Seeking Truth: Is Israel an “Apartheid State”?
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It’s our hope and expectation that this column, which is designed to thoughtfully address antisemitic and anti-Zionist distortions, will become a regular feature of the JIAAC Newsletter.  This, our first selection, addresses the canard that Israel is an “apartheid state.”

Israel is a democratic nation that struggles with many of the same challenges that accompany ethnic and cultural diversity in other democracies, including legacies of discrimination and unfair allocation of resources. These are problems that a democratic society, with its imperfections, should and will struggle with. However, such problems are not apartheid.

Within its national borders, Israel is a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic nation with a very diverse citizenry that includes Jews, Muslims, Christians, Arabs, and others. Among the Jewish population of Israel, for example, about half have European ancestry and about half have non-European ancestry.  Most of the latter are Mizrahi – Jews from the Middle East, the vast majority of whom (850,000 in total) were summarily and often violently expelled from their homes in the Arab world shortly after Israel declared its independence. The Jewish communities that were displaced by these expulsions had been extant for hundreds of years, some for over a thousand years.

Non-Jews make up about one-quarter of the population of Israel; of these, about 80% are Arabs and the rest non-Arabs. Most Arabs living in Israel are Israeli citizens, with the same legal and civil rights as Jewish Israelis, with only minor exceptions.  Arab citizens of Israel are not subject to required military service (though they may volunteer for the military, as many in the Druze and Bedouin communities do). In addition, the Law of Return does not apply to non-Jews, though it does apply to non-Jewish relatives of Jews. When considering the Law of Return, it is important to understand it in the context of Jewish history, including Jewish history just prior to and shortly after Israel’s founding in 1948.

In the years leading up to the Second World War, millions of Jewish people in Europe were unable to find refuge anywhere in the world, even in the face of (literally) murderous persecution by the Nazi regime; and, after the war, many displaced Jews were prevented from returning to their homes and communities or denied emigration to other countries. These unique circumstances, as well as centuries of prior persecution, displacement and exile, fairly demanded that Israel become a place of asylum for the Jewish people of the world.  Moreover, it is important to note that Israel is not the only nation with a law favoring preferential entry to those with national, ethnic or religious ties. China and several European nations have such laws, as do several other states in the Middle East. Jordan, for example, has its own law of return that explicitly denies citizenship to any Jew, even those with an ancestral tie to Jordan, while Saudi Arabia allows return based on explicitly religious criteria.

Arab citizens of Israel have full voting rights, and there are several Arab-based political parties in Israel. The Israeli Arab community is represented by these parties in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. Israeli Arabs have also served at various levels of the nation’s court system, including the Supreme Court, and in Israel’s diplomatic service, and as local elected officials, such as mayors. Nevertheless, despite their considerable civil and political equality, Israeli Arabs do tend to have a higher rate of poverty and less formal education than their Jewish fellow citizens, and members of the Arab community in Israel have complained about a lack of political influence. The latter is likely a reflection of the Arab community’s minority status within a democratic polity. [see Council on Foreign Relations, https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-know-about-arab-citizens-israel#chapter-title-0-6]  It’s not unusual,  in a heterogeneous democratic society, for those in the minority to have less political clout than those in the majority (though this often ameliorated in a parliamentary system, such as in Israel); the important issue is whether and how much the rights of the minority are protected, as there will always be a minority in a heterogeneous society.

On a more granular level, Jewish and non-Jewish Israelis regularly interact with each other in their daily activities. Though there do tend to be predominantly Jewish and Arab towns or, within the larger cities, Jewish and Arab neighborhoods, this is de facto and not, as in apartheid, de jure. Moreover, there are cities with large mixed Arab-Jewish populations, most notably Haifa.

The relationship between the residents of Israel and residents of Gaza, Judea and Samaria is also not an apartheid relationship. It is, however, a relationship that has been affected by Israel’s history of terrorist attacks from these territories.

Israel is a small, beleaguered nation that, since its founding, has been surrounded by implacable foes. Both before the 1967 War, which led to the occupation of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza (though the occupation of Gaza was given up by Israel many years ago), and after the 1967 War, Israel has been constantly under attack. This has led to the fully understandable need to erect firm administrative and physical boundaries separating Israelis, the innocent victims of ongoing terror, from those outside Israel’s borders. Nevertheless, Arab residents of Judea, Samaria and Gaza – including those coming from areas of Gaza that yielded the perpetrators of the October 7 atrocities – have been allowed to cross these borders to enter Israel to work or to obtain medical care.

Such boundaries are common to nation states and have certainly (and unfortunately) been necessary for Israel, a nation that has experienced an unrelenting barrage of terror attacks targeting innocent civilians in buses, cafes, restaurants, schools and bookstores.  In fact, much of the heightened security around borders developed following a half decade of intense terror in the early 2000’s, when over 1000 Israelis were killed in terror attacks. The creation of secure borders to protect innocent civilians from terror and aggression is, again, not apartheid.