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Israel Isn't an "Apartheid State" - and I Should Know

(Spectator-UK) Prof. Raymond Wacks - While Israel's critics say it is an apartheid state, as someone born and bred in apartheid South Africa, I may be able to shed some light on the deficiencies of this increasingly pervasive analogy. The reckless invective that labels Israel an "apartheid state" is a grotesque injustice - and an affront to those who suffered the long years of discrimination and persecution in South Africa. Apartheid in South Africa was not merely racial segregation. It was an elaborate project enforced by an authoritarian regime that relied on an unaccountable security force with sweeping powers, a mostly supportive legislature, and a generally pliant judiciary. South Africa's legal system under apartheid disenfranchised every "non-white" person, and the law discriminated against them in almost every facet of social and economic life. There is little substance to the comparison of Israel and South Africa. Where is the "institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination" by one race over another, as specified in the Rome Statute? Israeli Arabs are enfranchised, are elected to the Knesset, and serve in the judiciary. They have the freedom to attend any hospital, school, or university. They are not denied access to beaches, cinemas, theaters, libraries, or sporting facilities. Even Richard Goldstone, the former South African judge who headed the censorious inquiry into Israel's 2009 operation in Gaza, conceded that in Israel "there is no apartheid. Nothing there comes close to the definition of apartheid under the 1998 Rome Statute." The writer, emeritus Professor of Law and Legal Theory at the University of Hong Kong, was previously Head of the Department of Public Law at the University of Natal in Durban, South Africa.
2025-01-28 00:00:00
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