“Israel defines itself as a ‘Jewish state’. All Jews, regardless of where they were born, can assume Israeli citizenship and participate fully in Israel’s democracy. The land’s Indigenous inhabitants, the Palestinians, however, are openly denied most basic rights and freedoms in Israel. While some Palestinians do hold Israeli citizenship, even they are not considered equal to their Jewish compatriots in the eyes of the state.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself accepted this fact a few years ago, stating ‘Israel is not a state of all its citizens … [it] is the nation state of the Jewish people – and only it’.”
But still, “[n]either Edward Said nor Archbishop Desmond Tutu” was able to start the discussion in mainstream media. “The UN special rapporteurs on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territories, such as Richard Falk and John Dugard, were not able to do that either. To be taken seriously, and find itself a place in the pages of Western newspapers, the statement that ‘Israel is an apartheid state’ had to come from Israeli Jews themselves.
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