Along with innumerable hazards to Israel – some of which are covered every day on these pages – there is a rolling menace that has been designed deliberately to delegitimise, and so undermine the foundations of, the Jewish state. And the fear is being voiced that this assault is poised to spike.

The warning came, on Day 1 of 2022, from then-Foreign Minister Yair Lapid: “We think that in the coming year, there will be debate that is unprecedented in its venom and in its radioactivity around the words ‘Israel as an apartheid state.’”

We must be ready to withstand this lie, and we can, with knowledge of the truth.

What, then, was apartheid?

In 1948, the South African government began enacting legislation to enforce the segregation of races upon its citizens.

Known as the “Apartheid Laws,” they decreed the absolute dominance of the country’s white nationals and the total disempowerment of its blacks – which included full-blood ‘Africans,’ mixed-race ‘coloureds’ and the descendants of immigrant Asian laborers. The blacks, who made up the overwhelming majority of South Africans, would be legally stripped of their citizenship and made foreigners in the land of their birth.

I am a white South African who was born into – and lived through half of – the apartheid era. During my upbringing, my family relocated repeatedly. We lived in every part of the nation – in all its provinces. I changed schools 13 times. In three years, as a soldier in the South African Defence Forces, I was stationed in five different military bases. I know my country well. I know apartheid well.

There is not even the remotest comparison between that South Africa and this Israel, where I have lived for 30 years.

None whatsoever.

Let me explain what Israel would have to do to qualify as an apartheid state. But first, some clarifications:

The charge is that Israel’s dealings with the Palestinian Arabs mirrors White South Africa’s treatment of its black citizens.

There, right at the start, the apartheid accusation falls flat. The Palestinian Arabs have never been Israeli citizens. Nor do they have any national history as ‘Palestinians’ – neither in Israel nor anywhere else. They are Arabs – their roots are in Arabia.

For starters, then, it is fallacious in the extreme to compare Israel’s relationship with the Palestinian Arabs in any area to the apartheid government’s dealings with its black citizens.

Palestinians are not Israelis. Period. Their plight was not caused by Israel and Israel’s government does not represent them and is not responsible for their national well-being, any more than England is responsible for the French or Australia is responsible for the people of Paraguay. The Palestinian Arab accusation that Israel practises apartheid against them is indisputably false.

Let us then turn to Israel’s own Arab citizens. They are, in fact, also Palestinian Arabs by descent, but unlike the majority of their people – who remain stateless – they chose to adopt citizenship after 1948 and be integrated into the reborn Jewish nation-state of Israel.

To elucidate: Before 1948, the area known as Palestine – which includes today’s Israel (with Judea, Samaria, Gaza and the Golan Heights) and Jordan – was neither a state nor a country. It was home to Jews and Arabs. The designation ‘Palestinian’ was never a nationality. Palestinian Jews became Israeli Jews with Israel’s independence. Those Palestinian Arabs that fled the land and would subsequently live outside of Israel are what are today called ‘Palestinians.’ As mentioned, those that remained and agreed to become Israeli citizens are known as Israeli Arabs.

Israeli Arabs comprise approximately two million of Israel’s 9.4 million citizens. They are, therefore, a minority. (In South Africa, the blacks were the majority, by far.)

These Arab Israelis mainly live in 15 towns and cities, mostly in and around the Galilee. They are completely equal – to Jews and all other Israelis – under the law. They have full voting rights. Arab political parties are represented in the Knesset, one of which was included in the Bennett-Lapid coalition, and Arab lawmakers have attained to ministerial portfolios and served as deputy Knesset Speakers. An Israeli Arab judge sits on the bench of the Supreme Court – the highest court in the land.

Israeli Arabs enjoy complete freedoms in their country. They can live, study, work and worship where they choose. They have national health coverage and enjoy the same benefits as their Jewish fellow citizens. What they are not obligated to do is to serve in the IDF.

Having said all that, let’s take a look at the aforementioned list of “Apartheid Laws” and see how it would be for these Arabs were Israel indeed an apartheid state:

• Arabs would have to be registered with a racial classification – (The Population Registration Act).
• Arabs would be mandated to live in ‘Arabs-only’ residential areas and work in ‘Arabs-only’ business areas – (The Group Areas Act).
• Arabs would have their names systematically removed from the voters’ roll until they were all deprived of their voting rights – (The Separate Representation of Voters Act).
• By law, Arabs would be deported from wherever they lived in Israel and forcefully settled in designated ‘Arabs-only’ areas – (The Bantu Authorities Act).
• Arabs would be evicted and have their homes destroyed if they tried to remain in ‘Jews-only’ areas – (The Prevention of Illegal Squatters Act).
• ‘Arabs-only’ areas would be transformed into fully-fledged independent Arab homelands ‘Arabstans’ – (The Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act).
• A denaturalization law would change the status of the inhabitants of these ‘Arabstans,’ stripping them of their Israeli citizenship with all its privileges and benefits – (The Black Homeland Citizenship Act).
• Most developed urban areas in Israel (all the established and economically thriving cities and towns) would be deemed ‘Jewish,’ and Arabs wanting to be in those areas would have to live in ‘compounds’ – (The Native Laws Amendment Act).
• The Arab population would be required to carry pass books with them whenever outside their compounds or designated areas. Any Jew, even a child, could ask an Arab to produce his or her pass. Failure to produce a pass would result in the person being arrested – (The Pass Laws).
• Once ‘Arabs-only’ areas were modernized and developed, Arabs would be moved out and the area declared a ‘Jews-only’ area – (The Group Areas Development Act).
• Arabs would be deprived of the right to appeal to courts of law by means of an interdict or any legal process – (The Natives (Prohibition of Interdicts) Act).
• Arabs would be restricted to studying in Arabs-only institutions. None of Israel’s schools or universities would be allowed to enroll Arab students – (Bantu Education Act). The ruling political party in Israel would declare that it viewed education as a key element in its plan to create a completely segregated society. Emulating the words of South Africa’s ‘father of apartheid’ Hendrik Verwoerd, an Israeli prime minister would declare: “There is no place for the Arab in the Israeli community above the level of certain forms of labor … What is the use of teaching the Arab child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice? That is quite absurd. Education must train people in accordance with their opportunities in life, according to the sphere in which they live.”
• Arabs would be allowed training in skilled labour, but would be restricted as to where they were allowed to work – (The Bantu Building Workers Act).
• Public places and services like beaches, playing parks, national parks, buses and trains, restaurants and hotels, theatres and cinemas etc would be segregated, with Jews getting the best and most well-equipped places and Arabs either given separate areas or banned from entering or using those facilities – (The Reservation of Separate Amenities Act).
• Arabs could be labelled ‘communists’ – which would mean they were criminals – for doing anything that promoted disorder and disturbances or encouraged feelings of hostility between Arabs and Jews – (The Suppression of Communism Act).
• Any Arab suspected of involvement in terrorism—broadly defined as anything that might “endanger the maintenance of law and order”—could be detained for a 60-day period (which could be repeatedly renewed) without trial and on the authority of a senior Jewish police officer. There would be no requirement to release information on who was being held, making it possible for people so detained to simply ‘disappear’ – (The Terrorism Act).
• Jews and Arabs would be prohibited by law from intermarriage – (The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act).
• It would be illegal for an Arab man to even show romantic interest in a Jewish woman; or for a Jewish boy to indicate an interest in an Arab girl – (The Immorality Amendment Act).
• On top of all this, to qualify as citizens of a state like the South African apartheid state, Israel’s Arabs would have to comprise the vast majority of the population and would be kept under the cruel and exploitative thumb of a minority Jewish population.

In the apartheid era, South Africa’s blacks were mostly Christian and animist. Very, very few were Muslim. Back then, there was no expressed backing for, or interest in, the PLO or any other anti-Israel terror group. Except for a radical fringe group, they never called for the Whites to be driven into the sea. Israel’s Arabs are 94 percent Muslim and most, including their Knesset members, support the Palestinian national cause, whose avowed goal is to turn Israel into an Islamic country called Palestine – “from the River to the Sea.”

This won’t happen, thank God, but if it did, we can be sure there would be no South African-style “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” here, just Shari’a show trials, pogroms and massacres.

I could go on about just how miserable daily life would be for Israel’s Arabs if this country was run by an apartheid regime. The diametrically-opposite truth is that the Arab citizens of the Jewish state enjoy an incalculably higher standard of living and quality of life than do any of their fellow Arabs in their 22 Arab states.

To suggest that Arabs in Israel live lives in any way comparable to the miserable existence endured by black South Africans is to do a terrible injustice both to Israel and to the victims of the state which coined, legislated and practised actual apartheid.

This is a libel that must be exposed for the malicious fallacy that it is.