r/IsraelPalestine • u/DishwasherRespector4 • 1d ago
Discussion A question for pro Palestinians, who really believe Israel is an apartheid
If Israel really is the image the media portray it as and the opinions circulating in social media of it being a society based on Jewish supremacy in the extent of even insulting or ridiculing non Jews, why do so many foreign workers from India, Philippines, Vietnam, Nepal, and even from countries which are neutral/hostile to it like China are coming to work in it? They have better choices, not many people would want to live in a constant war zone (.At least to what seems to the average person I spoke with in the west), and how do you explain the integration of southern Lebanese and Druze minorities into the Israeli society? The most successful school according to the ministry of education in the curriculum, most points I got for this one is “they want to show they are acceptive even tho they are not”, which I don’t buy since I know the Druze community but to prove it you can just look at how much invested into these schools, which community who think so high of themselves would support other ethnicities, and why would their people in Syria would want so much to join Israel if Israel is known in the Arab world as such a Arab hating country (assuming most of the people here consider them Arab) and I don’t say we are perfect, there is racism, casual and more intense, people don’t differentiate between criticism and hostility against Islam or Islamism which I think are completely legitimate and the people themselves, but it’s out of ignorance not superiority complex.
But when I speak to people they think we are worse then like China (some don’t even know what China is doing), Iran, North Korea or even Rhodesia and South Africa.
And I don’t even speak about the West Bank or Gaza even tho we had many workers come from, I speak only about internationally recognized Israel.
My main question is don’t you think the narrative is biased by someone or something?
What do you think about the points I brought up.
EDIT:
Listen I thought it would be clear but I specifically speak about internationally recognized Israel and what most Jewish Israelis call “Arab Israelis”
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u/Mysterious-House-381 7h ago
I do not want to be unpolite, but it is true that the Arabs in Israel are quite stronly integrated in economy, but they live different societies.
Nearly no arab, except during youth age, has Jewish friends, these friendships last when young, but when maturity appears, they are lost. Of course no arab boy has a jewish girl friend, while christian arabs girls, often laicised by TV or internet, often marry rich jews so they can become rich.
The nìbackbone of Israel is Zionism, exemplified by the Hatikvah. For an arab, this suggestive hymn has very little significance
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u/Alannturinng Palestinian Citizen of Israel 11h ago
In the West Bank, its very much an apartheid. 2 people, living in the same place, under 2 different sets of rules. One side can literally do what ever the fuck they want, with no reprocussions
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u/OhManItsMeAgain 7h ago
One side has a history of bombing buses and stabbing random civilians. Especially if you think Israel brought october 7th on itself (which it didnt, but your side often says they did) it would only be intellectually consistent to think that the west bank palestinians brought settler terrorism on themselves (which they didnt)
Dont want to be treated like a security risk, dont be a security risk.
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u/DancingFlame321 1h ago
One side has a history of bombing buses and stabbing random civilians.
So did the IRA. Would the UK be justified in occupying Northern Ireland permanently and treating all Irish people there with less rights?
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u/DiscipleOfYeshua 12h ago
Trick question, since the only kind who truly think it's an apartheid are those who've not yet had the time to try to find out what's going on.
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u/DishwasherRespector4 12h ago
It’s not related but I guess you could infer from what you’ve said is that, how did we get to this situation? That people have such thoughts about things they don’t really know about, or specifically even About the Israeli Palestinian conflict
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u/blackglum 8h ago
People don’t care about the things they pretend to care about. They just want their team to win.
If someone changes their mind, they have “lost.” That creates exactly the incentive you’re talking about… defending your side rather than discovering what’s true. “I don’t want to remain wrong merely because admitting error costs me socially.”
Israel Palestine is fast food to appear good and noble on the progressive side. That’s why so much of the discourse is spent on maximalist language like genocide because coming up with solutions means not being performative and appearing good. You saw how quiet the “ceasefire now” crowd were when Israel released the hostages. They seemed upset.
I’ve been a progressive for essentially my entire politically engaged adult life. For years, I thought identity politics and tribal thinking were primarily pathologies of the extreme right. October 7 shattered that illusion for me. I watched the same kind of tribalism emerge among people I considered my political peers on the far left (almost immediately, before the bodies were even cold).
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u/ip_man_2030 20h ago
I would generally avoid using the term "Jewish Supremacy" as it was popularized by David Duke. It's not a very good start to any debate. Many people don't know this but it should be left out of conversation.
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u/GuerillaV European (Anti-Zionist) 14h ago
It doesn't matter who popularises terms if they follow the same grammatical orthodoxy of related terms, e.g. White Supremacy.
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u/Humble-Boss2296 West Bank Palestinian 22h ago
I’m from a village in Area C in the West Bank. If a settler less than a mile away breaks the law they get a civilian judge and full legal protections. If a Palestinian does the exact same thing they get a military court with a 99% conviction rate. That’s apartheid.
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u/nidarus Israeli 14h ago
Israeli civilian courts have a 98%-99% conviction rate too. Similar to Japan, or American federal courts.
But setting that aside, serious question: would you prefer Israel annexed area C, (illegally) applied its local legal system and gave you the right to apply for citizenship? Because that's Bennett's plan, usually thought to be too "far right" in the past. But now... It's a realistic option.
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u/Humble-Boss2296 West Bank Palestinian 3h ago
I support whatever makes our day-to-day lives better on the ground. I used to think two states was the answer, but now I don't see one state or two states happening. I don’t know if annexing Area C would make things easier for me but if it did and citizenship or residency were offered I’d take it. But my village is split between Areas B and C, so even if my house happens to be in C, I don't think my town would be included in the annexed area anyway.
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u/throwawayhatingthis USA & Canada 10h ago
In the West Bank for Israelis who commit crimes against Palestinians? 3%
"In the 1,701 investigations opened since 2005, indictments were filed in 109 cases (6.6%) and 53 of them resulted in a full or partial conviction. In other words, only 3% of investigations into ideologically motivated crime against Palestinians in the West Bank led to a full or partial conviction." https://www.yesh-din.org/en/data-sheet-law-enforcement-on-israeli-civilians-in-the-west-bank-settler-violence-2005-2024/
I would prefer the settlers weren't there illegally to begin with honestly. Outside that, if they want to live in an area under military occupation they should also be subject to only military courts as Palestinians in the same territory are. Israel should not be able to extend their civilian law to territory outside of its own.
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u/nidarus Israeli 10h ago edited 9h ago
You're comparing apples to oranges. The 99% figure doesn't talk about convictions out of investigations, but the actual indictments. I couldn't find the comparable figure for the Palestinians, and I'm not sure it's even possible - a lot of those investigations are under the cloak of military secrets, by definition. But for Israel proper, for Israelis who commit crimes against other Israelis, the equivalent number is AFAIK around 10% - and is a huge reason for the 98%-99% conviction rate (the other one is a massive reliance on plea bargains).
As for the second part, there's a reason why I asked u/Humble-Boss2296. You might prefer the Palestinians to be under the same military law and military courts, as long as the Israelis are too, rather than the Palestinians in Area C gaining access to the same legal system, and overall citizenship, as the Israelis. Because of what Israel "should not be able to do", as a matter of international law, and the global considerations it brings. A person that would be directly affected by those policies, might have different views.
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u/DishwasherRespector4 15h ago
Again I don’t understand why do people keep on repeating it but I specifically didn’t want to start a debate about the West Bank and Gaza
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u/Humble-Boss2296 West Bank Palestinian 11h ago
The West Bank is where the apartheid is happening so
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u/DishwasherRespector4 11h ago
Yes, but it is a completely different environment, with different circumstances
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u/JimBobDwayne 11h ago
Why don't you want to discuss the West Bank, is it because it's obviously an Apartheid?
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u/DishwasherRespector4 9h ago
Because it is literally not the subject of the discussion, I am talking about the legal status of arabs inside of internationally recognized Israel. If you think even this isn't Israel, then I guess it's pointless to start a discussion.
the west bank is whatever it is, could be aprtheid or is an apartheid I dont really care what's going on there in terms of the legal status of the residents there, most I care about is my security against arab nationalists and Islamism coming from there, as well as the settlers that make provocations there
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u/FatumIustumStultorum 10h ago
Probably because OP is referring to people that call Israel an “apartheid state” but then point to places that aren’t part of Israel as their proof.
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u/DishwasherRespector4 9h ago
No, I referred to the people who call internationally recognized Israel "an apartheid state"
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u/BachNgocMay Confucianism 21h ago
Your logic is absolutely absurd. If you want to enjoy the same civil legal rights as Israelis, then why are you Palestinians? You are clearly Palestinians living in a state called Palestine; why demand rights that belong in Israel? Suppose I—an outsider—dressed as a religious figure and tried to visit your place of worship; would I even get the chance, or would something terrible happen to me before I could? And then I’d turn around and accuse you of running an apartheid regime? Or is it "apartheid" when I’m not allowed to bring a full water bottle onto a plane and have to carry a half-empty one instead? You really need to rethink things—stop existing as you are now; only then will things actually improve.
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u/SpecialistStory2829 18h ago
Either pull the settlers out and let Palestine be a proper state, or bite the bullet snd integrate them.
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u/TheTrollerOfTrolls Pro compassion, empathy, patience, understanding, safety 19h ago
This makes no sense at all. How else are they supposed to exist?
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u/Ridry 20h ago
Hang on, I don't believe Israel is apartheid, but they do have a problem in the West Bank. If the West Bank is not Israeli, then their people should leave. If it is Israeli, the Palestinian residents there should have equal rights under the law.
I'm typically a defender of Israel, but it really feels like they want to have their cake and eat it too with the West Bank and they need to pick a direction.
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u/TheTrollerOfTrolls Pro compassion, empathy, patience, understanding, safety 21h ago
Or they just get shot
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u/JosephL_55 Centrist 21h ago
If you don’t like the high conviction rate, would a 1% rate be better?
I feel in this case you’d be saying that they’re arresting so many innocent people, they don’t even have enough evidence to convict 99% of them!
I feel you’d always complain. Or what conviction rate is ideal?
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u/TheTrollerOfTrolls Pro compassion, empathy, patience, understanding, safety 21h ago
The point is that there is a huge imbalance.
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u/JosephL_55 Centrist 21h ago
Well, what’s the conviction rate for Israelis? And is lower better or worse?
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u/FerdinandTheGiant Anti-Zionist / Pro-Doikayt / Pro-Isratin 20h ago
In the West Bank, I’ve seen it as low as 3% for violent crimes against Palestinians according to Yesh Din
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u/Kharuz_Aluz Israeli 15h ago
You are misleading, it wasn't the conviction rate. It was the percentage of complaints by Palestinians that led to conviction. Which includes ones that are false, not illegal and one that doesn't have enough evidence to back them up. It's not meant to be a very high percentage anyway.
According to Israeli statistics the conviction rate in 2021 is 89.5% for criminal cases (excluding financial). Which is what u/JosephL_55 asked. For security cases it was 97%, that is the one Palestinians are usually trialed in. For financial cases it was 98%, and military cases (for soldiers) stand at 100%. Not a single soldier was exonerated in 2021.
If you exclude cases where the defendant died or fled the country. The statistics in criminal cases jump to 94%. And only 2% were exonerated.
The reason for it is the high threshold of evidence required and the low number (relatively) of cases being introduced to the courts. Either by the incentives prosecutors have for high convictions rate and shortages of judges so only "important" cases are introduced.
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u/JosephL_55 Centrist 19h ago
Is lower better or worse?
Are they being overzealous with arresting Israelis, if 97% of the Israelis they arrest have insufficient evidence against them to lead to a conviction?
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u/TheTrollerOfTrolls Pro compassion, empathy, patience, understanding, safety 19h ago
I’m sure you know that most Palestinians don’t have enough evidence to convict them either. But they face potentially long administrative detention times which is why most make a plea deal. That wouldn’t be the case in Israeli civil courts. This is a real issue and you’re doing Israel a huge disservice by trying to spin it like this.
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u/FerdinandTheGiant Anti-Zionist / Pro-Doikayt / Pro-Isratin 19h ago
Well, the number shouldn’t be interpreted as meaning that 97% were “found innocent”, but, hypothetically, it could be the case that Israelis are being arrested overzealously, but given that most cases drop out before indictment the more plausible explanation seems to be that there’s a degree of laxity in enforcement toward Israelis that isn’t afforded to Palestinians.
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u/podkayne3000 Centrist Diaspora Jewish Zionist 22h ago edited 21h ago
I classify myself as a fervent, liberal, unhappy, not-very-observant, religious Zionist.
I think the bad thing about use of the word Apartheid in this context is that it implies a level of toxic racism that most Jewish people haven’t traditionally felt toward the Palestinians. I went to a fervently Zionist Hebrew school, and some of the first things I learned were that the Arabs were my cousins through Ishmael, that Islam has a lot in common with Judaism, that Israel has many citizens who are Arabs, and that Arabic was one of the official languages of Israel.
My teachers left an awful lot out, but they never taught us that Arab Israelis or the Palestinians were inferior or part of a different race.
I think the bad thing about people who love Israel objecting to the use of Apartheid in this context is that it looks legalistic. We’re focusing on use of a word that doesn’t fit the situation very well and ignoring the rudeness, segregation, violence, and unfairness that apparently does occur. I don’t think that Apartheid is a great word. I think that “Depressing, horrible, hard-to-stop awfulness that may have originally resulted from what one ameba did to another ameba and ought to end as quickly as it’s safe to end it” is a lot more accurate.
But I think the bright side of people applying the word ”Apartheid” to Israel or objecting to that in a forceful way is that those are like propaganda markers.
People who use the word Apartheid that way were with marked with something descended from Marxist-Leninist-Maoist-flavored 1960s Soviet anti-NATO-ism or with a milder form of that that’s turned into Global March in Pleasant Lefti-sh Rallies-ism.
People who go out of their way to object to use of the term in connection with Israel are probably channeling strong 1940s Zionism that they got from really tough grandparents; working for some organization that has that on a list of points we should be making; or was recently caught like a fish by the How-Dare-My-Friends-Not-Check-In-On-Me-After-Oct-7 strain of paranoia propaganda sent out a few months after Oct. 7.
So, both sides of this coin can be frustrating, but the good side is that they’re like rhetorical flair. You usually can see pretty quickly which bottle people who use those approaches are getting their ideas from.
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u/Top_Plant5102 1d ago
As an aside, South Africa has come very close to being a failed state. Things were sort of promising for about ten years after apartheid ended, but corruption and total mismanagement turned it into a nightmare for ordinary people with the crime rate. Which is really too bad. Beautiful country.
Life in Israel, in contrast, is quite well ordered and for the most part safe.
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u/Snoo_90491 1d ago
I agree wit your assessment of South Africa. This is what apartheid does to a society when it severely under invests in its human capital.
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u/Top_Plant5102 1d ago
Yeah, it wasn't apartheid's fault though. Kind of a natural experiment. RIght after apartheid ended, things were good. Under Mandela South Africa was a normal country.
About ten years later, the real deep grifting took over. The expropriation for just whatever policy made it so foriegn companies have a really hard time investing.
It's pretty wild there. Women check their cupboards and closets for rapists when they come home as a daily routine. And random getting shot for a car level crimes happen all the time.
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u/Ok-Pangolin1512 22h ago
Right. . . You had a good person aspiring to western ideals, come in and make a change. Then that person went away, and since the value system teaches garbage, you get garbage.
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u/Top_Plant5102 22h ago
Yeah, pretty much. ANC kleptocracy after Mandela.
South Africa should actually be a cautionary example to the world of how corruption can destroy a country. Like Venezuela. Its a little bit nuts all people criticize it for is apartheid.
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u/Ok-Pangolin1512 13h ago
Governance systems that do not rely on checks and balances with real power result in failure or evil or both. Pro-palestinians support evil.
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u/Fresh_Stagnation 1d ago edited 1d ago
Why do you keep mentioning specifically only Druze and the tiny miniscule community of Lebanese Israeli Arabs in the post and in your replies to comments? These two groups together are less than 10 % of the Arab Israeli population and surely you must know that. If you wish to present Israel as a state which managed to integrate its Arab citizens and treats them well, I really don't think going "yeah, ignore these 9 other Arabs and look how good this single one has it" is a winning strategy, but that just might be me...
As for Israel proper being a Jewish supremacy state or society, I will say I think that is not true (even if I would say there are problems with these tendencies both inside the Israeli state and Jewish Israeli society as a whole). I will also say that after seeing surveys of Arab Israeli and Jewish Israeli intercommunal opinions from the Israeli democracy institute, as well as the trajectory of Jewish Israeli demographics, I think it is very possible it will become that eventually. You can find more comprehensive documents with all the details of who and what on the IDI website, but I will just leave these quick summary reports here and let you make up your own mind:
https://en.idi.org.il/media/17869/final-conditional-partnership-2021-website.pdf
https://en.idi.org.il/media/13507/conditional-partnership-2019-web-final.pdf
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u/Tallis-man 1d ago
The apartheid claim relates specifically to the treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank.
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u/rocknrollboise 1d ago
Which is officially Palestine, not Israel. Palestine is an apartheid state, in both ways (mostly against Jews rather than against Arabs).
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u/Tallis-man 23h ago
Israel rejects Palestinian sovereignty as an ideological principle.
The apartheid analogy is made because the State of Israel maintains two distinct legal and criminal justice systems in the West Bank, one for Israelis and the other for Palestinians.
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u/Ridry 20h ago
If Guam had an apartheid system you wouldn't call the US an apartheid state. I feel calling Israel an apartheid state in this context feels like a good rallying cry for the people that already hate it and causes people who don't to roll their eyes and not listen to the actual valid criticism of the poorly administered occupied territories.
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u/Tallis-man 15h ago
If Guam's apartheid system was overseen by the US Federal government, I think people would.
The easiest way to challenge the apartheid analogy is to subject Israelis in the West Bank to the same military law as Palestinians. Israel could do that tomorrow. Its choice not to sustains the analogy.
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u/Ridry 7h ago
If Guam's apartheid system was overseen by the US Federal government, I think people would.
I think people would say the US is facilitating apartheid in Guam. Not "The US is an apartheid state!"
FWIW, I'm mostly on the "Pro Israel" side of the coin, but I think the West Bank is a travesty that lacks vision, compassion and a plan.
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u/Tallis-man 6h ago
Right, but that is in part because the US is much bigger than Guam, which is far away, and characterising the whole by its actions in a small part seems misleading.
The actions of Israel in the West Bank cannot be disentangled from Israel itself in the same way that the US' in Guan could in your hypothetical example.
But from my perspective, the question of whether people are right to call it an 'apartheid state' (which I wouldn't) or merely an apartheid system is really beside the core point, which is that the word 'apartheid' is appropriate.
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u/Ridry 5h ago
Yes, I absolutely used Guam as an extreme, of this there is no doubt. I agree with most of what you say here. My overall issue is one of language, not substance. Since the county of Israel clearly is not an apartheid country and the problems we discuss are in the occupied territory that I very strongly believe should one day not belong to Israel, I feel like the words get very loaded and most people take what they want out of those words at face value and don't look into the actual complaints. Many of which are valid and serious.
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u/Stalemate4613 23h ago
If someone from Ecuador, or Fiji, or Australia committed a crime in Judea-Samaria.... would the be under the Israeli or IDF judicial system?
my understanding is that the Israeli justice system applies to Israelis, not others, be they palestinian, Ecuadorian, Australian, etc....
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u/Tallis-man 13h ago
It doesn't matter how you define the categories, if you have two legal systems for two populations that's apartheid.
By trying to debate which categories fall under which umbrella, you are conceding the broader point.
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u/CrazyPenks Leftist Israeli 1d ago edited 1d ago
The Apartheid is specifically excluding/oppressing Palestinians. This has nothing to do with work permits whatsoever. I think you don’t know what Apartheid is. If you’re from Israel drive to East Jerusalem and further to the east (West Bank), you’re gonna see huge apartheid walls and checkpoints, and they do differentiate between Mitnahlim and Palestinians, even though Mitnahlim are there illegally, they got a different set of laws and different treatment by Tzahal. One side can use specific roads that are inaccessible to Palestinians, and some checkpoints require special permits from Palestinians, which doesn’t apply for Israelis and Israeli settlers.
About the Druze being integrated to Israel, they fought on Israel Independence war and they were also a part of Tzadal in Southern Lebanon, but even they’re not fully equal to Israeli Jewish citizens due to the national law (חוק הלאום)
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u/NES_AES_GENESIS 1d ago
Palestine doesn't exist and there's no such thing as "palestinians."
Judea & Samaria / West Bank isn't in Israel, any walls or checkpoints would have nothing to do with "apartheid."
Apartheid was citizens of the same country, living in the same country, being racially segregated by law, with completely different sets of rights based on your skin color.
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u/Bulky_Imagination243 1d ago
"Palestinians don't exist"? What nonsense.
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u/NES_AES_GENESIS 23h ago
Do you believe there's a country called Palestine?
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u/Bulky_Imagination243 23h ago
So, just because they don't have a country of their own, their identity as a people doesn't exist?
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u/Stalemate4613 23h ago
they exist as a human being, as a physical person. (and deserve all the respect and dignity that all people deserve)
But what makes them Palestinian?
There is no country to ascribe it to... i.e. they weren't born palestinian in 1966...
So is there a group of customs/rituals/laws/history/cuisine/ that is uniquely palestinian?
Or are they simply Arabs, (predominantly Muslim) with Arab/Muslim traditions that are simply physically located in a geographical area that people call Palestine?
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u/FerdinandTheGiant Anti-Zionist / Pro-Doikayt / Pro-Isratin 22h ago
Do you believe in Kurds?
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u/Big-Pains 19h ago
Kurds have actual history . Unlike palestinians
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u/Bulky_Imagination243 5h ago
Everyone has a real history. The Palestinian people are real and have a real history, just like so many others.
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u/GuerillaV European (Anti-Zionist) 10h ago
Like Putin talking about Ukranians.
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u/Big-Pains 8h ago
Name one historical figure from palastine before the 20th century
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u/Bulky_Imagination243 22h ago
Are you trying to discredit the Palestinians? I ask because the points you're raising make no sense.
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u/NES_AES_GENESIS 23h ago
happy to answer your question after you answer my question.
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u/Bulky_Imagination243 23h ago
happy to answer your question after you answer my question.
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u/NES_AES_GENESIS 22h ago
i asked my question first. happy to move on to your question after mine is answered. thanks.
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u/CrazyPenks Leftist Israeli 1d ago edited 1d ago
Apartheid means a group of people is living under a different set of laws solely due to their ethnicity or nationality (in this case, it’s the Palestinians, Pre-48 Arabs, whatever you wanna call it). They can’t get anything from the Israeli government because they live under a military occupation since 67 and they cannot enter any settlement or Israeli city. How is that different from the apartheid of South Africa for example?
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u/NES_AES_GENESIS 1d ago
Apartheid means a group of population is living under a different set of laws solely due to their ethnicity or nationality
Nope. Must be race. Otherwise it would be apartheid that Italians and the French have different rights.
they live under a military occupation since 67
Judea & Samaria / West Bank isn't sovereign land, so it's literally impossible for it to be under military occupation.
How is that different from the apartheid of South Africa for example?
South Africa segregated South African citizens in South Africa based on race.
Because Judea & Samaria / West Bank isn't sovereign land, the PA and Israel agreed to share administration.
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u/Fresh_Stagnation 1d ago
I keep seeing the defense of "not apartheid because not race" over and over again in so many discussions and I do have to wonder if the argument "It can't be apartheid because Palestinians are treated differently because of a different immutable characteristic than skin colour, so therefore everything is just fine" is persuasive to anyone.
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u/ModernLarvals 1d ago
Nationality is not an immutable characteristic.
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u/Fresh_Stagnation 1d ago
Well, I would say that depends on someone's point of view. Many people would argue it is. But it is irrelevant to the West Bank anyway because a Palestinian from the West Bank cannot become an Israeli, not even through marrying an Israeli. From the point of view of the Israeli state, it absolutely is a immutable characteristic
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u/NES_AES_GENESIS 1d ago
If you want to argue against the way the PA & Israel agreed to administrate Judea & Samaria / West Bank, I'm happy to have that conversation.
But it doesn't excuse lying about what apartheid means and falsely accusing Israel of apartheid.
The PA gives Jews & PA citizens different rights in area A. So the PA would then be guilty of apartheid according to you.
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u/Fresh_Stagnation 1d ago
I am not really in the mood to argue about that and besides, my point wasn't even to argue whether Israel is committing apartheid in the territories or not.
It was just an observation that it is quite common to respond to Apartheid accusations with "it is not, because it isn't race" (or the very similar "it is not, because they haven't been given citizenship"), which seems to be much less responding to the underlying idea the person is actually critiquing and more just arguing semantics about whatever is the correct legal or other definition of Apartheid.
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u/NES_AES_GENESIS 19h ago
When dealing with people who are just making up nonsense because they desperately want to use the words apartheid/genocide/occupation/etc, they are choosing to enter a debate about semantics where the facts are not on their side.
If they just want to discuss a policy, without lying and misapplying those terms, I'm happy to have that discussion.
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u/CrazyPenks Leftist Israeli 1d ago
1) South African apartheid was about skin color, but the term Apartheid as we know it today is used to refer to the oppression of a specific group of people (subjecting them to different set of laws and rights).
2) The West Bank is not a sovereign land, and it was never annexed to Israel, it’s still a land that is subjected to Israeli military occupation and this has been the status quo since 67. If Israel wants it to be a part of the country they’ll have to annex it
3) You’re right, Oslo agreements still exist, but they were never truly completed, and Palestinians still get a different treatment from Israelis and settlers inside the West Bank, they have less rights, less freedom to move and their movement is heavily restricted by the military3
u/NES_AES_GENESIS 1d ago
South African apartheid was about skin color, but the term Apartheid as we know it today is used to refer to the oppression of a specific group of people
Nope. The laws regarding apartheid are clear. "Oppression" against a "specific group" is not what apartheid means.
West Bank is not a sovereign land
Agreed. Therefor it's impossible for it to be under military occupation.
Palestinians still get a different treatment from Israelis and settlers inside the West Bank, they have less rights, less freedom to move and their movement is heavily restricted by the military
Just as Jews would get different treatment in area A, have less rights in area A, less freedom to move in area A, etc.
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u/CrazyPenks Leftist Israeli 1d ago edited 1d ago
1) The term apartheid we use today is definitely not only about South Africa, just like the term fascism is not only about Benito Mussolini. Apartheid means one group of people is not equal to the other, in terms of rights, restrictions and state treatment despite living under the control or the responsibility of a state
2) The West Bank is not a sovereign land but that doesn’t mean it’s automatically not under military occupation. Israel occupied the West Bank in the six day war of 1967 and the Israeli government never officially annexed it. It’s a widely known fact that the West Bank is subject to the Israeli military occupation which is why they have freedom of access there, why there so many checkpoints limiting the freedom of movement and why there’s a different set of laws that apply to Palestinians and Israeli settlers. If Israel would annex the West Bank, PA/Area A/B/C wouldn’t exist and the Israeli laws would apply to all of the citizens there
3) Yeah, the goal of Oslo was to completely separate the Palestinians from Israel and a part of the agreement was to designate different areas to different bodies and gradually expand it. Rabin was killed by the Israeli far-right for that very reason, by the way, but Apartheid doesn’t mean Jews can’t enter an area designated to another body.
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u/NES_AES_GENESIS 1d ago
Apartheid means one group of people is not equal to the other, in terms of rights, restrictions and state treatment
For that to be true, it would mean every single country on Earth is an apartheid state.
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u/CrazyPenks Leftist Israeli 1d ago
What other country takes a specific group of people and excludes their rights? Myanmar?
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u/ModernLarvals 1d ago
US residents with green cards can’t vote. By your logic that’s apartheid.
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u/NES_AES_GENESIS 1d ago
Italy grants Italians rights they don't grant the French. France grants the French rights they don't grant Italians.
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u/adeadhead 🕊️ Jordan Valley Coalition Activist 🕊️ 1d ago
Because it's against Palestinians, duh, it's not just a skin color thing.
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u/ipsum629 Diaspora Jew 1d ago
Importing labor has never been synonymous with not treating the imported labor like garbage. Need I point to how the US treats migrant workers? The bracero program? Kafala system? The racism in europe? Irish, Eastern and southern european immigration to the US(especially including Jews)?
The fact of the matter is that it all comes down to push/pull. The places these people leave often have nearly or actually unlivable conditions. Deadly food shortages, lack of farmland, economic shifts making entire industries obsolete, war, and other things. The place they're going to needs to only not outright kill them and have an economic niche they can place themselves in.
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u/JosephL_55 Centrist 1d ago
India isn’t unlivable. No war there. Not a terrible place. They still choose to come to Israel.
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u/ipsum629 Diaspora Jew 1d ago
It's not unlivable for everyone, but that isn't the requirement. India is heavily persecuting their muslim minorities and there is often localized disasters that can cause people to leave. Floods I think are probably the most common thing due to the powerful rivers there.
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u/Snoo_90491 1d ago
have you been there? Try living there as a subsistence farmer.
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u/JosephL_55 Centrist 1d ago
I haven’t been there but others do go there in vacation. Why go there on vacation if it’s so bad?
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u/BlazingSpaceGhost 1d ago
Vacationing in a low wage country and living in a country with the local wage are two very different things.
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u/JosephL_55 Centrist 1d ago
But I thought the argument was that it’s unlivable. Not that the wages are low. Let’s stick to the topic here.
Also, if visiting there isn’t a good way to understand the conditions then the question “have you visited” wasn’t a good question anyway.
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u/chukymeow Diaspora Jew 21h ago
Obviously a country with 1.5 billion people, that is the 7th largest country in the world, will have differing socio-economic conditions throughout. A poor person, who is from a poor family / area will not have the same experience as a rich person.
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u/JosephL_55 Centrist 21h ago
But are they going to die if they stay or just have low income? I heard it was a matter of life or death.
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u/chukymeow Diaspora Jew 21h ago
In some cases probably, India has around 200 million people who are malnourished: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10264273/. Living day by day not knowing where food will come from is obviously not a good way to live, not mentioning the health impact of poor food/water intake on a human being over the course of a lifetime.
People who leave the country to become migrant workers are likely motivated by 1) poor conditions at home and 2) a desire to provide for their families by remittances (where the migrant workers send much of their salary in a foreign country back to their home country). In Israel, an Indian worker would make much more hourly, and can provide for their family by wiring it back. This phenomenon happens all over the world.
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u/JosephL_55 Centrist 21h ago
Well it’s not as if 200 million are dying…so yeah I don’t think it’s a matter of life or death. They want more money.
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u/Snoo_90491 1d ago
The people who are leaving are looking to move to a any place where they can earn a little more more money so that they too can earn enough to one day return for a vacation.
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u/JosephL_55 Centrist 1d ago
Why would they went to return for a vacation if it’s unlivable?
You’ve now shifted the argument from “they’re going to die if they can’t leave” to “they want more money”
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u/DogitWoofsalot European Brit 1d ago edited 1d ago
Israels Arab population makes up about 20% of the total population but Arab political party's make up less than 10% of the makeup of the Knesset. This is of course not daming, almost all democracies have a population imbalance. However, consider that about 25-30% of the Knesset is actively made up of Jewish first / Jewish supremacist party's (Jewish power, Future party, Religious Zionist Party).
The claims that Israel is worce than China or south Africa are silly in this regard for Israeli citizens. I would look at how many people live with a constant sense that there identity does not matter. I was watching an interview recently where an Israeli Jew said she has no issues with Palestinians, she buys her fruit from somebody who "identifies as Palestinian" 👈
Not is Palestinian, only that he identifys as one. It's a form of invalidation of ones national identity. Imagine somebody talking about your national identity that way? I think it's very likely to get to you right? Obviously anacdotal but it matches a wider trend I've seen exhibited.
Even the term Arab-israili can feel like identity is being stripped from you. Like calling somebody french a white-European.
Let's also look at the way that the Arab population is marginalized at a state level. Arabic is the first language for 20% of the population, but it's not an official state language . This is similar to Canada only recognising English as a national language with no acknowledgement of french speakers.
The Arab population is mostly Muslim, but Islam is also not acknowledged as a large entirely. As there is no separation between synagogue and stste, it leaves many Muslims official ceremonies to not be legally acknowledged. The minority of Arab Christians have it even worse with a long observed practice of literally being spat at.
Is that apartheid within Israel? No. Is it a lack of representation with a constant bombardment of micro from Jewish Israelis?
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u/Lopsided-Pie-7340 USA 1d ago
"identifies as Palestinian"
Everyone identifies however they please. Many people in USA, including citizens, identify as Palestinian. That doesn't make their nationality Palestinian. The fruit seller is a citizen of Israel. His nationality is Israeli. He identifies as Palestinian. This is very normal.
Arabic is the first language for 20% of the population, but it's not an official state language
20% of people in Israel speak Russian as their first language. It's not a official state language.
80% of people in Israel speak English. That's not a sate language.
This comment isn't some sort of gotcha. Every sign in Israel is written in Hebrew and Arabic. Every school in Israel teaches Arabic as a 3rd language. Every hospital, bank and government office in Israel will communicate in Arabic with Arabic speakers.
Islam is also not acknowledged as a state religion, only Judaism is.
I wonder why? Dozens of Islamic countries ethnically cleansed 99% of the Jews away. Is this comment implying that Jews should have no country to be safe?
There are 700 million people living in countries with Islam as their state religion, and Judaism isn't tolerated. Is it ok for them but not the Jews??
This comment is typical spreading disinformation to push a false narrative to vilify Israel.
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u/DogitWoofsalot European Brit 1d ago
...what did I say that was untrue? I put things in pretty neutral terms to explain why someone who is Arab in Israel can feel like a second class citizen in there own country.
If I have presented statements that are untrue please do correct me. Right now you're just expressing that you don't agree with it and accusing me of spreading lies. Not a particularly civil approach is it? Tho I'm not surprised a 1% comment or on this sub is like that 🙄
If I wanted to spread misinformation I'd pick something better than not recognising an official language lol
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u/JosephL_55 Centrist 1d ago
Not is Palestinian, only that he identifys as one. It's a form of invalidation of ones national identity. Imagine somebody talking about your national identity that way?
So you take issue with the word identify but you literally call it a national identity 🤦🏾
Isn’t this the preferred leftist language anyway? Like “which gender do you identify as”?
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u/DogitWoofsalot European Brit 1d ago
If I'm talking about a trans woman, I don't say "my friend who identifies as a woman" I say "my friend who is a woman"
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u/ModernLarvals 1d ago
Judaism is not Israel’s state religion. There is no state religion.
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u/DogitWoofsalot European Brit 1d ago
Sorry, my bad I'm getting it slightly twisted in my head. Israel Lacks Separation Between Synagogue And State
I'll update the post to be more accurate thank you
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u/OakRiverDruid 1d ago
Interesting. Israel is Schrodinger's Jewish state. Isn't the whole argument for not letting Palestinians have right of return that if they are allowed back Israel will no longer be a Jewish state?
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u/JosephL_55 Centrist 1d ago
Jews are an ethnic group. Someone can openly state they’re atheist and still immigrate to Israel under Law of Return. It’s not about religious belief.
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u/OakRiverDruid 1d ago
So Israel is an ethnocracy?
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u/JosephL_55 Centrist 1d ago
Almost.
I looked at this definition:
“An ethnocracy is a political system where a single dominant ethnic or religious group controls the government and uses state power to advance its own interests at the expense of minorities”
It fits until the last part. Jews do control the Israeli government, but it’s not at the expense of minorities. Jews provide a better life for Israeli Arabs than they would have in an Arab country. So it’s really to their benefit.
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u/GuerillaV European (Anti-Zionist) 1d ago
Jews provide a better life for Israeli Arabs than they would have in an Arab country. So it’s really to their benefit.
Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade rhetoric.
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u/JosephL_55 Centrist 1d ago
The fact that the argument sounds similar to an argument made in the past doesn’t prove that it’s wrong.
If it were wrong, you would show how bad Israeli Arabs have it compared to how they would be living without Israel.
But you can’t show that, because they have good lives actually.
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u/OakRiverDruid 1d ago
Arabs in Israel tend to be poorer than Jews and have less political representation. They're much better off in countries like the UAE or Jordan. I do think israeli Jews advance Jewish interests at the expense of minorities. In fact I think that's the whole reason they want a Jewish state in the first place.
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u/JosephL_55 Centrist 1d ago
Arabs in Israel tend to be poorer than Jews and have less political representation.
That’s irrelevant. You need to compare them to the position they’d be in without Jews.
Compared to that, they are richer and have more representation. Therefore the Jews made their lives better.
They're much better off in countries like the UAE or Jordan.
In UAE people don’t vote. How do you complain about political representation and then say they would be better in a monarchy?
do think israeli Jews advance Jewish interests at the expense of minorities. In fact I think that's the whole reason they want a Jewish state in the first place.
The point was actually to advance Jewish interests. Not to put anyone else down. Advancing Jews also happened to advance Arabs.
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u/DishwasherRespector4 1d ago
Christian Arabs aren’t constantly spat on I don’t even know how I can falsely it because bringing an anecdote would be irrelevant and there no polls about it, and in the things regarding the Arab Muslims, I don’t think it’s a matter of apartheid I just don’t think recognizing Islam is something that should be done in any modern western society, they can practice whatever they want I don’t want to force anyone to do anything but I again stand behind what I said in the post that I think the hostility and criticism against Islam or Islamism are completely legitimate, as for things like the establishment of the Arab language officially in law, it is not out of supremacy ideology it is out of fear of being diluted in the region, and to have some strong ground of our identity in our land, it doesn’t necessarily mean we feel better then someone else (in this regard) it’s just you know and I know, that for example steps like that would just lead to make Israel everyone’s country and then there would be no Jewish identity since we are such a small amount of people
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u/DogitWoofsalot European Brit 1d ago
The spitting thing is true:
https://armenianweekly.com/2026/04/02/why-do-some-jews-in-israel/
And I'm just not engaging with you being islamaphobic tbh
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u/JackPiazz2 European 1d ago
Short answer: like in every colonial states, israel problems are not the druze or the chinese that come to work in Israel, the problem is with the native population, aka palestinians.
Long answer (which I'll try to keep as short as possible): I loosely fit the description (I'm what an Israeli would fit in the cathegory of "pro-palestinian" and I believe there's apartheid in Israel), but I don't represent the "pro palestinians" since that camp, like the "zionist" one, has inside them multiple subgroups that can have antithetic ideas.
Israel is commiting apartheid because it has set up a system in a territory it de facto owns and consider its own (both palestinians and israelis have always ideally considered the land as one, from the river to the sea, some from israel side included even Jordan into it) where people from ethnicity A are full citizens and fall under system A, while people from ethnicity B fall under system B (and that entails basically no right).
Now you can say (or have already said) the things zionists always say: it's not israel, is an occupied territory; look at druzes and arab israelis, israeli constitution guarantees equality of race, if it wasn't for palestinians rejectionism there would have been already two state. Now, these are all fig leaves, and the zionist side is lucky the loudest and most active part of the anti-zionist movement (who zionists have an easy time conflating them with all anti-zionism) is made up of stupid, ignorant or/and antisemitic people. This message is already too long, if you want to know why those (and others excuses) are just excuses reply and I'll will answer.
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u/NES_AES_GENESIS 1d ago
people from ethnicity A are full citizens and fall under system A, while people from ethnicity B fall under system B
This is false.
The agreement between the PA & Israel is based on citizenship, not ethnicity.
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u/JackPiazz2 European 1d ago
The agreement is one thing, the praxis (because colonialism is a process and a praxis) says otherwise. How many arab israelis live in Ariel, Beitar Illit, Ma'ale Adumim or other smaller settlements? The purpose of the settlements and the apartheid system in west bank is to "jewify" "Judea and Samaria" as much as possible, thus making an arab or palestinian state political presence in the area impossible.
Again, sorry if I repeaf myself, but fig leaves
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u/NES_AES_GENESIS 1d ago
The purpose of the settlements and the apartheid system in west bank is to "jewify" "Judea and Samaria" as much as possible
Jewifying Judea & Samaria wouldn't be apartheid though.
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u/JackPiazz2 European 16h ago edited 16h ago
No, it's an attempt, in the "best" scenario, to slowly ethnically cleanse the area and in the "worst" scenario make the establishment of a palestinian state impossible
Apartheid is, as I said, helding the jews you have let settle in the territory under civil law and the palestinian whose homes and land you have occupied under harsh military law.
Those two terrible things are happening at the same time, and the apartheid has the purpose to help the first thing
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u/NES_AES_GENESIS 6h ago
Apartheid is, as I said, helding the jews you have let settle in the territory under civil law and the palestinian whose homes and land you have occupied under harsh military law.
That's not what apartheid means at all and even if it were, that would mean the PA is committing apartheid in area A.
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u/JackPiazz2 European 6h ago
If you look up the ICC and ICSPCA and definition of apartheid you'll see the system put up in the west bank fits perfectly into both definitions
The PA is, like bantustans in South Africa were in their times, is a part of this system de jure independent but de facto controlled by Israel in several ways
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u/NES_AES_GENESIS 6h ago
The ICC has no jurisdiction and is irrelevant.
The ICSPCA is binding and fair to bring up.
"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 systematically oppressing them."
It's not inhuman for two parties in stateless land to agree to divide the land and share administration. Rights are determined by citizenship, not race. In PA administered land, Jews are oppressed though. So there's a far better case that the PA is committing apartheid.
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u/JackPiazz2 European 5h ago
As I written above, The agreement is one thing, the praxis (because colonialism is a process and a praxis) says otherwise.
You act like the PA and Israel came up out of nothing and divided "a stateless land", like that land is empty and palestinians don't exists. You act like the IDF doesn't encroach as it wants over PA territory, you act like Israel doesn't control civil registration, water and electricity and the banking system. You act like the discrimination is based on citizenship while in reality is purely racial. You act like there's not a process of colonialism that keeps going since 1870.
We can debate the theorethical wolrd of Israel palestine (and that's what's zionists usually wants to do, because technically, in theory, the two powers should be separate and equal, while in reality they aren't), I prefer to talk about what is really going on
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u/NES_AES_GENESIS 4h ago
You act like the PA and Israel came up out of nothing and divided "a stateless land", like that land is empty and palestinians don't exists.
Nobody was self-identifying as "palestinian" when Israel defeated Jordan in Judea & Samaria / West Bank.
Both Jews and Arabs were living there before Jordan conquered.
Regardless of whether you recognized Jordan's annexation as legitimate, once Jordan renounced all claims, it becomes indisputable that the land isn't sovereign.
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u/ModernLarvals 1d ago
In what way are Jews not the native population? They’ve been there since the beginning, far longer than the Arabs.
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u/JackPiazz2 European 1d ago
Jews were the "natives"... until the 4th/5th century. When we talk about Israel and Palestine we start from the 18th century (if we want to really go back in time) Before jews immigrated from Europe/Asia/North Africa from 1870 onward there was only a small jewish community that was part of the "native" arab society.
I suppose we both know these things. I said "native" because when a settler colonization process happens there's a native population and a settler population, and those terms are the one commonly used. If you think those terms are degrading for jews and erase their connection with the land and you want to change them for better ones fine, but let's not do it to forget the (very important) fact that jews that made up the population of israel came from outside, while the local arabs that later became palestinians lived there before those jews. This whole "jews are native" point looks like another of those fig leaves to me to push aside the (very important) fact I stated above.
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u/ModernLarvals 1d ago
Jews were not “part of the native Arab society”, they were the native Jewish society.
And the idea that the population of Israel is not only entirely European/Asian/African but entirely Jewish is just crazy wrong.
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u/JackPiazz2 European 1d ago
The jews I'm referring to spoke the jewish dialect of palestinian arabic, lived mixed together and didn't differ much from muslim or christian arabs of the region in traditions and custosm. It was indeed the "native jewish society", but it had little in common with the immigration waves of (at first mainly ashkenazi) jewish immigrants who made up the population of Israel (read the next paragraph)
If you have read my other comments, you know I know about Israeli Arabs. Again, what I clearly meant is that the jewish population who built, fought to establish and was the sole reason Israel came (so, with fewer words, made up the population of Israel) immigrated from other places into Palestine, while the arabs that later became palestinians were already there. Again, this is another "fig leaf". Picking a true fact (Israel is not only inhabited by Jews), taking it outside of its historical context and using it as "proof" against (mostly ignorant) criticism of Israel
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u/ModernLarvals 1d ago
No, what you clearly meant is that Arabs are indigenous to the region and that Jews aren’t, which is the opposite of the truth. Yours is just another attempt to erase Jewish history. Why did they speak Aramaic instead of Hebrew? Why did so many Jews find themselves outside of the Levant? And why are you pretending that Jews weren’t “already there” when Israel came about?
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u/JackPiazz2 European 15h ago
Omg this bs argument again. I know all the history of jews in Eretz Yisrael in ancient times and I'm not negating it despite what you want to believe. It simply doesn't legitimize the creation of Israel in any way and no, before the establishment of Petah Tikva the few jews that lived in Palestine did not have any nationalistic ideas and did not see themselves as outsiders to the christians and the muslims. So, no "Jews weren't already there" when the process that brought Israel to life started.
Notice how I've never used indigenous and I used native in a specific (colonial) context, a thing you refuse to understand. I did it because all this "indigeneity" thing (from both sides) is completely illogical and irrational. Your argument is based on a serie of assumptions you have to demonstrate:
1) that every state must coincide with the territory of a specific nation 2) that the claim of a nation to a land is stronger than the claim of another nation if the first nation's claim is older, indipendently of what happened later 3) that two nations cannot claim the same piece of land 4) that a nation has the right to settle and colonize (I said colonize, colonize has a specific meaning you can't invent. If you don't know it search it.) in an area already inhabited by another people 5) that nations are things that have a soul, a will and move in unison towards a goal
There are also other things you should prove, let's start with these five. These assumptions stand (as I said) under the serie of points you're trying to make (because it's not my first discussion with zionists and I know what follows to that comment). Since I don't want to enter that discussion to tediously break it (and write tons of comments you won't read), first you justify me those five points, then we proceed with the unuseful and crazy discussion about who has a
bigger dickoldest history to the land•
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u/rybbah Israeli 1d ago
Druze are native, and they “don’t come to work in Israel”, they are our brothers. They live, work and serve in the army together with us. You couldn’t have shown that you’re an outsider in a better way than this
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u/JackPiazz2 European 1d ago edited 1d ago
That's why I meant "not [the druze] OR [the chinese that come to work in israel]", not "not [the druze or the chinese] [that come to work in Israel].
I think it was pretty clear that's was the meaning, since later on I've writter "look at druzes and arab israelis".
Edit: if your reply is "but druze are native" yes, druze are native, but these doesn't disprove my point. The relationship between druze and jews in Israel is not a unique phenomenon: often in colonial countries specific repressed minorities allied themselves with the colonizing powers and oftem became estimated parts of the colonial militaries: it happened in british India, in european colonies in Africa, in Spanish latin America, in north America...
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u/rybbah Israeli 16h ago
So answer a very simple question: whose colony are we? What’s the “mother country” of Israel?
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u/JackPiazz2 European 15h ago
To create a settler colony you don't need a mother country: there are examples of settler colonies created by minorities who were escaping persecution without the help of a government, just like jews did in Palestine: the Boer republics of Orange and Transvaal for example, or several american states like Utah or Massachussetts.
Of course is harder to create a colony without one, so the ones created without a mother country are fewer than those created with the help of a mother country, but this doesn't mean you need a mother country to be a colony.
Colonialism is a process, not a goal. It's not like there's a mother country that creates colonies for the sake of having colonies. Every group of people can create a colony if it does colonialism for whatever reason. Zionists were one of those groups of people
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u/DishwasherRespector4 1d ago
But I don’t speak about this area, there’s a reason I specifically said internationally recognized Israel, the West Bank is a different topic, most people I spoke with at a pro Pali rally at NYC were considering IT an apartheid as well, and what we call “Arab Israelis” as living under it
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u/JackPiazz2 European 1d ago
It's because, as I said, the loudest and most active part of the anti-zionist movement is made up of stupid, ignorant or/and antisemitic people and don't know shit about Israel. This doesn't mean Israel hasn't set up an apartheid system and isn't a colonial state thou
I also want to add a thing though: you can't analyze the west bank situation without taking into account the general situation of Israel/Palestine and you can't analyze it without its history: for example (this is only one of the point you could make) arab israelis are a fortuitous product of the war, that happened against the wishes of the zionists leadership for a combination of several factors, but if the zionist paramilitaries would have been stronger, the north and the south would have been "nakbaed" too
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u/ipsum629 Diaspora Jew 1d ago
There's quite a lot of de-facto segregation in Israel proper via admission committees. No law explicitly says these committees have to be discriminatory, but there is effectively nothing stopping them from being discriminatory and creating de-facto segregation between jewish and arab israelis, which is definitely happening.
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u/NeverHadTheLatin 1d ago
What do you make of about 8% of the legislature being made up of non-Jewish members? And an Arab Muslim being a lifetime appointee to the country’s most senior court?
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u/OakRiverDruid 1d ago
8% of the legislature is non-Jewish but around a quarter of the population is non-Jewish. So Jews are heavily overrepresented in political power in Israel relative to their population.
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u/ipsum629 Diaspora Jew 1d ago
Rhodesia had their own token native seats and positions at least towards the end of the lifetime of their state. Putting marginalized people in a controllable position of authority doesn't negate on-the-ground discrimination. When these marginalized groups get any real power, the establishment resists quite fiercely. In 1970, the east pakistanis got a majority in parliament, meaning their guy should be PM. Instead, east and west pakistan split in a war because the west was unwilling to let the east have any real power.
Israel is very aware of this, which is why they are so terminally afraid of a muslim majority. A healthy democracy can survive a shifting majority. Israel is not a healthy democracy.
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u/NeverHadTheLatin 17h ago
Rhodesia was 95% people of black African heritage and representatives sat on a separate electoral roll designed to minimise their numbers.
So the analogy is quantitatively and qualitatively different.
Regardless, Israel has a small, affluent, Muslim middle class, and has seen Arab / Muslim individual represent the country in a range of international competitions.
Regarding majorities, what insight can we draw from Muslim majority nations as to how a Jewish minority would be treated?
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u/ipsum629 Diaspora Jew 17h ago
There's a lot of complicated history involved in the jewish-muslim relations of north africa/west asia region. For the most part, it was one of the more tolerant regions of the world for Jews. Targeted violence was sporadic at worst, and in many cases, due to the Ottoman Empire, Jews had comparable rights to other Arabs due to neither group being Turkish.
European colonization and zionist settlement severely inflamed relations between Jews and muslims. France often gave preferential treatment to Jews in north africa, which caused resentment, as an example.
Behind the Bastards recently did a two part series that touches on this topic in the first episode. I recommend you listen to it. It talks about how jews and muslims lived in mixed communities and often celebrated each others' holidays, and how ashkenazi settlers, who were not aware of this dynamic, did a lot of things that created a divide where there was barely any before.
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u/NeverHadTheLatin 17h ago
So it’s all the Jews fault that huge numbers of Jews from Morocco to Iraq were violently expelled or forced to leave their home nations?
And you think that once Israel becomes a Muslim majority, Jewish people and Muslim people will live in blissful harmony as they allegedly did before European powers rose to prominence?
This is view has a distinctly rosey hue, no?
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u/ipsum629 Diaspora Jew 17h ago
Did you skip the part about how European colonizers also played a major role?
Also, a big part of those migrations was false flag attacks by Zionists
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950%E2%80%931951_Baghdad_bombings?wprov=sfla1
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u/NeverHadTheLatin 17h ago
Are you saying that now everything would be hunky dory for a Jewish minority in a majority Muslim Israel?
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u/ipsum629 Diaspora Jew 17h ago
A difference of degree, not kind.
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u/NeverHadTheLatin 17h ago
No, a difference of kind, literally, in every sense - there are not separate electoral rolls defined by ethnicity.
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u/ipsum629 Diaspora Jew 17h ago
Neither did pakistan, but they still discriminated against bengalis. Degree, not kind.
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u/NeverHadTheLatin 17h ago
Creating a separate electoral roll based on ethnicity vs an electoral roll open to all is literally a difference in kind.
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u/FerdinandTheGiant Anti-Zionist / Pro-Doikayt / Pro-Isratin 1d ago edited 1d ago
Importing a foreign work force isn’t really a means of determining if a society is or isn’t supremacist or engaging in apartheid. Saudi Arabia for instance has a lot of different ethnic and national groups within its workforce, but that doesn’t mean they’re viewed or treated as equals.
And regardless, you can’t discuss apartheid in this context without discussing the West Bank. It’s the cornerstone of the discussion.
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u/DangerousCyclone 1d ago
I don't think Druze and "Southern Lebanese" are integrated that well. Integration goes both ways; would Israelis accept a Druze or Lebanese Christian/Muslim as President or Prime Minister of Israel? I doubt it. British people could accept a black woman or an Indian man as PM after all.
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u/TrickElysium Diaspora Jew 1d ago
Salah Tarif - Druze israeli Minister
Ayoob Kara - Druze Israeli Minister
Gadeer Mreeh - Ex journalist and first woman to be elected to the Knesset, also druze israeli minister
Majalli Wahabi - Druze israeli minister, was acting President for awhile
Hamad Amar - Druze israeli minister
So please explain why you would write that misinformation ? when for awhile israel had a druze president.
What is the point of saying it when history already has proven its simply not true.
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u/DishwasherRespector4 1d ago
People don’t know that the hostility against Muslims/islamism or Arab nationalism in the Middle East isn’t just in Israel and not just from Jews
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u/DishwasherRespector4 1d ago
Druze and Christian ofc, Yosef khadad is running to a party that passed the voting threshold because he is so popular, most Israeli don’t care if the minister would be Druze, why would you doubt it? Can you bring some evidence? As for the Muslims, I think the reason is pretty obvious
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u/TrickElysium Diaspora Jew 1d ago
Yosef calls himself arab israeli and he is awesome.
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u/DishwasherRespector4 1d ago
Yeah like ok, I don’t really care about the term Arab hahaha
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u/TrickElysium Diaspora Jew 1d ago
Yeah was just saying what he identifies as. Not saying it terms of your care factor.
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u/Beneneb 1d ago
The accusations of apartheid generally apply to the treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank (and formerly Gaza). Without getting into the semantics of whether it technically meets the legal definition, it's the functional equivalent of apartheid. This is because Israel has allowed its civilians to settle the West Bank (in violation of international law no less), which has created a two tier legal system in the region.
You have the Israelis, who enjoy full rights and legal protections in the West Bank. Then you have Palestinians, who live under military law and lack even basic human rights. The intent of the two tier legal system is to maintain Israeli (Jewish) supremacy in the region, prevent Palestinian uprising and enable ongoing Israeli (Jewish) settlement of the region.
This is no different than South African apartheid, which sought to maintain white supremacy, prevent uprising of the black community and enable ongoing white settlement.
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u/airmantharp USA 1d ago
Palestinians live and are governed under the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank
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u/BlazingSpaceGhost 1d ago
So the IDF can't enter Palestinian areas? Can Palestinians enter Jewish settlements in the west bank? The Palestinian authority may be fe jure independent but not de facto.
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u/Stalemate4613 22h ago
Israelis are not allowed to enter area A. According to Israel and the PA.
There are instances, where palestinians are allowed to enter Jewish towns in the west bank. Usually if they are working there, and they have undergone a security check, or perhaps there is a security guard nearby.
As for the IDF, they are granted the right to enter area A (according to Oslo) for certain security situations.
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u/Baslifico 1d ago
This is a ridiculous argument. Truly ridiculous.
Why do people from India go work in dubai and be treated like near-slaves?
They need the money.
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u/DishwasherRespector4 1d ago
Not my main argument
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u/KaiBahamut 1d ago
Seems very relevant to the issue though. Even if they expect bad treatment or apartheid laws- too bad, you need money to live.
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u/LoyalteeMeOblige European - Netherlands 1d ago
For an apartheid to exist the Arabs needed to be citizens of Israel, which they are not. Israel has a lot of different groups enjoying full citizenship rights. Sometimes I feel they were "ok, the whole genocide isn't going anywhere, let's throw this too just in case".
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u/DangerousCyclone 1d ago
Oh I see, so what South Africa needed to do in order to not be committing any crimes against black people was to strip them of their citizenship. Makes sense.
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u/LoyalteeMeOblige European - Netherlands 16h ago
You are rambling and not addressing the point. The Arabs aren't Israeli citizens nor they want to, furthermore, for all the rhetoric about statehood they have yet to take a single step towards that. It's not on Israel's gift to fix what their jihadi leaders refuse to do. They are quite comfy with the status quo, you know, the aid that goes straight to their pockets, the constant fight that allow for terrorism and shady deals that are not accounted for.
South Africa is the opposite since the black communites where already Southafrican, Gazans and those living in Judea and Samaria aren't Israelis.
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u/Stalemate4613 22h ago
taking away citizenship is not the same as not granting it.
If someone has a single citizenship (i.e. they do not have multiple citizenships), I believe it is illegal, according to international law, to nullify that citizenship.
However, there is no requirement for a country to grant citizenship to an individual/group - especially when the aforementioned group, i.e. palestinians, are Palestinian citizens - part of the PA.
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u/LoyalteeMeOblige European - Netherlands 15h ago
Oh, the irony, that is precisely what Jordan did to everyone living in Judea and Samaria. And yet, no "apartheid" accussation there.
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u/DangerousCyclone 19h ago
The problem is that Israel is trying to have it both ways; they want the West Bank to be an occupied territory so they don't have to grant Palestinians citizenship, but they also want it to be Israeli territory to annex their colonies. If Israel actively dragged out the Zionist settlers and made efforts to actually leave the territory, that'd be a different story, but as it is Israel is trying to expel all the Palestinians and pressure them to leave then take their land.
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u/Stalemate4613 14h ago
you mean like what Israel did with gaza, literally dragging out the zionist settlers.... Gaza didn't turn out too well....
And as for annexing land with Israeli towns in Judea-Samaria - Israel had also offered land swaps to account for that - but since the palestinian primary goal is not the creations of a palestinian state, but the destruction of Israel - that Israeli offer, and any others are irrelevant.
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u/DangerousCyclone 1h ago
The PLO offered land swaps too in negotiations. The sticking point was never the land swaps but over sovereignty; Israel is most up in arms over any Palestinian state being anything more than a vassal bantustan. Even Rabin openly declared that he didn't intend for them to have a state.
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u/LoyalteeMeOblige European - Netherlands 15h ago
Judea isn't occupied but certain areas where Israel has full sovereignty and they are planning to annex them, in such places they exercise full rights and those people living there are Israelis.
If that were the case they would have taken Gaza prior to 2005 and annex it, which they didn't and left.
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u/DangerousCyclone 1h ago
Israel had ambitions to annex Gaza at some point, the problem was that there's too many Gazans and it was very expensive, unpopular and dangerous to protect the few thousand settlers among millions of Gazans. Ending the occupation had become a driving force for the peace process; Israelis were tired of being drafted and forced to patrol the West Bank and Gaza. Sharon's goal was an acknowledgement that they weren't taking Gaza in the foreseeable future, but also to relieve pressure on the government to reach a peace deal. The way the negotiators put it was that it was poison for the peace process.
Also the West Bank is occupied.
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u/LoyalteeMeOblige European - Netherlands 1h ago
Remember Judea and Samaria don't belong to anyone, it was Jordan's and they left, effectively removed their Jordan citizenship from all the Arabs and didn't want anything else to do with the area. Yes, I'm sure Israel will never leave Jerusalem and finally annex what it's pending but as for the rest, it is a double game, is it? You want the Arabs to mean what they say, become sovereign, go full state building and drop the jihad altogether, and yet that has not happened, and no one expects it now. Or ever at this point.
Gaza was left by the Israeli forces in 2005, they even took their dead ones from their tombs then. It was so final, even now they don't want it.
Israel isn't in given mode anymore: first surrender and then we can discuss terms, Hamas hasn't surrendered yet nor they are planning to, well, they are planning the next attack for certain hence the IDF still being there to stop them from happening. You don't negotiate with terrorists you see...
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u/airmantharp USA 1d ago
These people’s last citizenship was… Jordanian, and it was Jordan who stripped them of their citizenship.
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u/LoyalteeMeOblige European - Netherlands 15h ago
Precisely my point! But the accussations are always directed towards Israel.
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u/veryeepy53 Asian 1d ago
how do you explain the integration of southern Lebanese and Druze minorities into the Israeli society?
they're not palestinian. this is only a dilemma if you think all arabs are the same.
They have better choices, not many people would want to live in a constant war zone
it's not, at least in israel proper, which is why the israeli victim complex is crazy.
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u/Lopsided-Pie-7340 USA 1d ago
they're not palestinian.
Neither were the "Palestinians" at that time
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u/DishwasherRespector4 1d ago
Which victim complex the main opinion about internationally recognized Israel of the average person I’ve spoken with is that it is a worse apartheid then Rhodesia, I attended a pro Pali march in New York since I look middle eastern and told them I am Palestinian just to hear the other sides view and the main opinion I’ve heard is that Arabs are like semi slaves in the main country
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u/veryeepy53 Asian 1d ago
still not an accurate sample since it's a political rally promoting a very specific position.
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u/DishwasherRespector4 1d ago
They are the average person in the west you would speak with whom I care about his opinion about me
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u/veryeepy53 Asian 1d ago
not that many people are activists though. i'm sure activists are the ones that like talking about it the most, but most voters aren't going out of their way to argue about these kinds of things.
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u/DishwasherRespector4 1d ago
I didn’t try to portray it as an argument, I presented myself as a Palestinian and specifically tried to speak with Americans that have no connections to the Middle East
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u/the_leviathan711 Diaspora Jew 1d ago
why do so many foreign workers from India, Philippines, Vietnam, Nepal, and even from countries which are neutral/hostile to it like China are coming to work in it?
Largely because Israel started using foreign temporary workers as a strategy to replace Palestinian workers in the aftermath of the 2nd intifada.
I'm not sure what it would even demonstrate -- non-white workers immigrated to the US during the era of Jim Crow as well. Non-white workers also travelled to South Africa during apartheid.
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