First came the apartheid hitchhiking and now there’s the apartheid kindergartens. No, we’re not talking about South Africa of yesteryear. We’re talking about Israel in the year 2013. More precisely, we’re talking about Israel’s most liberal city, Tel Aviv.

Here’s an extract from a report published in today’s Daily Beast:

When the children of south Tel Aviv head back to school on Tuesday [27 August], kindergarteners will attend facilities that are segregated by race. The children of asylum seekers from sub-Saharan Africa will go to their kindergartens and all the other kids will go to their own. As of this year, the municipality of Israel’s most liberal city decided that separate-but-equal for three-to-six year olds was the way to go – in 2013. According to a report published by Ynet (Hebrew edition), the city built the new preschools for black children after Jewish-Israeli residents of the inner city area threatened to keep their children at home rather than allow them to learn how to count, fingerpaint and play on the swings alongside their peers from Eritrea and Sudan.

Let’s hope that civilized society will respond to this new apartheid in the same way that it responded to apartheid of old: boycott, divestment, sanctions.