H eadlines
Apartheid Continued from Page 1
Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, denied the charge
and cast aspersions on HRW
itself, telling The New York
Times that, “The mendacious
apartheid slur is indicative of
an organization that has been
plagued for years by systemic
anti-Israel bias.”
Apartheid, and whether it
is an accurate description of
the Israeli government’s policy
toward Palestinians living
under its control, is a frequent
topic of correspondence from
Jewish Exponent readers. And
for good reason: It is a grave
charge, freighted with history
and sometimes complicated
by countercharges of antisem-
itism toward those who would
make it.

During the recent fighting
between the Israel Defense
Forces and Hamas, as well as
the skirmishes between civil-
ians over the evictions in
Sheikh Jarrah, the charge of
apartheid was made loudly
once more and countered
with the same volume. But in
notes from our readers arguing
either side, it became clear that
few appear to have an accurate
idea of what actually consti-
tutes apartheid.

So what it is apartheid? How
is it defined legally? When
did critics of Israel begin to
describe their actions as apart-
heid, and why? Which actions
by the Israeli government are
critics referring to today when
they use the term apartheid?
And what do the people who
deny the charge present as the
exculpatory evidence?
Prior to the development
of a legal definition, apartheid
was a policy of segregation
and resource distribution in
South Africa. It was intended
to ensure white South Africans
could dominate a country in
which they were a minority.

The term “apartheid” was
developed by Afrikaner clergy
as “a moral project to preserve,
protect and uplift the Afrikaner
nation,” said David Gordon, a
professor of history at Bowdoin
College. The Afrikaners were white
South Africans, typically of
Dutch descent. Apartheid “was
vaguely defined by a polit-
ical party commission prior
to the election in 1948, when
the Nationalist Party, headed
by one of these clergy, came
to power using ‘apartheid’ as
an election slogan,” Gordon
added. What it would come to
mean in reality took more time
to work out.

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Apartheid, instituted in
1948, inaugurated a system
of segregation that deprived
many Black South Africans of
citizenship, barred them from
marrying white South Africans
and gave the state power to
evict millions of them from
their homes. Other non-Af-
rikaner racial groups were
discriminated against, as well.

A system of racial classi-
fication helped the state to
keep non-Afrikaners from
using the same public facil-
ities or attending the same
social events as their Afrikaner
countrymen. It restricted job
opportunities, housing, educa-
tion and movement within the
country. Internal repression of
dissidents could be brutal. And
though the system was eventu-
ally dismantled, the legacy of
apartheid remains.

Apartheid, according to
Ian Lustick, a professor at the
University of Pennsylvania,
was given a legal definition
outside the bounds of South
Africa in 1973. The UN
General Assembly promul-
gated “The International
Convention on the Suppression
and Punishment of the Crime
of Apartheid,” which defined
apartheid as “inhuman acts
committed for the purpose of
establishing and maintaining
domination by one racial group
of persons over any other racial
group of persons and systemat-
ically oppressing them.”
Those “inhuman acts”
included actions like “legis-
lative measures and other
measures calculated to prevent
a racial group or groups from
participation in the political,
social, economic and cultural
life of the country,” as well
as internal suppression of
dissidents, ghettoization and
land expropriation. This was
intended, in part, to define
apartheid as not only a crime
against its victims, but against
humanity. In 2002, the International
Criminal Court issued the
“Rome Statute,” defining
“the crime of apartheid” as
JEWISH EXPONENT
An Israeli security checkpoint. Such restrictions on Palestinian freedom
of movement are central to the charge of apartheid made by some against
Israel. 
Photo by James Emery via Flickr (licensed under CC BY 2.0)
“inhumane acts ... committed
in the context of an institu-
tionalized 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.”
So what does this have to do
with Israel?
According to Asaf
R o m i r o w s k y, e x e c u t i v e
director of Scholars for Peace in
the Middle East and a fellow at
the Philadelphia-based Middle
East Forum, applying the term
“apartheid” to Israeli policy
toward Palestinians “speaks to
the lack of understanding and
the lack of education, or under-
standing, of what is actually
happening on the ground in
Israel.” The push to charge
Israel with apartheid, he said,
has its roots in Palestinian
Liberation Organization
propaganda campaigns in the
early 1970s, and has become
the bedrock accusation of
the boycott, divestment and
sanctions movement.

“If you fast forward from
that understanding into the
use of media, and then the use
of social media, and the rapid-
ness of what happened now
in Gaza, it is no surprise that
every group out there, Jewish
and non-Jewish, are accusing
Israel of ethnic cleansing and
apartheid,” Romirowsky said.

He believes that the inclu-
sion of Ra’am, an Islamist party,
in the new Israeli government,
“factually debunks apartheid
altogether.” Romirowsky’s
position, that Israel is not
committing the crime of apart-
heid, is shared by Israel and the
U.S. State Department.

Lustick did not take the
same view.

For a time after the 1967
war, most of the world, he said,
accepted that Israel ruled over
Palestinians in the West Bank
and Gaza Strip in a manner
consistent with international
law. “But with the extensive
processes of land expropria-
tion and settlement,” Lustick
said, “including the transfer of
almost one-tenth of all Israeli
Jews across the Green Line,
and with declarations by Israeli
leaders that Israel will never
withdraw and never allow
Palestinian independence, the
control of those areas, and of
their populations (who have no
political rights in Israel) have
increasingly and legitimately
been understood as a consol-
idating regime of systematic
discrimination against
Palestinian Arabs in favor of
Jewish Israelis.”
In Lustick’s view, and that
of some independent NGOs
and think tanks in Israel and
abroad, the actions of the
Israeli government constitute
the crime of apartheid. l
jbernstein@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0740
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