By ZACHARY GITTRICH
The United Nations’ definition of Apartheid: any inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group over any other racial group and systematically oppressing them.
We are often told when someone tells us something about themselves, we should believe them; we should believe how they self-identify. Let’s look at statements by top Israeli officials about how Israel self-identifies.
“Israel … better rid itself of the territories and their Arab population as soon as possible. If it did not, Israel would soon become an apartheid state.” — former Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion (1967).
“I don’t think it’s possible to contain over the long term, if we don’t want to get to apartheid, a million and a half [more] Arabs inside a Jewish state.” — former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (1976)
“We established an apartheid regime in the occupied territories immediately following their capture. That oppressive regime exists to this day.” — Attorney General of Israel, Michael Ben-Yair (2002)
“What acts like apartheid, is run like apartheid and harasses like apartheid, is not a duck — it is apartheid.” — former Israeli Environment Minister Yossi Sarid (2008).
“The state of Israel practices its own, quite violent, form of apartheid with the native Palestinian population.” — former Israeli Education Minister Shulamit Aloni (2006).
“The Supreme Court could have taken a braver decision and not relegated us to the level of an apartheid state.” — Zehava Galon, former chair of the Meretz party (2006).
“If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state.” — former Prime Minister Ehud Barak (2010)
“If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights, then, as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished.” — former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (2010)
“In the situation that exists today, until a Palestinian state is created, we are actually one state. This joint state … is an apartheid state.” — former Israeli Ambassador to South Africa Alon Liel (2013).
“On the Palestinian matter, [Benjamin Netanyahu’s] policies are leading to either a binational state or an apartheid state.” — Meir Dagan, a former head of the Mossad spy agency (2015).
“The product of Zionism, the State of Israel, is not a Jewish and democratic state but instead has become an apartheid state, plain and simple.” — Amos Schocken, publisher of the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz (2021)
“The time has come to call a spade a spade: An apartheid regime is the name given in international law by the international community to a regime of the type that Israel is maintaining in the occupied territories.” — Yehudit Karp, former Israeli deputy attorney general (2021)
“The increasingly weighty body of scholarly, legal and public opinion that has designated Israel to be perpetuating apartheid … must be a wakeup call.” — Daniel Levy, former Israeli negotiator (2022)
“There is an apartheid state here … In a territory where two people are judged under two legal systems, that is an apartheid state.” — Tamir Pardo, former head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency (2011-2016) (2023)
“Accusing Israel of apartheid is not anti-Semitic. It describes reality.” — Amos Goldberg, leading professor of the Holocaust at Hebrew University in Jerusalem (2023)
Israel’s 2018 Nation-State Law states, “The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people … The state views the development of Jewish settlements as a national value and will act to encourage and promote its establishment and consolidation.”
“Israel is not a nation of all its citizens. According to the nation-state law we passed, Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people — and not anyone else.” — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (2019)
Others within Israel who self-identify Israel as an apartheid state against non-Jews include: B’Tselem; Yesh Din; Physicians for Human Rights Israel; Adalah — The Legal Centre for Minority Rights in Israel; and HaMoked — Center for the Defense of the Individual.
In our epistemological age of affirming the lived-experience of individuals, of listening and supporting how people self-identify, it follows that we must listen and affirm Israel’s truth, i.e., how Israel self-identifies. Israel, by its own leaders’ words, self-identifies as an apartheid state.
— Zachary Gittrich is a writer from Peoria