Defining apartheid
(In response to Oday Shahin’s Oct. 11 column, “Study abroad program sends wrong message.”) Oday Shahin’s comparison between Israel and apartheid South Africa is not as controversial as it initially seems. Indeed, many high-ranking Israeli officials (including the former Israeli Attorney General Michael Ben-Yair and the former Israeli Ministers of Education Yossi Sarid and Shulamit Aloni) and reputable Israeli human rights organizations (B’Tselem, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel) have made the exact same comparison.
It is shocking, however, that no one within the recent dialogue over Israel and Palestine attempts to give a definition of “apartheid.” Let us define apartheid now, so you, the reader, can judge Israel’s policies on your own.
According to the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, the term “apartheid” applies to “inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining […] over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them.” Article II(b) of the treaty specifically states that apartheid occurs through deliberately imposing “living conditions calculated to cause [a group’s] physical destruction.”
So, does Israel impose destructive living conditions on Palestinians? Throughout the West Bank, the Israeli occupation has developed a system of checkpoints that control the movement of Palestinian people, economic commerce and important medical supplies.
John Dugard, a special rapporteur to the [United Nations] on the human rights situation in Palestine and South African professor of law, argues that these checkpoints “resemble the ‘pass laws’ of apartheid South Africa, which required black South Africans to demonstrate permission to travel or reside anywhere in South Africa.”
Article II(c) of the convention then states that apartheid is “… calculated to prevent a racial group or groups from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country.”
Israel’s citizenship law may violate this section of the International Convention on Apartheid. This citizenship law does not permit a Palestinian from the West Bank or Gaza Strip to gain Israeli citizenship via marriage, while a person of any other nationality who marries an Israeli can apply for citizenship rights.
The law also prevents children of such marriages who are born in Israel from becoming citizens: they must emigrate at the age of 12 to the West Bank or Gaza Strip. According to Israeli Haaretz reporter, Armos Schocken, the law’s “existence in the law books turns Israel into an apartheid state.” And a Supreme Court justice argued that this law creates “a violation of rights [that] is directed against Arab citizens of Israel. As a result, therefore, the law is a violation of the right of Arab citizens in Israel to equality.”
Finally, Israel’s oldest and largest human rights organization, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, stated in its annual 2008 report: “This state of affairs in which all the services, budgets and the access to natural resources are granted along discriminatory and separatist lines according to ethnic-national criteria is a blatant violation of the principle of equality, and is in many ways reminiscent of the Apartheid regime in South Africa ... It is also important to note that such a state of affairs is in total contradiction of the principles of international law.”
I leave to my reader to determine if the Israeli government’s policies in Israel and the military occupation in the West Bank have created “systematic oppression” of the Palestinian people. But above all: Educate yourself on issues of human rights abuses and strive to educate others. As Nelson Mandela, the post-apartheid leader of South Africa, stated, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”
Danielle Bäck Undergraduate
