Israel As an Apartheid State

Israel is widely regarded as ‘an apartheid state’. Similarities with South Africa before 1994 abound: common roots in settler colonialism, racial segregation, brutal repression, and so forth. If anything, conditions in Palestine are worse. Its separation wall and tiny enclaves of Palestinian administration on the West Bank are more suffocating, and nothing came close to the genocide in Gaza.

It was reasonable to assume that the label of ‘apartheid state’ would mobilise solidarity for Palestine. The 1973 UN convention proclaiming apartheid to be a crime against humanity, also included ‘similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination’ found elsewhere. In 1997, Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first democratic president, declared ‘our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians,’ and, in similar vein, when South Africa charged Israel of genocide at the International Court of Justice, it claimed a ‘moral responsibility to always stand with the oppressed.’

While similarities have chimed with many, as with any good comparison there are limitations, and it is well we are aware of these. South Africa was also highly industrialised with a powerful black working class, and by the time apartheid came to an end it was no longer central to the West’s global domination or even white economic privilege. The presentation poses the question: how can a more nuanced understanding of apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa contribute in taking us beyond the morality of fine words to the deeds of isolation, boycott, divestment and sanctions?