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CloudYeller | 2 years 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.

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HAL3000|2 years ago

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"

CloudYeller|2 years ago

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.