The term “apartheid” is the Afrikaner word for “apartness.”  It was coined in the 1930s and became systematized as South African policy in 1948 when the Afrikaner Nationalists took power. It is a system of institutionalized segregation designed to perpetuate the supremacy of the dominant group. It reflects a belief that certain people are less human than others.  

Although apartheid is identified with South Africa, the United Nations took steps to universalize its meaning. On November 30, 1973, the UN General Assembly adopted the “International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid.”  

The Convention emphasized that “the crime of apartheid”—which was defined as a crime against humanity—was not exclusive to South Africa. Instead,  it “shall include similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practiced in southern Africa” and listed those “inhuman acts” committed to establish and maintain domination by one “racial group” over any other racial group, resulting in its systematic oppression.  

The term has long been applied to Israel/Palestine by Palestinian NGOs such as Al Haq, leaders of the fight against South African apartheid including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, international law experts like John Dugard and even by high-ranking Jewish Israeli leaders including two former Israeli ambassadors to South Africa. In 2021, major reports on Israel’s apartheid practices were produced by the Israeli group B’Tselem, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch.  The term does not demonize Israelis or Jews; it accurately describes a political system.

Israeli apartheid takes many forms. It covers all aspects of life, including the very concept of Israel as a Jewish state—that is, a state that defines itself as a Jewish state rather than a state for all its citizens. More than 50 provisions of Israel’s principal laws discriminate, either directly or indirectly, against non-Jews.

Under Israeli military occupation, millions of Palestinians face the following conditions:

• Physical separation from Israelis and from each other by Israel’s 403-mile-long “separation wall”  

• No right of free speech, assembly, or movement

• Arrest and imprisonment without charge or trial

• Night raids and house searches

• Land appropriation, home demolitions, and destruction of crops

• Assassination, extra-judicial murder

• No right to vote for the Israeli government that controls their lives

• Separate transportation systems and Jewish-only roads

• Israeli control of all Palestinian borders, all imports and exports, and all movement between towns and cities 

• Total impunity for settlers who take over Palestinian property, livelihoods, and lives

• Unequal legal systems

• Unequal educational systems

• Unequal access to water  

• Separation of families

• Unequal health care and lack of access to hospitals, and separate maternity wards for Jewish and Palestinian mothers

• Lack of self-determination in all areas of life

“Inhuman acts” like these led UN Special Rapporteur Michael Lynk to conclude in his final March 2022 report:

 “This is apartheid. It does not have some of the same features as practiced in southern Africa; in particular, much of what has been called ‘petit apartheid’ is not present. On the other hand, there are pitiless features of Israel’s ‘apartness’ rule in the occupied Palestinian territory that were not practiced in southern Africa, such as segregated highways, high walls and extensive checkpoints, a barricaded population, missile strikes and tank shelling of a civilian population, and the abandonment of the Palestinians’ social welfare to the international community.  With the eyes of the international community wide open, Israel has imposed upon Palestine an apartheid reality in a post-apartheid world.”