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Frank Visser, graduated as a psychologist of culture and religion, founded IntegralWorld in 1997. He worked as production manager for various publishing houses and as service manager for various internet companies and lives in Amsterdam. Books: Ken Wilber: Thought as Passion (SUNY, 2003), and The Corona Conspiracy: Combatting Disinformation about the Coronavirus (Kindle, 2020).

Israel and the Apartheid Accusation

Amnesty's Claim and the Global Reaction

Frank Visser / ChatGPT

When Amnesty International released its 2022 report declaring that Israel maintains a system of apartheid against Palestinians,[1] the global response was instant, polarized, and emotionally charged. For some, it confirmed what decades of lived experience and observation had already made clear: that Israel presides over a vast machinery of domination separating Jews and Palestinians through laws, barriers, and privileges. For others, it was an outrageous distortion — a weaponized misuse of one of the most stigmatizing terms in political vocabulary.

To understand why this word—apartheid—carries such explosive power, one must explore not only Amnesty's reasoning but also the larger moral and political context in which the claim operates.

Amnesty's Legal and Moral Framework

Amnesty International's report, titled “Israel's Apartheid against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and a Crime against Humanity,” argued that Israel enforces a system of oppression across all territories under its control — from the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip to East Jerusalem and even within Israel's recognized borders. The report relies on the legal definition of apartheid contained in two key international instruments:

the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, and the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which classifies apartheid as a crime against humanity when committed “in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over another.”

For Amnesty, the crucial point is not that Israel replicates South Africa's system in every detail, but that it fulfills the legal criteria of systematic domination. Amnesty contends that Israeli policy intentionally maintains the privilege of one group—Jewish Israelis—over another—the Palestinian population—through overlapping laws, zoning regulations, and military control mechanisms that effectively fragment Palestinian life into disconnected enclaves.

This, according to Amnesty, constitutes a “cruel system of domination” rather than a temporary condition of occupation. It is not merely a side-effect of security measures, but the guiding principle of state policy.

Patterns of Control and Discrimination

Amnesty's case rests on a series of patterns observable across various domains of Israeli administration and territory. Among these, five stand out:

Land and Property Seizure: Israel's confiscation of Palestinian land, its settlement construction in the West Bank, and the complex web of zoning laws in East Jerusalem collectively ensure continued Jewish demographic and territorial dominance. Palestinians face routine demolitions, forced evictions, and the inability to secure building permits, while Jewish settlements expand with state support.

Movement Restrictions: Palestinians in the occupied territories face an elaborate system of checkpoints, the separation wall, and travel permits that severely limit mobility between Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. Gaza, under blockade since 2007, is frequently described by human rights groups as an “open-air prison.”

Legal and Political Inequality: Amnesty argues that the dual system of law—civil law for Jewish settlers and military law for Palestinians in the same territory—illustrates institutionalized discrimination. Within Israel proper, Palestinian citizens may vote, yet face dozens of discriminatory laws that limit access to land, housing, and state resources.

Denial of Nationality and Return: Millions of Palestinian refugees displaced in 1948 and their descendants remain denied the right to return, even as Jews worldwide enjoy automatic citizenship under Israel's Law of Return. This asymmetry, Amnesty claims, codifies demographic privilege as a cornerstone of the state.

Suppression of Dissent and Excessive Force: The recurrent use of lethal force, administrative detention without trial, and restrictions on Palestinian political expression are presented as elements of maintaining control, not as exceptional responses to violence.

Together, these measures form what Amnesty calls an intentional architecture of domination, not an accidental accumulation of harsh policies.

How the Accusation Has Been Received

Support and Validation

Amnesty's report was not the first of its kind. In 2021, Human Rights Watch[2] and the Israeli organization B'Tselem[3] had already concluded that Israel's governance structure amounted to apartheid. Their analyses lent considerable credibility to Amnesty's subsequent study, suggesting a growing consensus within the human rights community.

The Palestinian Authority and numerous civil society groups welcomed the report as long-overdue recognition. For many Palestinians, “apartheid” captures their daily experience of segregation—whether through walls, permits, or exclusion from citizenship—and provides a powerful moral and legal vocabulary to seek redress.

The report also energized international campaigns advocating for sanctions, arms embargoes, and referral of Israeli officials to the International Criminal Court. To its supporters, Amnesty had broken the silence that Western governments long maintained to shield Israel from accountability.

Rejection and Counter-Reaction

The backlash, however, was immediate and fierce. The Israeli government denounced the report as “antisemitic propaganda” and accused Amnesty of demonizing the Jewish state. Israeli officials argued that Palestinians under Israeli sovereignty possess full voting rights, representation in parliament, and access to the judiciary—facts they say are incompatible with apartheid.

They further contend that many restrictive policies stem not from racial animus but from legitimate security concerns following decades of terrorism and warfare. The Gaza blockade, for instance, is defended as a response to Hamas rocket attacks, not an act of racial segregation.

Governments allied with Israel—including the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands—publicly rejected Amnesty's conclusions. Some accused the organization of diluting the historical specificity of South African apartheid by applying the term too loosely. Others warned that the charge could embolden antisemitic currents already present in parts of the anti-Israel movement.

Even Amnesty Israel, the organization's domestic branch, expressed discomfort. Its director, Molly Malekar, criticized the report for portraying all of Israel in a single, negative light, arguing that it failed to recognize the internal diversity of Israeli society and the genuine—if limited—democratic rights that Arab citizens hold.[4]

Why the Term “Apartheid” Divides So Deeply

The gulf between Amnesty and its critics reflects not just political alignment but profound conceptual disagreement. Three fault lines explain why consensus remains elusive:

Law versus Analogy: For Amnesty, “apartheid” is a legal term with a precise definition that can apply beyond South Africa. For Israel's defenders, it remains an emotionally loaded historical analogy, implying racial hatred and total segregation. They view its application as politically motivated rather than juridically rigorous.

Occupation versus Domination: Israel insists the West Bank and Gaza represent a military occupation pending negotiation, not a permanent regime of domination. Amnesty counters that after more than half a century of control and settlement expansion, this distinction has lost credibility.

Security versus Intent: Israeli officials justify their policies as security measures; Amnesty argues that these have evolved into a coherent system of control irrespective of violence. The debate thus turns on the elusive question of intent—whether Israel's goal is safety or supremacy.

The Political and Symbolic Stakes

Labeling Israel an apartheid state carries immense symbolic weight. It invokes a moral legacy of international resistance that helped dismantle white rule in South Africa, and thus implies a call to boycott or sanction Israel until change occurs. That is precisely why the term is so fiercely resisted: it reframes Israel not as a democracy under siege but as a colonial power maintaining ethnic privilege.

For Palestinians, the word offers international recognition of a lived reality. For many Israelis, it feels like a denial of their right to self-determination and an erasure of their history as a people seeking refuge after persecution. Hence, the debate over “apartheid” is as much about competing collective narratives as it is about human rights law.

Broader Implications

Beyond the immediate controversy, the Amnesty report reflects a broader shift in how global civil society views the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The long-dominant “peace process” framework—two states negotiating a territorial compromise—has lost credibility. With settlements expanding and the occupation deepening, many now see the issue less as a temporary political dispute and more as a permanent system of unequal rights.

This shift toward a rights-based paradigm rather than a diplomatic one has implications for future activism, diplomacy, and public opinion. If the apartheid framework gains traction, it could gradually alter how international institutions and Western publics engage with Israel, potentially leading to a new phase of global pressure similar to the anti-apartheid movements of the 1980s.

Conclusion: A Word That Shapes the Future

Amnesty International's apartheid accusation against Israel has done more than provoke outrage or applause—it has forced the world to confront uncomfortable questions about equality, sovereignty, and justice in the Holy Land. Whether one accepts or rejects the term, it has re-centered the debate around a stark moral contrast: can a state be both Jewish and democratic if millions of people under its control lack equal rights?

The enduring power of Amnesty's report lies not merely in its allegations, but in its insistence that the current status quo cannot be normalized as a “conflict” without end. It demands that the world choose whether it views the situation as a temporary occupation or as a permanent system of domination. That choice, more than any single report, may determine the moral trajectory of international engagement with Israel for decades to come.

NOTES

[1] Amnesty International, "Israel's Apartheid Against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime Against Humanity", 2022.

[2] Human Rights Watch, "A Threshold Crossed, Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution", 2021.

[3] B'Tselem, "A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid", 2021.

[4] Tani Goldstein, "Amnesty's Israel chief criticizes group's report accusing Israel of apartheid", Times of Israel, 2022.