Blood Libel #2 | “Israel is an Apartheid State.”
Anti-Zionist:
Israel is an apartheid state, just like South Africa was.
Pro-Zionist:
Can you explain what “apartheid” means, and how it applies to a country where Arab citizens vote, serve in the parliament, and sit on the Supreme Court and protests its government freely?
(Let them attempt to define apartheid as systemic discrimination.)
Apartheid, as defined under international law, is “an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over another.”
So let’s ask:
Do Arab citizens of Israel have the right to vote? Yes.
Do they serve in the Knesset, judiciary, medical field, military, and police? Yes.
Do they have freedom of speech, religion, and assembly? Yes.
This isn’t apartheid — it’s a multiethnic democracy with legal protections for minorities and a long tradition of internal dissent and activism.
In fact, Israelis — Jews and Arabs alike — regularly protest their own government’s policies, including on issues like West Bank settlements, judicial reform, and the treatment of Palestinians.
So if your claim is that Israel is an apartheid state, the facts just don’t back it up.
(At this point, they may try to refute the claims… to which there is no credible refutation, or they will attempt to clarify they aren’t talking about the state of Israel but instead they are talking about Judea & Samaria or the so-called “West Bank”.)
Ah — so you’re not talking about the State of Israel. You’re talking about a territory with a disputed status under international law, governed in part by the Palestinian Authority, and subject to Oslo security arrangements that both sides agreed to.
Are there restrictions in the West Bank? Yes — but they are based on security, not race.
And much of the West Bank is governed by Palestinian leadership, not Israel.
If you want to discuss the challenges of a prolonged conflict, that’s fair.
But calling it “apartheid” slanders the only democracy in the region, and it erases the real suffering of South Africans who endured true apartheid — where they had no vote, no freedom, no access to power, and no representation.
BEYOND THE TALKING POINTS:
I would encourage you to really dig in and learn more about the facts behind what led to the “Occupation” of the “Disputed Territory” of Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”).
The Six-Day War in 1967: A War for Survival
Few lies have done more to distort public understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than the claim that Israel’s so-called “occupation” began with a war of colonial conquest in 1967. This falsehood has become a cornerstone of the modern blood libel against the Jewish state—a libel that erases the true context of the Six-Day War and flips the moral landscape upside down.
Before the War: No Palestinian State, No “Occupation”
In 1967, Israel was a small, embattled democracy bordered by hostile regimes. The Gaza Strip was not “Palestinian land”—it was under Egyptian military occupation. The “West Bank”, including East Jerusalem, was annexed by Jordan, which had barred Jews from accessing holy sites like the Western Wall and destroyed 58 synagogues. These territories were not earmarked for a Palestinian state. For nearly 20 years, the Arab world controlled both Gaza and the West Bank and chose not to create one.
The notion of a sovereign “Palestine” did not exist. No Arab regime called for one. No Palestinian leader governed one. And yet, the very Arab nations that had denied Palestinians their own state were preparing for war—not to liberate Palestine, but to destroy Israel.
The Lead-Up: A Coordinated Attempt to Annihilate Israel
In May 1967, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser escalated tensions by demanding the withdrawal of UN peacekeepers from the Sinai Peninsula. He then blockaded the Straits of Tiran, cutting off Israel’s maritime access to Asia and oil—a move universally recognized as an act of war.
Nasser massed over 100,000 Egyptian troops near Israel’s southern border and declared:
“Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel.”
— Gamal Abdel Nasser, May 26, 1967
Syria, meanwhile, stepped up attacks from the Golan Heights. Jordan signed a military pact with Egypt and opened its borders to Iraqi troops. Arab media boomed with genocidal threats. The world watched in silence as Israel faced the prospect of a second Holocaust.
The War: Preemptive, Defensive, and Existential
In Israel and the West it is called the Six Day War. In the Arab world, it is known as the June War, or simply as "the Setback." Never has a conflict so short, unforeseen and largely unwanted by both sides so transformed the world. The Yom Kippur War, the war in Lebanon, the Camp David accords, the controversy over Jerusalem and Jewish settlements in West Bank, the intifadas and the rise of Palestinian terror: all are part of the outcome of those six days of intense Arab-Israeli fighting in the summer of 1967.1
On June 5, 1967, Israel launched a preemptive strike against Egypt’s air force, crippling it within hours. Despite Israeli warnings to stay out, Jordanian forces began shelling Jerusalem and advancing into Israeli territory. In response, Israel captured East Jerusalem and the West Bank. On the northern front, Israel neutralized Syrian artillery by taking the Golan Heights. By June 10, the war was over—and Israel had tripled its size in six days.
But these territorial gains were not the result of imperial ambition. They were the result of a desperate war for survival. Israel captured land from regimes that had used it to wage war—land that had never belonged to a Palestinian government because no such government had ever existed.
The Aftermath: Israel Offers Peace, the Arab World Rejects It
Immediately after the war, Israel made it clear: it did not seek permanent control over these territories. It offered to return land in exchange for peace.
One of the most enduring lies in the campaign to delegitimize Israel is the claim that UN Security Council Resolution 242 requires Israel to withdraw from all land captured in 1967—and that its continued presence in the West Bank is therefore illegal. This is a deliberate distortion of the resolution’s language and intent.
Passed after the Six-Day War, Resolution 242 calls for Israel to withdraw from “territories occupied”—not “allterritories,” and not “the territories.” That omission was intentional. The British ambassador who drafted the resolution, Lord Caradon, confirmed:
“We didn’t say ‘all the territories’ because we didn’t want to say it.”
The resolution ties withdrawal to peace. It affirms Israel’s right to secure and recognized boundaries, not a return to the vulnerable 1949 armistice lines. Yet after the war, Israel’s offer to negotiate peace was met with the Arab League’s answer which came in September 1967 at Khartoum with the infamous “3 Nos”:
“No peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel.”
The truth is simple: Israel is not in violation of 242. The Arab world rejected peace, and Palestinian statehood was never denied by Israel—it was denied by Arab leaders who preferred eternal conflict over coexistence. Resolution 242 is not a weapon against Israel. It’s a roadmap to peace—one the other side still refuses to follow.
Regardless of the foregoing, in a gesture of restraint, Israel did not annex Gaza or the West Bank. It allowed the Islamic Waqf to retain authority over the Temple Mount, and in East Jerusalem, Arab residents were offered Israeli citizenship. The occupation that followed was not a product of Zionist expansionism. It was a product of Arab rejectionism.
The Blood Libel Today: Turning Self-Defense Into Sin
And yet today, activists, academics, and journalists accuse Israel of having “occupied Palestine” since 1967—as if there had been a Palestinian state to occupy. They claim Israel “ethnically cleansed” Palestinians, though no mass expulsion occurred. They scream “colonialism,” ignoring that Jews are indigenous to the land and that Egypt and Jordan—not Britain or France—had been the occupying powers before 1967.
This inversion of truth is not simply ignorant—it is malicious. It casts Israel’s fight for survival as a war of aggression. It erases the decades of Arab denialism and failed leadership. And it turns the victim of genocidal threats into the villain.
What We Must Remember
In 1967, Israel acted in self-defense, not conquest.
There was no Palestinian state to occupy—because the Arab world refused to create one.
After the war, Israel offered peace, and it was rejected.
If the world had accepted Israel’s peace offer in 1967, there could have been a Palestinian state for the past 57 years. Instead, there has been only war, lies, and blood libels.
Judea & Samaria the so called “West Bank”
The “West Bank” refers to the west bank of the Jordan River. It is also called by its biblical and geographic names of Judea and Samaria, or beyond the ‘Green Line’ that marked the boundary prior to 1967.
For Israel its significance is both religious and strategic. Often referred to as ‘the cradle of Jewish civilisation’, it is where the majority of biblical stories took place. It is also important strategically. Topographically, the mountain ridge overlooks Israel’s coastal plane. It also provides an element of strategic depth, without the West Bank Israel would be just 9 miles wide at its narrowest point.
Israeli settlements were first built in 1967 and gradually expanded across the West Bank with significant blocs east and south of Jerusalem. The population of the West Bank is estimated at just under 3 million, made up of around 500,000 Jews and 2.5 million Palestinians.
To gain a fulsome understanding of the current situation in Judea and Samaria, you need to study the Oslo Accords. The Oslo Accords, signed in 1993 (Oslo I) and 1995 (Oslo II) were intended to act as the basis of a road map to a comprehensive peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The Oslo Accords had the potential to mark a significant turning point in Israeli-Palestinian relations. For the first time, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) mutually recognized each other, with the stated aim of negotiating a final peace settlement.
These “accords” were mutually agreed upon by both Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as part of a transitional framework toward a negotiated two-state solution.
While Oslo offered hope for a two-state solution, the peace process was severely undermined by waves of Palestinian terrorism, including suicide bombings, shootings, and other attacks during the mid-to-late 1990s and early 2000s. Hamas and other rejectionist groups opposed to Oslo launched attacks designed to derail negotiations, and Israel responded with targeted operations. This cycle of violence, including the Second Intifada (2000–2005)—which erupted after failed final status talks at Camp David under President Bill Clinton in 2000—further hardened attitudes on both sides and led to a breakdown of trust .
Here is Former U.S. President Bill Clinton shares inside details on Yasser Arafat’s failure to accept an Israeli peace deal that would have granted Palestinians nearly the entire West Bank and a capital in East Jerusalem. Clinton reflects on Israel’s right to self-defense in the face of continued violence from Hamas. Highlighting Israel’s ancient historical ties to Judea and Samaria, Clinton rejects claims against Israel’s legitimacy. He critiques Hamas’s intentions, arguing that its primary goal isn’t Palestinian statehood but rather the destruction of Israel – a stance that endangers Palestinians too. Clinton also addresses Middle Eastern geopolitics, warning of a growing alliance between Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas. He urges world leaders to recognize the complexity of the conflict and support lasting peace based on truth and security. Subscribe for in-depth insights on the Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts and regional stability.
As part of Oslo II, Israel & the PLO agreed to divide the “West Bank” into three administrative zones:
Area A (about 18% of the West Bank) was placed under full Palestinian civil and security control,
Area B (about 22%) under Palestinian civil control with shared Israeli-Palestinian security oversight, and
Area C (about 60%) remained under full Israeli civil and security control.
This arrangement was intended to be temporary, with further redeployments based on future negotiations.
The Settlements
With respect to the Israeli settlements that are purported to be a violation of international law, it is important to note that the settlements — including all government-authorized settlements and “unauthorized outposts”—are located in Area C, which the Oslo framework placed under Israeli control during the interim period. No Israeli settlements exist in Areas A or B, which are administered by the Palestinian Authority (PA) . Despite criticism of Israeli settlement expansion in Area C, it is important to note that Oslo did not prohibit such activity in that zone during the interim period. Final borders and sovereignty were left unresolved and were to be determined in future negotiations. Today, the legacy of Oslo remains hotly contested: some view it as a failed peace plan, others as a missed opportunity subverted by extremists and political intransigence on both sides.
This is a very poignant article by Nachum Kaplan of the newsletter, “Moral Clarity” republished in the Future of Jewish substack entitled: “Everything you know about Israeli settlements is wrong. Few seem to know about the Palestinian Authority's vast illegal settlement program in Judea and Samaria (also known as the West Bank) and the strategy behind it.” Please take the time to read it.
As I highlighted at the outset, there is so much propaganda disguised as scholarly work. This article is a perfect example, it’s entitled “The Illusion of Oslo” by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace which was published 3 weeks prior to October 7th by Nur Arafeh As ChatGPT concludes:
This is not a neutral analysis but rather a polemic from a pro-Palestinian perspective. It selectively presents facts, omits key historical context, attributes malicious intent to Israel, and idealizes Palestinian steadfastness. That doesn’t mean every claim is false—but the article is ideologically driven and should be read critically alongside more balanced sources.
Be careful. Ensure you research everything you read.
Thomas Pueyo also does a good job of describing the situation in the so called “West Bank”. Lots of challenging subjects to explore. In “The Problem of West Bank Settlements” Thomas points out:
“I mentioned before why Israel is settling the West Bank. It’s all about security. But Palestinians don’t give much of it. It’s not just the past: the pogroms before independence, the three Arab attacks on Israel, the two Intifadas…When Israel did give Palestinians more independence, like in Gaza or by withdrawing from parts of the West Bank in the Oslo Accords, it’s been systematically followed by increased violence, like Hamas’s takeover in Gaza and the 2nd Intifada, much more aggressive than the 1st one. So Israelis did try to give authority to Palestinians.”
It’s complicated and unfortunately it has helped our enemies create the narrative that “Israel” is a colonizer and an apartheid state. But the “West Bank” is not technically Israel in large part because of the Oslo Accords which were meant to bring peace. Peace, however, is a two-way street!
According to Wikipedia (at least as of this writing):
The West Bank is a landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the Levant region of Western Asia that forms the main bulk of the Palestinian territories. It is bordered by Jordan and the Dead Sea to the east and by Israel (see Green Line) to the south, west, and north. It has been under an Israeli military occupation since the 1967 Arab–Israeli War. Since the Oslo II Accord was signed in 1995, its area has been split into 165 Palestinian enclaves under total or partial civil administration by the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), and a contiguous area containing 230 Israeli settlements into which Israeli law is "pipelined". Israel administers the West Bank – sans East Jerusalem – as the Judea and Samaria Area division.
So yes… the West Bank is complicated. But it’s not Gaza and it’s not Israel.
The promise of the two-state solution may be fading away… but it is entirely unreasonable to blame Israel! Israel has offered land for peace many times and its enemies simply aren’t interested in peace. Once again it’s causation vs correlation.
But let’s talk about the settlements as an impediment to peace.
Critics often claim that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are the central obstacle to peace. But this claim deserves serious scrutiny—especially when considered alongside the conflicting positions held by many of Israel’s loudest opponents.
On the one hand, we are told to believe that the chant “From the river to the sea” is not a call for the eradication of Israel (a lie), but rather a vision for peaceful coexistence in a single democratic state. If that were true — if the aim were truly one binational state where Jews and Arabs live side by side—then why is Jewish presence in the West Bank treated as a crime? Why would Jewish homes in Judea and Samaria be any more controversial than Arab ones in Tel Aviv or Haifa?
If the vision is coexistence, settlements should not be the problem. The answer is it wouldn’t be. So the only conclusion must be that they don’t want to live side by side with their jewish neighbors.
So let’s look at the rhetoric around settlements in a two-state solution.
Israel has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to trade land for peace, including dismantling settlements.
In 1979, Israel returned the entire Sinai Peninsula to Egypt—over 80% of the land it had captured in the defensive 6 day war in 1967—in order to achieve peace with Egypt.
In 2000 and 2008, Israel offered the Palestinians nearly all of the West Bank and a capital in East Jerusalem. Each time, Israel said yes. Each time, the Palestinian leadership said no.
And specifically with respect to settlements, in 2005, Israel forcibly evacuated every Israeli from Gaza—over 8,000 citizens forcibly uprooted from their homes by the IDF. In return, Israel didn’t get peace. It got suicide bombers and rockets. Hamas seized control, turned Gaza into a terror base, and launched thousands of attacks on Israeli civilians.
So if Israel has a track record of trading land for peace and from withdrawing from territory—sometimes at great internal cost—then blaming settlements for the absence of peace rings hollow.
The reality is this: peace hasn’t been rejected because of where Jews live in the West Bank—it’s been rejected because of where Jews live, period.
When you understand the full context you’ll understand what the slogan “From the river to the sea Palestine will be Free” really means. When you hear Palestinian’s chant this in Arabic, it’s chillingly clear. They say:
“Min al-nahr ila al-bahr, Filastin ‘Arabiyya”. (من النهر إلى البحر ستكون فلسطين عربية)
This translates to:
“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be Arab.”
This is not a call to end occupation. It is a call to erase Israel entirely. It means no place for Jewish sovereignty between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. In that worldview, Tel Aviv is a settlement. Haifa is occupation. The problem is not the presence of Jews in Area C (which per the terms of the Oslo Accords is controlled by Israel — it’s the presence of Jews at all from the river to the sea.
So when is it fair to ask: how long can a nation keep offering peace when its outstretched hand is met—time and again—with violence, rejection, and betrayal?
This isn’t just a political calculus. It’s a human one.
Imagine growing up in a society where every generation is told: “We tried. We offered. We left. And they still came to kill us.” Imagine what that does to the national psyche—to the young people watching rockets rain down from land Israel gave away, to the parents teaching their children to hope for peace while preparing for war.
Hope becomes harder to hold when every concession is answered with bloodshed. Trust becomes a luxury. And yet, remarkably, many Israelis still say they would support a two-state solution—if only there were a real partner for peace.
If protests around the world were truly about peace, they wouldn’t glorify Hamas or Hezbollah or Iran while chanting slogans that deny Israel’s existence. They would call for the liberation of Gaza from Hamas’s tyranny. They would acknowledge that coexistence requires compromise from both sides. And they would recognize that the real obstacle to peace is not Israeli settlements—it’s the ongoing war against Israel’s right to exist.
Formal vs. Full Citizenship – Understanding the Jewish Democratic Model
Some critics claim that because Israel self-identifies as a Jewish state, it cannot also be a liberal democracy. But this assumes a false binary. Many democratic nations (such as Ireland, Greece, or Finland) tie national identity to ethnicity, language, or religion, while still upholding civil rights for all citizens. Israel is no different in this regard—it is both Jewish and democratic, and while not perfect, it does provide legal equality and individual rights to all of its citizens, including its Arab minority.
As Professor Raphael Cohen-Almagor argues in his piece, “Israeli Palestinians: Between Formal and Full Citizenship,
Arab citizens of Israel enjoy formal citizenship: they vote, serve in parliament, access courts, express their views freely, and participate in nearly every sector of society. This is not apartheid.
Cohen-Almagor himself rejects the apartheid label as inaccurate and inflammatory. He writes:
While Israeli Palestinians do not always receive equal treatment and they de facto at times are discriminated against, Israeli Palestinians do not live under anything that resembles South African apartheid.
Instead, he calls for greater efforts to close the gap between formal citizenship (legal equality) and full citizenship(social and economic equity). This is a valid aspiration—and it mirrors the ongoing challenges of every liberal democracy.
It’s a sad fact that discrimination and inherent biases exist in all democrat societies, including within the United States, which has long struggled with disparities in education, housing, policing, and economic access for minorities. It’s human nature after all. But Israel exists in a unique situation amongst first world nations given that it is surrounded by Arab populations and Islamist regimes that have persecuted a 100 year war against the existence of a Jewish State.
To equate those internal disparities with apartheid is a distortion—one that falsely compares Israel’s flawed but pluralistic democracy with a brutal, race-based system of domination that systematically excluded Black South Africans from all political rights.
The idea of a “Jewish democracy” is not inherently contradictory. Just as France can be a French republic while protecting Algerian Muslims or African immigrants, so too can Israel be a homeland for the Jewish people while safeguarding the rights of its non-Jewish citizens. It is worth noting that even Cohen-Almagor acknowledges the legitimacy of this arrangement:
While there is the need for a home for the Jewish people… Israel should retain its democratic character.
Israel, like every democracy, can always do better in ensuring equity for all its citizens. But imperfect democracy is not apartheid. Israel’s commitment to civil rights—especially for its minorities in a region dominated by authoritarian regimes—sets it apart, not beneath, other nations. And using the language of apartheid to delegitimize Israel doesn’t help Palestinian citizens—it erases the real moral complexity of building a democratic state amidst decades of regional war and existential threat.
Footnotes:
Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East. Winner of the 2003 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History. Michael B. Oren's Six Days of War is the most comprehensive history ever published of this dramatic and pivotal event, the first to explore it both as a military struggle and as a critical episode in the global Cold War. Oren spotlights all the participants--Arab, Israeli, Soviet, and American--telling the story of how the war broke out and of the shocking ways it unfolded. Drawing on thousands of top-secret documents, on rare papers in Russian and Arabic, and on exclusive personal interviews, Six Days of War recreates the regional and international context which, by the late 1960s, virtually assured an Arab-Israeli conflagration. Also examined are the domestic crises in each of the battling states, and the extraordinary personalities--Moshe Dayan and Gamal Abdul Nasser, Hafez al-Assad and Yitzhak Rabin, Lyndon Johnson and Alexei Kosygin--that precipitated this earthshaking clash.