Originally a comment by Stewart on The row over.
I’m afraid my conscience won’t permit me not to react to the suggestion that Israel has anything like South Africa’s apartheid (I am not a Zionist and my nearly thirty years lived experience of Israel between 1976 and 2005 were not something I ever wished upon myself).
Israel has Arabs and Muslims in high positions, including an Arab Christian judge (George Karra), who sentenced a former – Jewish, obviously – President of the State (Moshe Katsav) to prison. That kind of thing (of which there is plenty, though not all as dramatic as the example above) leaves comparisons to South Africa in tatters.
Yes, both sides have their racists and religious fanatics and yes, those on the (Jewish) Israeli side have been clawing away with alarming success at gaining more political and legal power, especially in the last decade or so, but for any comparison with South Africa to hold water there must be actual laws that say “Arabs/Muslims may not” do something or that only Jewish Israelis have certain rights or privileges. Daily life in Israel is simply not like that and anyone who has spent a reasonable amount of time there cannot take the apartheid accusation seriously.
The two societies may not mix much but it’s certainly not illegal, nor are marriages between Muslims and Jews, though the Interior Ministry will only recognise those that took place elsewhere (no such thing as a civil, non-religious, marriage can take place inside the country, so mixed-religion marriages are not possible there). I remember when the suburb of Neve Yaacov on the outskirts of Jerusalem was new (my father lived there for a while) that it was unpopular with some because there were also Arab families living there. My guess, in general, would be that Jewish Israelis have a far greater fear of entering Arab-only areas than the reverse.
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