The cartoon the NZ Herald sacked Malcolm Evans for

In the wake of the protest held outside the Batsheva Dance Company performance in Wellington on Saturday night, supporters of Israel have vigorously denied the claim that Israel is an apartheid state. Are they right?

First the background.

Batsheva is an Israeli dance company which is a “cultural ambassador” for Israel. It is largely funded by the Israeli Ministry of Culture & Sport, the City of Tel Aviv and the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs who praise the troupe as “ambassadors of Israeli culture”. As such it is part of a wider propaganda strategy by Israel – called Brand Israel – to try to rebrand this controversial state as a liberal democracy where the arts flourish as a way to deflect hostility to Israel’s abuses of Palestinian human rights.

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Saturday’s protest – “Boycott Batsheva” – by Palestinian solidarity groups was designed to build support in New Zealand for the international BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) campaign to isolate Israel. Just as New Zealand activists stood with black South Africans against apartheid so we are now standing with Palestinians against Israeli’s racist policies.

At Saturday’s Batsheva event the former honorary Israeli consul in Wellington David Zwartz organised a counter demonstration with some Zionists supported by an evangelical Christian Zionist group who had apparently travelled down from Hawkes Bay. They held placards claiming “Israel is the only true democracy in the Middle East” and another rather bizarre placard attacking me personally with the words “HART – Halt All Racist Talk John”.

Zwartz and his followers were most irate at the claim Israeli is an apartheid state and in Israel’s defence they point to Arab Israelis being able to vote and currently there are 12 Arab Israeli’s elected to the Israeli Knesset (parliament).

However having people elected to parliament is no guarantee of equal rights and nowhere is this more evident than Israel.

Arab Israelis (Palestinians who stayed when Israel was established in 1948) are afforded citizenship rights along with Jewish Israelis but Arab Israelis are not given the status of “nationals” of Israel – a status reserved for Jewish Israelis only. What flows from this racially applied distinction is a myriad of laws which make Arab Israelis second class citizens in the land of their birth – in a word – apartheid.

Jewish families can bring in Jewish relatives from overseas who automatically receive Israeli citizenship and Israeli national status but Arab Israeli families are denied this right. Israel even refuses entry to a husband or wife of an Arab Israeli if that partner is from the West Bank or Gaza. The couple either have to live apart or move out of Israel. Israel doesn’t want more Palestinians in the country.

What this means is any Jewish person who has never sighted the Middle East can migrate and become a citizen of Israel without a problem but an Arab family who has lived in the area for centuries is denied entry to any family members – including those hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were driven out of Israel when the Jewish state was formed in 1948.

As you might imagine the discrimination follows through in land and building both within Israel and in the West Bank. Arab Israelis struggle to get building permits in wider Israel while Land and building opportunities are extensive for Jewish Israelis. Every day Palestinian homes are being bulldozed and Palestinian land seized while illegal Jewish-only settlements are being built on Palestinian land.

Jewish-only roads cross-cross the occupied West Bank, slicing and dicing Palestinian land into discrete areas similar to the bantustans of apartheid South Africa.

Discrimination follows into pretty much every area of life. In education for example the Israeli government spends an average of just $192 per year on each Arab student and $1,100 per Jewish student.

Such statistics were commonplace in South Africa under apartheid and it’s no surprise to see them in Israel. Racism speaks loudly in the allocation of resources.

Israeli denials of apartheid are pointless but continue to be put out in the hope gullible people will accept them at face value. It’s worked for Israel for a long time but not now.

The BDS campaign must be tightened on this rogue, racist, apartheid state.

Next time you hear of a BDS protest – make sure you are on the right side of history with the Palestinian people.