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by CloudYeller 924 days ago
I dislike repeating myself but once again, per Wikipedia, apartheid is a "system of institutionalised racial segregation".

That Amnesty article contradicts that definition. It's talking about mistreating people in East Jerusalem, aka The West Bank, which again, is not part of Israel, has its own government, etc. And what is the primary race of those people in the West Bank? Arab. And Arabs comprise how much of the Israeli population? Around 20%. And are those Israeli Arabs being systemically mistreated, as though by apartheid? If they are, then this "apartheid" not only directly opposes Israel's declaration of independence, but it's a strange type of Apartheid that is highly supportive of Arabs becoming doctors at roughly double the expected rate per capita in Israel.

Yes, Israel is treating people differently, but it's not based on skin color or race. It's based on whether they live inside its national borders.

This is a complex and nuanced situation but please try to understand that it's dangerous to unilaterally redefine words the way that Amnesty does in that article. There's a huge difference between widespread systemic racism and some bad apples illegally occupying land outside a nation's borders.

1 comments

It appears that they do not contradict that definition. Please read this article, where you can find the definitions in the context of the crime of apartheid:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_of_apartheid

There is a section there about definition of racial discrimination, it's not only about race.

"According to the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD),

the term "racial discrimination" shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.[17]

This definition does not make any difference between discrimination based on ethnicity and race, in part because the distinction between the two remains debatable among anthropologists.[18] Similarly, in British law the phrase racial group means "any group of people who are defined by reference to their race, colour, nationality (including citizenship) or ethnic or national origin"

TIL. But even if you count nationality-based mistreatment as apartheid, Israel contains many Palestinians: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_citizens_of_Isra...

To be fair, Israel was doing some bad stuff to them within its borders in the 1960s but "In 1966, martial law was lifted completely, and the government set about dismantling most of the discriminatory laws, while Arab citizens were granted the same rights as Jewish citizens under law".

It seems like the main issue today is treating people differently based on whether they currently live on the other side of a national border. Ex: apparently marriage to an Israeli is no longer a path to Israeli citizenship for Palestinians residing outside Israel- https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israels-knesset-pa...

But many, if not most, countries have policies that similarly punish people outside their borders so I don't see how that is particularly damning for Israel.

And Israel has been editing the equivalent of their Bill of Rights (ie. the Israeli Basic Laws) to grant certain civil rights fundamentally only to it's Jewish citizens.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-adopts-divisive-la...

Have you even read the actual legal text [1] for the Nation-State law? It basically just says that Israel will always retain certain elements of Jewish culture such as the flag, anthem, holidays, and official language. No one is preventing non-Jews from partaking in those cultural artifacts, just like how no one is preventing Mexican Americans from celebrating the 4th of July and no one prevents them from speaking Spanish.

Is every country now required to sing Kumbaya and officially honor every major culture within a 1000km radius? Can they not officially declare that certain cultural things are more important to them than others?

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Law:_Israel_as_the_Nat...

The problem I have is with part 1C

> The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.

What would happen if that part was removed and 100 years from now, another group tried to claim Israel as their self-determined government?

Every time Jewish people try to be a peaceful minority inside someone else's society, they face discrimination, exile, or pogroms. And it just happens that many government leaders of neighboring countries have repeatedly declared their intention (or heck, literally tried) to mass murder them.

Those are not the main issues.