Over the past few years, the anti-Israel movement has developed a new strategy: comparing the current situation in Israel to that of apartheid in South Africa, which ended in the 1990s. However, this analogy is completely flawed.

Apartheid was the racial separation and discrimination that plagued South Africa from 1948 to 1980. Blacks were prohibited from voting, and their lives were regulated by the deplorable apartheid system.

Many anti-Israeli activists claim that like the apartheid South Africa, Israeli law and society discriminates against those of an indigenous population, the Palestinians. Therefore, these activists believe that the solution is to remove the “Jewish Domination,” the State of Israel, just as the white domination was eliminated from South Africa.

Many critics continue to claim that Israel uses apartheid because of the pervasive issues of citizenship, land ownership and human rights. This analogy stems from historical and legal issues including skewed versions of the 1948 war and Arab discrimination. Additionally, because Israel is a Jewish state, it has been incorrectly asserted that all gentiles are discriminated against.

Contrary to that belief, Israel’s democratic constitution states that it “will uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens without distinction of race, creed or sex; will guarantee full freedom of conscience, worship, education and culture.” Israeli law applies to all citizens including Muslim and Christian Arabs, who make up one fifth of the population. Additionally, during apartheid in South Africa, blacks had no rights, while in Israeli Arabs have the same political rights as Jews and can vote and participate in the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament. Currently, an Arab Israeli, Salim Jubran, is serving on the Israeli Supreme Court. Outside of politics, Muslim and Christian Arabs also have social rights such freedom of religion, which is rare in many other Middle Eastern countries, such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Pakistan, where Islam is the only permitted religion, and other religions fear prosecution. Finally, Arabs make up a significant portion of the students and professors of Israeli Universities, including Haifa University, where the student body is 20 percent Arab.

Another common misinterpretation is that Israeli involvement in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank reflects apartheid. However, this claim is entirely untrue. First, it is evident that Israel does not want to rule over the Palestinians in this region because it has hindered settling in the West Bank and completely evacuated the Gaza Strip. Additionally, Israel signed the Oslo Accords in 1980 which permitted the establishment of the Palestinian Authority. In South Africa, over 12 million blacks were forced into Bantustans, poor homelands lacking economically viable land. Despite deeming Bantustans independent and granting limited rights, these regions were not recognized by other foreign governments like Palestine has been. Israel has publicly accepted the idea of a self-determinating Palestinian State, as long as Israel achieves its necessary security. Palestine is recognized and financially supported by foreign powers, and ruled by its own leaders, not Israeli puppet governments like the Bantustans were. It is evident that the Israeli presence in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank is the antithesis of what some extremists believe to be a new generation of Bantustans.