz published an op-ed in Haaretz on Wednesday giving his top 10 reasons why boycotting Israel is immoral. What if he wrote the same article in 1974 about the anti-Apartheid movement? It might look something like this. By Sol Salbe Ten reasons why the anti-Apartheid movement is immoral and hinders peace The anti-South African movement…

By +972 Magazine February 13, 2014