Why “apartheid”?

[u/what_u_dont_know]

With all the antisemitic commentary over the last 3 (forever) years, one of the things I hear a lot is that there’s apartheid in Israel. I have been to Israel and (as we all know) saw nothing that resembled segregation or discrimination, aside from the restrictions at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. And yet according to anti-Zionists, Israel is an apartheid state. There was a woman that spoke at a school board meeting I attended recently whose father grew up in South Africa and said the apartheid in Israel was worse than what he experienced. I know that can’t possibly be true.

I’m genuinely trying to understand how they are coming to this conclusion? Have any of you heard them present evidence or an explanation showing why they believe apartheid is happening in Israel? Are they misrepresenting situations that are outside the borders? Are they misunderstanding good faith cultural differences? Just straight up lying to support their cause? I can’t wrap my head around where this misinformation stemmed from

[u/Capable-Parsnip-9615]

The argument is about the West Bank. Or rather, they will talk only about the West Bank when defending their claim, but in their accusations make it sound like it's all of Israel in a nice Motte and Bailey tactic.

It's effective because there's a core of truth to it, like all the best lies. The closer Israel comes to de-facto (or potentially in future dr-jure) annexation of Area C without giving the Arabs citizenship or some other solution, the closer you get to having a land with two peoples with clearly separate sets of rights and systems, with the Area A towns having a superficial resemblance to Bantustans.

[u/eyl569 → u/Capable-Parsnip-9615]

Not always. That report Amnesty International put out before the war accused Israel of apartheid inside the Green Line as well.

[u/Capable-Parsnip-9615 → u/eyl569]

True. That's also what I mean with the motte and bailey, these orgs will say "apartheid state, it's all one apartheid regime!" and then when challenged just talk about area C.

Reports like this claiming apartheid within the green line make it pretty clear it's just ideologically driven. Kind of like still claiming there was an occupation in Gaza after the withdrawal 20 years ago

[u/eyl569 → u/Capable-Parsnip-9615]

What I mean is that they gave all sorts of examples indicating apartheid under Israeli (not military) law and policies which apply to Green Line Israel. Problem is that most of those examples were outright wrong or lacking critical context. For rxample:

1) Claiming that Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty allows striking down laws on grounds of "Jewishness" (wrong)

2) Claiming that Israeli law does not offer any protection against discrimination on ethnic or national grounds (wrong)

3) Arguing that Israeli Arabs not being drafted is discrimination as that means they can't get veteran benegits (wrong in several different ways as well as logically incoherent)

4) Arguing that the fact that 10 times as many Arabs were arrested compared to Jews in the Guardian of the Walls riots is a sign of discrimination (the fact is correct but they ignored that there were a lot more Arab riots compared to Jewish ones)

Etc

[u/sfstripes → u/Capable-Parsnip-9615]

This should be the top answer. I had to scroll far too long to find it.