Yes, It's Apartheid

[July 2026]

Listen, I get why the word "apartheid" makes people lose their shit in Israel-Palestine discourse. It is heavy. It conjures images of South Africa, with its pass laws and brutal racial hierarchy, and nobody wants to be on the wrong side of that history. But as a post-Zionist who wants Israel to thrive as a Jewish homeland, I am done dancing around the reality. Yes, what Israel maintains in the occupied Palestinian territories is apartheid. Not the existence of Israel itself. Not the idea of a safe haven for Jews. The occupation and the system of control it imposes on Palestinians. That is the apartheid we are calling out.

First, let us clear the air on the usual knee-jerk reactions. Zionists often say, "Hey, twenty percent of Israel's citizens are Arab and they have equal rights." Fair point on the surface. Arab Israelis vote, sit in the Knesset, attend universities, and live with legal citizenship inside the Green Line. They are not herded into Bantustans or stripped of basic civil status like Black South Africans under apartheid. But this misses the point entirely. When critics like me say "apartheid," we are not talking about the internal makeup of Israel proper. We are talking about the territories occupied since 1967. That is where the dual system kicks in hard.

The other deflection is that calling it apartheid means rejecting the very concept of a Jewish state. Bullshit. I am not an anti-Zionist who wants to dismantle Israel. Jews are indigenous to the Levant. That is historical fact. The Jewish connection to this land runs deep, through millennia of presence, exile, and return. I support the right of return for Jews who need a safe haven or feel that spiritual pull. Nobody storms into Hasidic neighborhoods in Brooklyn or Jersey screaming about apartheid enclaves. A Jewish homeland does not have to mean supremacy over others. It can coexist with justice. My beef is not with Israel's identity as a refuge. It is with the occupation that has lasted over half a century and treats Palestinians as lesser humans under Israeli control.

Let me spell out what apartheid looks like here, because the details matter and get glossed over too often. Under international law, apartheid is not limited to South Africa. The relevant definition comes from the 1973 Apartheid Convention and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court: an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over another with the intent of maintaining that regime.

Since 1967, Israel has controlled the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza (with varying degrees of direct rule). In these areas, there is one population, two systems. Jewish settlers, around 700,000 of them, live under full Israeli civil law. They vote in Israeli elections, enjoy Israeli courts, police protection, and subsidies. Their settlements expand with government backing, roads built for them, water resources prioritized. Palestinians in the same territory? They live under military law. Israeli military orders govern their lives. They cannot vote for the Israeli government that rules them. Movement is restricted by checkpoints, walls, and permits that Jewish settlers do not need.

Take land. Israel has seized huge chunks of the West Bank for settlements, declared "state land," or military zones. Palestinians face demolition orders for building on their own property, while nearby settlements get hooked up to power grids and sewage systems. B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, has documented this for years. It is not random security shit. It is systematic. The goal, stated in policies and actions, is to maintain Jewish control over the land and demographics. Palestinians get fragmented cantons, cut off from each other by settler-only roads and the separation barrier. Families split, farmers blocked from fields, kids from schools. That is not temporary occupation. It is engineered domination.

Palestinians get evicted from their homes and the properties are being sold at certain synagogues, which is an absolute shanda and chillul Hashem.

Movement restrictions scream apartheid. Palestinians need permits to travel within the West Bank or to Jerusalem for work, family, or medical care. Israelis and settlers breeze through. The permit system echoes pass laws. Gaza has been under blockade for years, turning it into an open-air pressure cooker. Even before recent horrors, fishing limits, import controls, and exit bans crushed life there. UN experts and groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have laid this out: a regime of oppression and domination based on identity. One group gets supremacy; the other gets restrictions designed to keep them down.

Security is the go-to justification. Rockets, terror attacks, October 7 horrors. No one denies the threats. Jews have every right to safety after centuries of persecution culminating in the Holocaust. But security does not excuse a permanent dual legal regime that privileges one ethnicity over another in the same space. South Africa claimed security too. The point of international law on apartheid is intent and system, not just isolated violence. Here, settlements keep expanding, even as talks stall. The occupation has become the status quo, with facts on the ground cementing Jewish supremacy from the river to the sea in practice. B'Tselem called it exactly that: a regime of Jewish supremacy. Not democracy plus occupation. One system.

Palestinians under this rule face arbitrary detention, home raids, settler violence with little accountability, and collective punishment. Water allocation favors settlements. Economy is strangled by checkpoints and barriers. Kids grow up knowing their horizon is narrower because of who they are. This is not equal rights with some inconveniences. It is institutionalized separation and control. Reports from the ICJ and UN rapporteurs back this up, pointing to systemic discrimination violating conventions against racial segregation.

I am not ignoring Palestinian agency or failures. Hamas is a nightmare, rejecting peace and using civilians as shields, and we will never forget the rape and murder of Israeli civilians on October 7th 2023. Corruption in the Palestinian Authority sucks too. Violence against Jews is real and indefensible. But none of that excuses Israel's role as the stronger power maintaining the occupation. Both sides have blood on their hands, but only one controls the territories and sets the rules for millions without citizenship or full rights.

So what now? I believe in a future where Israel remains the Jewish homeland with right of return, and Palestinians get real self-determination and civil rights. A two-state solution is still the practical path. Borders roughly along 1967 lines, with swaps, Jerusalem shared or negotiated, security arrangements that work for both. But endless talks without freezing settlements make it a joke. Alternatively, something like "Land for All" – a confederation of two sovereign states in one shared homeland. Israelis and Palestinians both attached to the whole land, free movement with citizenship in their own state, joint institutions for some issues. Jews stay Jewish, Palestinians get dignity and rights. No one gets erased.

This does not mean flooding Israel with refugees to end its Jewish character. It means acknowledging mutual indigeneity and finding a way to share without domination. Jews need safety. Palestinians need freedom. Both are possible without apartheid.

Critics will say this is naive. Maybe. But clinging to the status quo is bloodier. The occupation erodes Israel's soul too. It turns a refuge into an overseer, breeding resentment and cycles of violence. Young Israelis grow up as occupiers. That is no way to live.

I am a post-Zionist because I want better for the idea of Israel. A Jewish state that does not need to subjugate others to survive. One that lives up to its own declaration of independence promising equality. Calling the occupation apartheid is not hate. It is clarity. It forces us to confront the gap between the dream of a secure Jewish homeland and the reality of control over another people.

We can do this. Jews and Palestinians both belong here. Safety for one does not require chains for the other. End the occupation, dismantle the dual system, build something just. Yes, it is apartheid now. But it does not have to stay that way. Fuck the fatalism. Let's get to work on a brighter future.