Is Israel an apartheid state?

I grew up in South Africa during the apartheid years, born to parents who had survived the Nazis. Thus, I heard firsthand what they experienced, which shaped my sensitivity to social justice and support for civil disobedience against that regime.

In 1948, the South African government, under Prime Minister Daniel Francois “D.F.” Malan, introduced apartheid laws, many of which were based on the 1935 Nazi Nuremberg Laws, building on the race-based discriminatory laws that had existed for a century under British rule.

Thus, in 1949, the Mixed Marriages Act forbade marriages between whites and nonwhites, while the Immorality Act of 1950 criminalized sexual relations between whites and other races. In the same year, the Suppression of Communism Act effectively silenced those who opposed the regime’s racial policies. The Group Areas Act (1950) made residential separation compulsory, which forced nonwhites into ghettoes. The Separate Amenities Act (1953) enforced separate public premises, vehicles and services along racial lines. The Population Registration Act (1950) had already classified every citizen into his or her racial group as determined by the government. Blacks were required to always carry with them their passbooks, which included a photo, fingerprints and other information. Being caught without the passbook resulted in immediate arrest. I remember talking to a Black woman, who then went to buy cigarettes across the street. Leaving her passbook in her handbag on a table, she was immediately arrested by passing police and jailed for two weeks.

 In 1953, Minister of Native Affairs Hendrik Verwoerd, who became prime minister in 1958, introduced the Bantu (Black) Education Act, which legalized inferior ad hoc education for Black people. Verwoerd wrote, “There is no place for the Bantu in the European community above the level of certain forms of labour … ” 

Apartheid laws also extended to the Dutch Reformed Church, known as “the (apartheid) government at prayer.” Black employees were often barred from attending the funeral services of their white employers, in addition to regular Sunday services at white churches.

These apartheid laws were by no means exhaustive. Their purpose was to isolate and depersonalize South Africans of color, just as Germany had done to its Jews.

Israel has nothing that remotely resembles the apartheid laws. On the contrary, Israel has attempted to level the playing field by introducing affirmative-action programs that represent the diversity of Israeli society. While not perfect, these programs are class-based rather than race-based, so as to include as many disadvantaged citizens as possible regardless of ethnic background. The result is that many Arab Israelis have benefited, together with Jewish Israelis from poor non-European backgrounds. By contrast, South Africa emphasized and exploited racial distinctions among its own citizens in order to promote discrimination and impoverishment, thereby ensuring the regime’s own racial hegemony.

In apartheid South Africa, Blacks were mostly barred from the professions and kept as unskilled “labor units,” as Verwoerd outlined. By contrast, in Israel, where Arabs comprise 20 percent of the population, 35 percent of Israeli pharmacists are Arabs. The director of emergency medicine at Jerusalem’s famous Hadassah Medical Center is Dr. Aziz Darawshe, an Arab Israeli whose mother was illiterate and whose father had four years of schooling. His siblings include physicians, a dentist, an engineer and five sisters also attended college.

In 2013, a female Israeli Muslim, Mais Ali-Saleh, graduated as valedictorian from Israel’s top medical school, the Technion. Recently, Education Minister Naftali Bennett congratulated Mohammed Zeidan on being Israel’s top high school graduate (he posted the highest score on a standardized test). He will join his sister at the Technion. By contrast, Black South African students were generally not permitted on campus except as janitors.

In South Africa, the police and military played a key role in supporting apartheid — often violently. In Israel, Arabic-speaking Israelis such as Brig.  Gen. Imad Fares and Col. Ghassan Elian, commander of the elite Golani Brigade, have risen to positions that were unthinkable for Blacks or Indians in South Africa. Recently, Arab-Israeli Jamal Hakrush was appointed deputy police commissioner.

Although life-saving measures such as the security barrier and checks on Arabs are in place to save lives from terror attacks, these do not apply to Arab Israelis but to those who are not Israeli citizens outside the cease-fire lines. By contrast, the South African apartheid regime discriminated against its Black citizens. An American or German tourist could attend a theater or stroll on the beach — activities denied to Black South African citizens.

Recently, Israeli-Arab Ta’alin Abu Hanna won the Miss Trans Israel pageant. She remarked that had she been in an Arab country, she probably would have been murdered. In apartheid South Africa, a person of color could not even enter an art or music competition, let alone a beauty pageant.

Bishop Desmond Tutu and those organizations that promote events such as Israel Apartheid Week are not only misleading, they insult the memory of apartheid’s victims just as Holocaust distorters/deniers do. Unfortunately, they have also profoundly embarrassed genuine liberals by misrepresenting and distorting the truth through misguided political correctness and devious populism.

Ron Jontof-Hutter is senior research fellow at the Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism. He is also the author of a satire on populist anti-Semitism titled “The Trombone Man: Tales of a Misogynist.”