Is Israel on the path to becoming an apartheid state, or is it already one?
The discussions on this topic have been contentious since President Carter published his book Palestine: Peace not Apartheid in 2006.
However, the time for pretense is now over. A recent survey of the Jewish public in Israel shows a majority support for apartheid policies.
Remember Richard Goldstone of the Goldstone Report fame? Goldstone was vilified by pro-Israeli groups after heading the investigation into Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli incursion into Gaza in December 2008/January 2009. He is a former justice of the South African Constitutional Court.
Goldstone was vilified by pro-Israel groups as a “self-hating Jew” and his report was likened to a blood libel, a false charge against Jews with roots in medieval antisemitism. Nevertheless, the report galvanised Israel to start investigations into the charges that were made against its military operation, which are still ongoing.
Goldstone was boycotted by Jewish communities around the world and was not allowed to attend the bar mitzvah of his grandson in South Africa.
Yet, he has continuously defended Israel from accusations of apartheid, as evidenced in this New York Times Op-Ed from a year ago.
[…]In Israel, there is no apartheid. Nothing there comes close to the definition of apartheid under the 1998 Rome Statute: “Inhumane acts … committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.” Israeli Arabs — 20 percent of Israel’s population — vote, have political parties and representatives in the Knesset and occupy positions of acclaim, including on its Supreme Court. Arab patients lie alongside Jewish patients in Israeli hospitals, receiving identical treatment.
[…]
But Goldstone’s rose colored view of the situation in Israel finds little support in the Israeli public.
Today, Haaretz published an article based on a survey conducted by Dialog conducted on the eve of Rosh Hashanah. It reveals that a majority of Israeli Jews support anti-Arab, ultra-nationalist views.
Survey: Most Israeli Jews would support apartheid regime in Israel
Most of the Jewish public in Israel supports the establishment of an apartheid regime in Israel if it formally annexes the West Bank.
A majority also explicitly favors discrimination against the state’s Arab citizens, a survey shows.
The survey, conducted by Dialog on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, exposes anti-Arab, ultra-nationalist views espoused by a majority of Israeli Jews. The survey was commissioned by the New Israel Fund’s Yisraela Goldblum Fund and is based on a sample of 503 interviewees.
The questions were written by a group of academia-based peace and civil rights activists. Dialog is headed by Tel Aviv University Prof. Camil Fuchs.
The article speaks for itself and I hope you find the time to review it.
The below graphic should give you a quick overview of what to expect.
I am increasingly left with a feeling of “this is like Serbia” in the mid- and late 1990s. Isolation and condemnation from most of the free world. A large part of the population in denial over the impact of actual and proposed policies.
And the attitudes reflected fit like hand in glove to the brief diary I posted a week ago: Take it All Away from Them