5 ms·

As someone born and raised in South Africa that lived there until the end of 2019 I really wish people would stop comparing Israel to the old government in ZA.

• mabbo 5y ago
  Is there a better analogy to compare the situation to? Language is about communicating ideas efficiently. Apartheid is a good word for what is happening, and our response should be the same as it was in South Africa.
  • chmod600 5y ago
    My understanding is that, once you're a citizen of Israel, you have the same rights as other Israeli citizens, regardless of race or religion. Under apartheid, rights were infringed based on race.
    • mabbo 5y ago
      But is it really so different if we replace race with religion? Israel doesn't recognize people who join the religion- it's effectively based on birth just as much as race. We have a government over a people that determines the rights of each person based on who their parents were. That's the core concept that I, for one, am opposed to.
      • ashwagary 5y ago
        >But is it really so different if we replace race with religion? They aren't completely replacing race with religion, many Palestinians are black and my understanding is Israel is quite racist towards its black Jewish population as well. European Settler colonialism has historically been quite racist.
        • rudimental 5y ago
          How many and what % of Palestinians are black? How many and what % of Israelis are black? By black do you mean having darker skin tones? If so, many Jewish Israelis are black - as are many Palestinians - and not just those that came to Israel from Ethiopia. Also, many Israelis are white (as in light skinned) as are many Palestinians. The average Israeli is Mizrahi (of North African / Middle Eastern origin).
          • tga_d 5y ago
            I'm not sure why you think any of this is relevant to the point being made, but since you seem to be actually ignorant of the matter: blackness is a racial identifier, not a matter of skin tone. Skin tone is certainly part of racialization, but regardless of how dark or light someone's skin is, they may or may not be racialized as black, and therefore may or may not be subject to anti-black racism.
    • danudey 5y ago
      I see the distinction here. In South Africa you could be a citizen regardless of your race, but how you were treated depended on your race; citizens were not equal. In Israel, they are trying to prevent people of a certain race from becoming citizens, but once you are a citizen, there are fewer 'official' racist policies even if a lot of the people you have to deal with are outwardly racist anyway. On paper, citizens are (largely) equal.
      • chmod600 5y ago
        In other words, it doesn't meet the definition of apartheid. You can make an analogy to apartheid. It's up to others to determine if the analogy fits the point you are making though.
        • yosefjaved1 5y ago
          There is an entire Wikipedia article going over this exact issue. It looks like people have been arguing about this analogy for awhile now. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_the_apartheid_analogy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_the_apartheid_ana...
    • caeril 5y ago
      > Under apartheid, rights were infringed based on race. This is a good point. Israel totally doesn't deny entry, immigration, work visa status, citizenship, and even recognition as Jewish to black Jews: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Jews_in_Israel#Absorption_in_Israel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Jews_in_Israel#Absor... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Hebrew_Israelites_in_Israel#Status_in_Israel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Hebrew_Israelites_in_I...
      • chmod600 5y ago
        Immigration is not generally regarded as a right, nor is recognition of membership by a particular religious structure. And racism by itself doesn't appear to constitute apartheid.
    • zaphirplane 5y ago
      You don’t have the same right to marry who you want thou (where the other person agrees to be explicit)
• breakyerself 5y ago
  Apartheid doesn't mean "Identical to South Africa". Apartheid is a crime against human rights defined as such: Apartheid refers to the implementation and maintenance of a system of legalized racial segregation in which one racial group is deprived of political and civil rights. Apartheid is a crime against humanity punishable under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. ACADEMIC TOPICS. legal history.
  • complexmango 5y ago
    How would you explain affirmative action on the basis of race today, in this context?
    • potatochup 5y ago
      There are a couple of arguments that might be presented to explain how affirmative action is different to apartheid. 1) affirmative action does not remove any rights of those groups not targeted by affirmative action. It is possible to argue that by supporting one group, you are implicitly disadvantaging the out-group, but usually this distinction is important. E.g. having a "ladies night" at a bar is generally more acceptable than a "men pay double price" night. 2) affirmative action policies tend to target education and employment. The right to vote is typically is given higher priority when it comes to balancing different rights. 3) Affirmative action can be seen as targeting equal outcomes, not equal treatment[1]. My country offers free breast cancer screening to all women above a certain age. Men can certainly catch breast cancer, but it's far more dangerous to women, so a gender-blind outcome of "we want less people to die of breast cancer" has a gender-aware policy implementation. Most people wouldn't say that this policy is "medical apartheid" on the basis of gender. Similarly, you could say that affirmative action is about getting disparate groups to have equal outcomes in terms of whatever metric you care you measure (educational attainment, income, etc) [1] not everyone agrees with this. Some people argue that preferential treatment should be given to groups that were historically persecuted (e.g. land confiscation), as remediation.