Israel and apartheid - Wikipedia
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Oct 28, 2023
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Israel's policies and actions in its ongoing occupation of the Palestinian territories have drawn accusations that it is committing the crime of apartheid. Leading Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights groups have said that the totality and severity of the human rights violations against the Palestinian population in the occupied territories, and by some in Israel proper, amount to the crime against humanity of apartheid. Israel and some of its Western allies have rejected the accusation, with the former often labeling the charge antisemitic.
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The issue is debated by scholars and lawyers,[12] United Nations investigators,[13] the African National Congress (ANC),[14] human rights groups,[15][16] and many prominent Israeli political and cultural figures.[17][18]
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2022 Amnesty report
Amnesty secretary general Agnes Callamard dismissed the criticism of its report as shooting the messenger.
On 1 February 2022, Amnesty International published a report, Israel's Apartheid Against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime Against Humanity,[87] which stated that Israeli practices in Israel and the occupied territories equate to apartheid and that territorial fragmentation of the Palestinians "serves as a foundational element of the regime of oppression and domination".[88] The report states that, taken together, Israeli practices, including land expropriation, unlawful killings, forced displacement, restrictions on movement, and denial of citizenship rights amount to the crime of apartheid.[89] The report suggested the International Criminal Court include the crime of apartheid as part of its investigations.
Even before its release, Israeli officials condemned the report as "false and biased" and antisemitic,[90][91] accusations that Amnesty secretary general Agnes Callamard dismissed as "baseless attacks, barefaced lies, fabrications on the messenger".[92][93]
The Anti-Defamation League criticized the report, saying, "Amnesty International's allegations that Israel's crimes go back to the sin of its creation in 1948, serve to present the Jewish and democratic state as singularly illegitimate at its foundational roots."[94]
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In its March 2023 annual report, Amnesty condemned "double standards" exhibited by Western countries with respect to Israel and other countries. The report said, "Rather than demand an end to that system of oppression, many Western governments chose instead to attack those denouncing Israel's apartheid system."[110][111][112][113][114]
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Overview of reports
According to author Ran Greenstein, "Two features are shared by all the reports: they agree that apartheid is a relevant, indeed essential, concept for the analysis of Israeli rule, and they focus on legal analysis and political arrangements, paying scant attention to social and historical aspects of the evolution of Israeli, Palestinian, and South African societies."[121]
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According to author Ran Greenstein, "Two features are shared by all the reports: they agree that apartheid is a relevant, indeed essential, concept for the analysis of Israeli rule, and they focus on legal analysis and political arrangements, paying scant attention to social and historical aspects of the evolution of Israeli, Palestinian, and South African societies."[121]
Additional views
Scholarly views
In their 2005 book-length study Seeking Mandela: Peacemaking Between Israelis and Palestinians, Heribert Adam of Simon Fraser University and Kogila Moodley of the University of British Columbia wrote that controversy over use of the term arises because Israel as a state is unique in the region. They write that Israel is perceived as a Western democracy and is thus likely to be judged by the standards of such a state. Israel also claims to be a home for the worldwide Jewish diaspora.[122] Adam and Moodley note that Jewish historical suffering has imbued Zionism with a "subjective sense of moral validity" that the ruling white South Africans never had.[123] 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.[124] Adam and Moodley write, "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."[125]
Manfred Gerstenfeld quoted Gideon Shimoni, professor emeritus of Hebrew University, as saying in a 2007 interview that the analogy is defamatory and reflects a double standard when applied to Israel and not to neighboring Arab countries, whose policies towards their Palestinian minorities have been described as discriminatory.[126] Shimoni said that while apartheid was characterized by racially based legal inequality and exploitation of Black Africans by the dominant Whites within a common society, the Israel–Palestinian conflict reflects "separate nationalisms", as Israel refuses to exploit Palestinians, on the contrary seeking separation and "divorce" from Palestinians for legitimate self-defense reasons.[126][self-published source?]
An August 2021 survey found that 65% of academic experts on the Middle East described Israel as a "one-state reality akin to apartheid". Seven months earlier, that percentage was 59%.[
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On 8 September 2022, the World Council of Churches adopted a statement that included a call for "The WCC to study, discuss and discern the implications of the recent reports by B'tselem, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, and for its governing bodies to respond appropriately." After much debate, the statement also read, "Recently, numerous international, Israeli and Palestinian human rights organizations and legal bodies have published studies and reports describing the policies and actions of Israel as amounting to 'apartheid' under international law. Within this Assembly, some churches and delegates strongly support the utilization of this term as accurately describing the reality of the people in Palestine/Israel and the position under international law, while others find it inappropriate, unhelpful and painful. We are not of one mind on this matter".[196]
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Anglican Archbishop and Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu commented on the similarities between South Africa and Palestine and the importance of international pressure in ending apartheid in South Africa. He drew a parallel between the movement "aiming to end Israeli occupation" and the international pressure that helped end apartheid in South Africa, saying: "If apartheid ended, so can the occupation, but the moral force and international pressure will have to be just as determined."[321] In 2014, Tutu urged the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States to divest from companies that contributed to the occupation,[322] saying that Israel "has created an apartheid reality within its borders and through its occupation", and that the alternative to Israel being "an apartheid state in perpetuity" was to end the occupation through either a one-state solution or a two-state solution.[323]
Howard Friel writes that Tutu "views the conditions in the occupied Palestinian territories as resembling apartheid in South Africa." BBC News reported in 2012 that Tutu "accused Israel of practicing apartheid in its policies towards Palestinians."[324
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