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I am an academic, not an activist.  Maybe I should be an activist, but I am not. In recent months (this is July 2022) the word apartheid has become almost universally used by those who are critical of Israeli occupation policies. This podcast  is a discussion of the comparisons between South African Apartheid, which ended in the early 1990s after the release of Nelson Mandela from prison, and the Israeli policies in the occupied territories.    Back in 2005 I had an article in Middle East Journal ("The Presbyterian Divestiture Vote and the Jewish Response").  It is available on the UM virtual archive site Deep Blue. It  discusses the debate over this topic.  

Here are some passages from that article. 

Nobel Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu visited Palestine and saw definite parallels. He used words such as “disenfranchised,” “voiceless,” “injustice,” “oppression,” “collective punishment,” and “home demolitions” to describe the Palestinian situation. “I’ve been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about.” 

As Israel’s highly respected columnist Nahum Barnea put it, “thirty-seven years after the occupation, in the eyes of a large part of the world, Israel has become a pariah country."  That reminded me what a young South African woman said to me, "It was not pleasant being the polecat of international politics." 

The Anti-Defamation League preferred to focus on Israel rather than the Occupation: 

"In no way can the treatment of Arabs by the State of Israel be compared to the treatment of the Blacks of South Africa under apartheid. There is no Israeli ideology, policy or plan to segregate, persecute or mistreat the Arab population. Apartheid was a uniquely repressive system, through which South Africa’s white minority enforced its dominion over the black and other non-white racial groups who made up more than 90 percent of the population. Apartheid—which means ‘separate development’ in the Afrikaans language—was enabled through a host of laws which banned blacks from ‘white areas,’ prevented blacks and whites from marrying or even having sexual relations with each other, and regulated the education of black children in accordance with their subservient social position. No such laws exist in Israel, which pledged itself to safeguard the equal rights of all citizens in its Declaration of Independence. Arab citizens of Israel have the full range of civil and political rights, including the right to organize politically, the right to vote and the right to speak and publish freely. Moreover, Israel has declared its acceptance, in principle, of a sovereign Palestinian state in most of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Whatever your view of Israel, the Palestinians and the conflict, it is obvious that there can be no comparison to apartheid."

Former Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Meron Benvenisti  noted that the South African regime was isolated.  but  “Israel receives massive, unshakable support from a unified Diaspora Jewry and American aid” and is protected from “effective sanctions” by post-holocaust concerns."

Finally, while many white South Africans felt uneasy about the morality of an ethnic regime, few Israelis question the ethics of a Jewish state. Most argue that the Jews are a national people inhabiting their historic homeland. There is “no feeling of guilt,” and the occasional cracks in the “national consciousness” are “plastered over” by raising the specter of an “existential threat.” 

I hope you find this discussion informative. 

Factoid:  15,000 Gazans  cross the border daily to work  in Israel.