🤥 There is no apartheid in Israel.

Apartheid is an Afrikaans word that refers to a system based on discrimination and segregation. In the case of Israel today, there are different sets of laws and rights for Israeli Jews on the one hand and for Palestinians on the other. This system is enforced by Israeli bureaucracy and by force. 

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem (Israel) disagree. Amnesty concludes that “Israel enforces a system of oppression and domination against Palestinians…in order to benefit Jewish Israelis. This amounts to apartheid as prohibited under international law.”

Many South Africans who were subjected to and resisted apartheid have for decades insisted that Israel’s system of “oppression and domination” is identical to South African apartheid if not worse. Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter offers a similar conclusion in his book Palestine: Peace not Apartheid.

In a 2007 interview, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter said the use of the word apartheid to describe Israeli policies towards Palestinians is accurate on two levels, in that there are two sets of laws that govern two sets of people, and one side (the Israeli) has complete domination over the life of the other. For example, he shared how Palestinians cannot use the same roads built for Israelis in Palestinian territory.