Israel Is Not an Apartheid State

When I researched the meaning of the word APARTHEID in a dictionary I found the following:

Apartheid

1. An official policy of racial segregation formerly practiced in the Republic of South Africa, involving political, legal, and economic discrimination against nonwhites.
2. A policy or practice of separating or segregating groups.
3. The condition of being separated from others; segregation.

…Even before the State of Israel was established in 1948, Jewish leaders consciously sought to avoid the situation that prevailed in South Africa. As David Ben-Gurion told Palestinian nationalist Musa Alami in 1934:

“We do not want to create a situation like that which exists in South Africa, where the whites are the owners and rulers, and the blacks are the workers. If we do not do all kinds of work, easy and hard, skilled and unskilled, if we become merely landlords, then this will not be our homeland.”

People need to realise that today, within Israel, Jews are a majority, but the Arab minority are full citizens with voting rights and representation in the government. Under apartheid black South Africans could not vote and were not citizens of the country in which they are the overwhelming majority of the population.

The situation of Palestinians in the territories—won by Israel in a defensive war forced upon it by its neighbours—is different. The security requirements of the nation, and a violent uprising in the territories, have forced Israel to impose restrictions on Arab residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip that are not necessary inside Israel’s pre-1967 borders. The Palestinians in the territories, typically, dispute Israel’s right to exist whereas blacks did not seek the destruction of South Africa, only the apartheid regime.

If Israel were to give Palestinians full citizenship, it would mean the territories had been annexed. No Israeli government has been prepared to take that step.
Individuals do not realise that Palestinians from the territories are allowed to work in Israel and receive similar pay and benefits to their Jewish counterparts. They are allowed to attend schools and universities. Palestinians have been given opportunities to run many of their own affairs. None of this was true for South African blacks.

If there were to be a boycott of Israel, would people really be satisfied? Many do not realise what the extent of a full boycott of Israel would mean; No mobile phones (as these were invented by Israeli scientists), no MSN, no Jaffa Oranges, no “pill cams” the list is endless !!!
People need to realise that Israel does not segregate its inhabitants. Israel does not demonstrate any form of political, legal or economic segregation; as the definition of apartheid states. Israel believes in democracy and freedom of speech. Israel is not simply a Jewish state there is a wealth of culture within its lands, it’s simply a nation which is misunderstood.

Israel is not an apartheid state!