Why Israel is not an apartheid state, despite what you are hearing

South African-Israeli SAMUEL HYDE argues comparing Israel to South Africa’s former regime is inaccurate and unhelpful to the democracy movement.

The situation in Israel underscores a significant crisis. There is a surge in extra-judicial violence coupled with an unprecedented expansion of settlement construction. Israeli lawmakers have been firing a seemingly endless litany of populist rhetoric at anyone who is not them, does not think like them, or does not look like them.

However, it is equally true that Israel cannot be described as a  totalitarian regime of the kind that South Africa used to be.

Perhaps Benjamin Pogrund's article, I have long rejected claims that Israel is an apartheid state.  I no longer can, would have better served its readers if written as a pre-emptive caution against the trajectory he believes Israel to be on.

Pogrund attempts to delineate a distinct "Israeli apartheid" that diverges from the South African archetype. Engaging with such labels is not merely perilous for Israel, as Pogrund is undoubtedly aware, but it also imperils the entirety of the democracy movement.

This approach is unlikely to yield significant benefits in terms of addressing the  needs at hand. What is required is voices capable of shaping and defining the opposition's political program, steering us away from the current course.

It is widely recognised that the apartheid analogy serves less as a realm of analytical inquiry and more as a rhetorical tool.  Since the Durban conference of 2001, this analogy has been used by activists of the BDS movement, along with their sympathetic allies.

Their intent is to utilise this analogy as a framework that justifies isolating and ultimately dismantling the State of Israel, drawing parallels to how international pressure significantly contributed to the  downfall of South Africa's white minority regime.

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Why Israel is not an apartheid state, despite what you are hearing (Haaretz)  

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