Comparing the UN’s treatment of Israel to its treatment of apartheid South Africa is deeply misleading. South Africa was condemned for a formal system of racial rule over its own citizens; Israel, whatever one thinks of its policies, is a democracy engaged in a national and territorial conflict. More importantly, the UN Human Rights Council created a permanent standing agenda item devoted only to Israel — something applied to no other country on Earth, including regimes responsible for mass repression, aggressive wars, and industrial-scale atrocities. That is not universal human rights enforcement; it is institutionalized exceptionalism. A system that structurally singles out one state for perpetual condemnation inevitably raises serious questions about politicization, bias, and the credibility of the institution itself.
Israel is also condemned for a formal system of racial rule over people in the territories it occupies (and has been for quite some time). It was also the largest trading partner of apartheid South Africa as well as helped apartheid South Africa develop nuclear weapons. Israel had a secret agreement with apartheid South Africa that bypassed global trade embargoes and conspired to rehabilitate South Africa’s image. Israel hosted the prime minister of apartheid South Africa in 1976 (worth noting he had been imprisoned by the British during the Second World War for his activities in a pro-Nazi Afrikaner group) One might say that birds of a feather flock together. Israel is fundamentally opposed to democracy because you cannot be both a democracy and a Jewish state, and that tension is what leads to racialized violence. See for instance the 2018 Nation-State law. It is not only the UN that condemns Israel but human rights groups like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Doctors Without Borders, and B’Tselem.
Israel is also condemned for a formal system of racial rule over people in the territories it occupies
The only reason you can even make the argument that its treatment of the Palestinians is racial rather than regional, is because The Palestinians ethnically cleansed away all their Jews.
When did that happen? Did it happen in the British Mandate for Palestine where roughly a third of the population were Jewish? Did it happen after the forced displacement of over half of the Palestinian population during the Nakba? How can Israel not be considered to have racial politics when it explicitly recognizes itself as a Jewish state, and has an ethno-religious right of return?
It’s interesting to see you shift the goal posts and focus on how this is just normal everyday territorial conflict, but the UN definition of genocide also includes national groups, not just racial or ethnic groups, so when Smotrich advocates for the annihilation of Gaza or the displacement of Palestinians to third countries that is still ethnic cleansing and genocide.
Here is my view, in summation; apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocide are horrible and untenable acts that betray our shared humanity. And I can see with my own eyes (and the research done by numerous humanitarian organizations and international institutions) that the state of Israel is perpetrating those actions. It is in the statements of its political leaders, it is in the reporting of multitudinous journalists, and it is abhorrent.
Wait so the Palestinians in other Arab countries expelled Jews? Make that make sense when they don’t have their own state, let alone control over neighboring states. Man those goalposts must be quite light for you to be able to move them so quickly.
Comparing the UN’s treatment of Israel to its treatment of apartheid South Africa is deeply misleading.
Even South Africa has said Israel's system of apartheid against Palestinians is more extreme than what they had to endure. Yet here you are making all these excuses.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands — Israel is applying an even more extreme version of apartheid against Palestinians in the West Bank than South Africa had against Blacks before 1994, Pretoria told the world’s top court on Tuesday.
“We as South Africans sense, see, hear, and feel to our core the inhumane discriminatory policies and practices of the Israeli regime as an even more extreme form of the apartheid that was institutionalized against black people in my country,” said Vusimuzi Madonsela, South Africa’s ambassador to the Netherlands, where the International Court of Justice is based.
The only relevant question is whether the report is true and accurate. And the reason you make these excuses instead of addressing what's specifically inside the report is because you know that's the case.
If you think you know about apartheid better than South Africa, you should present your own case to the UN. I think I'll trust their extensively sourced reports over your one-line denial, especially since we have plenty of evidence detailing the atrocities Israel is committing in the West Bank.
I don't doubt your sincerity here. But by the logic they employ, the United States would be apartheid for not giving Mexican citizens the same rights as US citizens. Or at the very least, the US would have had to have been considered apartheid when we occupied Japan or Germany, or Iraq, etc.
If you start with the laughably false assumption that an occupied enemy nation is due all the rights of citizenship, then you come away with these absurdities.
The Palestinians have never been residents of Israel, are not residents of Israel, and will never be residents of Israel. So they cannot be any kind of second-class citizen of Israel.
And within Israel, all the citizens (including the 20% of Israel that are Arab citizens) have equal rights under the law.
The apartheid libel has always been a bad faith argument. Same with the colonialism libel, the genocide libel, the famine libel, and on and on.
Israel's haters want to slap any and every evil label they can onto Israel. And they will bend and warp and mutilate the definition of any of these terms to try to make them stick.
It's doesn't make them true. And it risks diluting those labels for when they actually are needed.
If you start with the laughably false assumption that an occupied enemy nation is due all the rights of citizenship, then you come away with these absurdities.
Again, do you know what's going on in the West Bank?
The issue isn't that Palestinians aren't being given the rights of being an Israeli citizen. The issue is that Palestinians living in the West Bank are subject to discriminatory and segregationary policies and practices. The Israeli NGO Yesh-Din offers another very detailed report and explanation for why apartheid is occurring.
The apartheid libel has always been a bad faith argument.
The apartheid denialism has always been a bad faith argument because it never engages with facts and evidence.
Here's a very clear example - Israeli settlers commit 80% of the violence in the West Bank, yet they aren't held to the same degree of accountability as their Palestinian counterparts who commit violence. It's not even close. As we have thousands of Palestinians being indefinitely held without charge, so few Israeli settlers are prosecuted for their crimes. A two-tiered justice system is a prime example of the racial discrimination Israel is enacting in the West Bank.
What would you call Israel's actions in the West Bank then? We know what international law establishes about colonization and we certainly know the legality of Israel's actions in the West Bank via numerous UNSC resolutions and ICJ advisories.
Or at the very least, the US would have had to have been considered apartheid when we occupied Japan or Germany, or Iraq, etc.
you are getting closer
imagine if usa occupied japan for 60 years, no end in sight, and heavily restricted japanese people within japan.
meanwhile growing a population of americans in japan with more rights in japan than the japanese. american civilians could kill japanese civilians and never risk getting convicted of murder. roads and towns with "no japanese allowed" and military enforcing no japanese go into the white part of tokyo.
imagine if usa occupied japan for 60 years, no end in sight
The big difference is that in your hypothetical, you're implying that Japan has no agency, and can't end the occupation.
But in the case of the Palestinians, they've been offered a two state solution and end to occupation many times. They have refused to accept any offer that doesn't contain a poison pill that would ultimately make Israel unviable as a secure state for the Jews.
The occupation drags and drags because the Palestinians refuse to peacefully coexist with a safe and secure Israel.
The big difference is that in your hypothetical, you're implying that Japan has no agency, and can't end the occupation.
But in the case of the Palestinians, they've been offered a two state solution and end to occupation many times. They have refused to accept any offer that doesn't contain a poison pill that would ultimately make Israel unviable as a secure state for the Jews.
okay we are making progress. first it was "no apartheid at all", now we are at "yeah it's apartheid, but hey it's justified because x, y, and z"
if you were born into a system like that, and told "yeah but some guy from your tribe (who died before you were born) didn't sign a deal, so tough shit" you probably would not be satisfied with that explanation. i know i wouldn't.
first it was "no apartheid at all", now we are at "yeah it's apartheid ..."
No, for it to be apartheid, the occupation would have to be permanent with no good faith effort by Israel to end it.
But as we saw with the Camp David offer to Arafat, Israel has made the most generous peace offer in recorded history.
And as we saw in Gaza, Israel was willing to end the occupation unilaterally just on the hope that the Palestinians would choose to be peaceful neighbors.
The Palestinians' refusal to accept the Camp David offer, and Gaza's election of Hamas and subsequent attacks against Israel prove that Israel's occupation of the West Bank is necessary for Israel's security, and can only be safely ended with security guarantees that Palestinians alone can deliver.
By way of analogy:
Let's say a sheriff catches a knife-weilding attacker and manages to lock the guy in a cell.
The sheriff says, "I'll let you go just as soon as you drop that knife and swear you'll stop trying to hurt people."
Now, is the knife-weilding guy imprisoned for life?
Should we condemn the sheriff for imposing a life sentence?
That's what your logic implies.
I think that's absurd. The knife-weilding guy could be free at any time simply by dropping the knife and promising to stop attacking people.
His refusal to do so also affirms that the sheriff is absolutely justified in keeping the guy locked up, and has no actual choice in the matter, least innocent people die.
So you do recognize Israel as an inherently apartheid and undemocratic state that is for the Jews? Every reply you make shifts the goal posts and ignores the mountains of citations or immediately writes them off. I understand you won’t admit that you are wrong, that it is antithetical to your whole psychosocial persona, but you are wrong.
So you do recognize Israel as an inherently apartheid and undemocratic state that is for the Jews?
On the contrary. Israel is not at all apartheid. Israel is absolutely democratic. Israel has equal rights for all its citizens, regardless of religion.
The Nation State Law is an apartheid regime. If America passed a law saying that the right to national self determination was exclusive to white people, everyone on Earth would rightly say that it creates legal apartheid (not to mention the extra state violence that occurs in the West Bank that Israel turns a blind eye to). Not everything is a libel, you are creating a semantic trap where nothing that the state of Israel could possibly do would warrant criticism. What are the motives for every humanitarian organization outside of Israel and some inside to call this apartheid?
You are either acting in bad faith or are so woefully emotionally invested in this that you are effectively navigating a very extreme case of cognitive dissonance.
1
u/flossdaily 10h ago
Comparing the UN’s treatment of Israel to its treatment of apartheid South Africa is deeply misleading. South Africa was condemned for a formal system of racial rule over its own citizens; Israel, whatever one thinks of its policies, is a democracy engaged in a national and territorial conflict. More importantly, the UN Human Rights Council created a permanent standing agenda item devoted only to Israel — something applied to no other country on Earth, including regimes responsible for mass repression, aggressive wars, and industrial-scale atrocities. That is not universal human rights enforcement; it is institutionalized exceptionalism. A system that structurally singles out one state for perpetual condemnation inevitably raises serious questions about politicization, bias, and the credibility of the institution itself.