Israel-Gaza war: what do "apartheid," "settler colonialism," and "genocide" mean in the current context?
In the polemics over the current Israel-Gaza war, some of the supporters of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and its response to the murderous October 7 attacks by Hamas against civilian noncombatants have tried to stigmatize the concepts of “apartheid” and “settler-colonialism” as applied to Israel and its current government as not only wrong but specifically anti-Semitic.
The descriptor “genocide” is similarly stigmatized when it is applied to Israel’s policy toward Palestinians in general and in the current war with Gaza, in particular.
Israel’s wars past and present and its on-going policy toward “settlers” (the term Israel itself uses) in the West Bank and the Israeli state itself are also described a “settler-colonialism” by critics and academics.
Critics have also described Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians as “genocide.”
All three terms are legitimate concepts. All of them can be and are used to describe Israel’s policies, although “genocide” in this context is a particular rhetorical minefield, as I describe below. I don’t use the latter term for Israel myself. All these terms (and many others) can be used by anti-Semites and in an anti-Semitic context. But none of them are inherently anti-Semitic in the Israel-Palestine context.
Israel and “apartheid”
The term “apartheid” is taken from the severe system of white rule and subjugation of Black people practiced for decades by the government of South Africa. It has also been applied - legitimately - to the drastic official system of racial segregation in the American South after the Civil War until the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Acts put an end to them officially and, to a large extent, in practice. (Public schools in Mississippi were not fully integrated until 1971.)
The Israeli human rights B’Tselem describes the current Israeli system as apartheid:
More than 14 million people, roughly half of them Jews and the other half Palestinians, live between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea under a single rule. The common perception in public, political, legal and media discourse is that two separate regimes operate side by side in this area, separated by the Green Line. One regime, inside the borders of the sovereign State of Israel, is a permanent democracy with a population of about nine million, all Israeli citizens. The other regime, in the territories Israel took over in 1967, whose final status is supposed to be determined in future negotiations, is a temporary military occupation imposed on some five million Palestinian subjects.
Over time, the distinction between the two regimes has grown divorced from reality. This state of affairs has existed for more than 50 years – twice as long as the State of Israel existed without it. Hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers now reside in permanent settlements east of the Green Line, living as though they were west of it. East Jerusalem has been officially annexed to Israel’s sovereign territory, and the West Bank has been annexed in practice. Most importantly, the distinction obfuscates the fact that the entire area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River is organized under a single principle: advancing and cementing the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians. All this leads to the conclusion that these are not two parallel regimes that simply happen to uphold the same principle. There is one regime governing the entire area and the people living in it, based on a single organizing principle. [my emphasis]1
Human Rights Watch (HRW) has also described Israel’s current system as apartheid:
[Israeli] authorities have dispossessed, confined, forcibly separated, and subjugated Palestinians by virtue of their identity to varying degrees of intensity. In certain areas, as described in this report, these deprivations are so severe that they amount to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.2
And their report provides this map:
Amnesty International (AI) also applies the term “apartheid.”3 And provides this video4:
Jimmy Carter long preceded AI and HRW in criticizing the current Israeli system as “apartheid.” In a 2006 book that is even titled Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, Carter wrote about three feasible options for Israel’s future. One of them was this:
A system of apartheid, with two peoples occupying the same land but completely separated from each other, with Israelis totally dominant and suppressing violence by depriving Palestinians of their basic human rights. This is the policy now being followed, although many citizens of Israel deride the racist connotation of prescribing permanent second-class status for the Palestinians. As one prominent Israeli stated, "I am afraid that we are moving toward a government like that of South Africa, with a dual society of Jewish rulers and Arab subjects with few rights of citizenship. The West Bank is not worth it." An unacceptable modification of this choice, now being proposed, is the taking of substantial portions of the occupied territory, with the remaining Palestinians completely surrounded by walls, fences, and Israeli checkpoints, living as prisoners within the small portion of land left to them.5 [my emphasis]
The process that last sentence describes has gone much further since 2006 in the West Bank. While Gaza has been turned into an open-air prison.
Israel and “settler colonialism”
B’Tselem also applies the description of “settler colonialism”6 to Israel.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch in their reports on Israeli apartheid do not apply the framework of “settler colonialism,” and received some criticism for not doing so. Lana Tatour wrote:
Apartheid is a feature of the Israeli state structure and core ideology, but not its sole feature. Apartheid serves a broader purpose, which is the advancement of Zionist settler colonisation in Palestine. Apartheid, alongside occupation, are thus modes of colonial domination.7 [my emphasis]
Yari Hawri provides this clarification:
It is this particular context — of settler colonialism — that is often missed out by human rights organizations working within a framework of international law. Indeed, there are limited provisions for addressing colonialism and settler colonialism within international law. This is why many Palestinians argue for a more holistic understanding of the situation in Palestine — one that isn’t solely reliant on international law.
The context of settler colonialism is even more crucial when thinking about the endgame. The danger is that calls to end apartheid become solely about a liberal framing of equality rather than one that is intertwined with justice and decolonization.8 [my emphasis]
“Settler colonialism is premised on the replacement of an indigenous population with an exogenous one on the land. Therefore, territoriality, or territorial control, is its irreducible element,” explains Sara Salazar Hughes.9
“Settler-colonialism” is not as familiar a term as “apartheid.” But it refers to a form of foreign settlement that displaces the native population. Britain’s colonial rule in India imposed an unjust, violent, and exploitative foreign rule on the local population. But it didn’t try to settle the entire country and replace the native population.
In the Western Hemisphere, the colonial policies of European powers like Britain, France, Spain, and Portugal did aim at such displacement. And the independent nations that emerged typically did so, as well. The US settlement of its territories on the North American continent was also clearly settler colonialism. Argentina conducted military operations against the native populations with the same goal and result: “Desert Campaign” (1833–1834) and the “Conquest of the Desert” (1870s–1884). Neither Argentine campaign involved actual deserts.
Describing the Israel-Palestine situation as a “settler-colonial” one is currently considered a more radical understanding than the criticism of Israel as practicing apartheid. And neither Amnesty International nor Human Rights Watch were prepared to embrace that particular framework.
Noura Erakat and John Reynolds look at the conceptual framework in Jewish Currents, describing the “settler-colonialist” analysis of Israel as part of:
… a rich Palestinian intellectual tradition that understands apartheid as an inevitable outcome of Israeli settler colonialism, and a key ideological and legal-institutional vehicle for its continuance. To say “settler colonialism” is to name a distinctive phenomenon in which the settler arrives with the intent to stay and supplant native sovereignty—not merely to rule, but to replace through forced assimilation, geographical containment, juridical erasure, and killing. This requires the racialization of the natives—their classification as other and inferior—in order to justify their domination and displacement. In his 1970 book, Settler Colonialism in Southern Africa and the Middle East, also published by the Palestine Research Center, Syrian intellectual George Jabbour emphasizes that “the distinguishing feature of settler colonialism” is the “declared espousal of discrimination, on the basis of race, colour or creed.” The radical critique rooted in this work from the 1960s and ’70s understands apartheid not as a deviation from Israeli democracy, but as a governance modality of settler colonialism—a direct derivative of Zionism’s state project. Palestinian scholars have emphasized that decolonization need not be predicated on settler evacuation, as occurred in former European colonies like Algeria or Mozambique. They insist that the issue has never been the Jewish claim to belonging and staying, but rather, the Zionist claim to sovereignty and domination.10 [my emphasis]
Genocide - and polemics about genocide
“The question of genocide is never far from discussions of settler colonialism,” writes Patrick Wolfe.11
That in itself is a shade of meaning involved with the “settler colonialism” concept.
I try to be very careful with the use of the term “genocide.” That’s because I take the phenomenon very seriously and don’t want to see the term diluted into something that gets applied to every war and every ethnic or racial conflict. And I refrain from applying it to the Israeli situation. Or to Russia’s current actions in Ukraine.
That’s not to say that I don’t take seriously concerns that are seriously expressed.12 I do. Brazilian President Lula da Silva, for instance, has called the Israel-Gaza conflict a genocide.13 Though he directed that criticism mainly at Israel, the statement itself has some ambiguity on whether he is accusing Hamas of the same. More recently Lula has said:
What we are seeing is an act of insanity by the prime minister of Israel wanting to finish off the Gaza Strip. He's launching missiles, he doesn't know on whose head they're going to fall… forgetting that there are not only Hamas soldiers, there are women there, there are children.14
Bolivia just broke diplomatic relations with Israel over its conduct in Gaza, the foreign minister calling the decision “a repudiation and condemnation of the aggressive and disproportionate Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip and its threat to international peace and security”.15
And it would be hard to overlook the genocidal implications of Bibi Netanyahu’s very public invocation of “Amalek” against Hamas and implicitly against all Palestinians in Gaza.16
But I’m afraid that the concept of genocide has undergone such a process of inflation that it is losing its distinctive meaning in the world of politics and international relations. Accusations of genocide against Israel are particularly touchy in the context of the current Israel-Gaza war and especially so in Germany and Austria. Because actual anti-Semites have always wanted to minimize or totally deny that the Holocaust occurred. They also indulge in the anti-Semitic practice of equating “Jews” and “Israel.”
So for the radical right, accusing Israel of genocide against the Palestinians serves a dual propaganda purpose: (1) saying “The Jews” are the ones committing genocide, i.e., not Germans or Christians, while (2) simultaneously saying that Muslims are the ones criticizing Israel and so we rightwingers can’t be anti-Semitic because we hate Muslims and immigrants and refugees and they are the ones who are criticizing Israel. Even mainstream politicians who really should know better are complaining about “imported anti-Semitism” (i.e., Muslims, immigrants and refugees). Because, you know, European countries like Germany, Austria, France, and Hungary don’t have any native anti-Semitism to worry about. (I hope it’s obvious that is sarcasm!)
Oddly enough for that perspective, it is pretty routine to see news items about adherents of the far-right “Freedom” Party in Austria (FPÖ) or the Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) in Germany getting found with some kind of Nazi paraphernalia or something close to it. Like on Monday of this week: “Far-right German legislator arrested after 'Sieg Heil' salutes heard.”17 Go figure. “Imported” anti-Semitism?
There are also public and academic “memory cultures” in Germany and other European countries in which the Holocaust plays a major role. Over time, a lot of nuanced concepts like “uniqueness” and “singularity” and comparisons between genocides become part of the discussions and disputes. Meron Mendel, an Israeli-German professor who is also the director of the Bildungsstätte Anne Frank (Education Center Anne Frank) has written about some of the discussions about Israel and Germany in which he has been involved in recent years, including murky controversies involving BDS (the loose anti-Israeli-occupation Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement) and “postcolonial” theory.18 As always when it comes to adapting large concepts to specific political confrontations, arguments can get murky.
Holocaust references by Israeli officials can also be complicated and problematic:
On Monday night, [Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad] Erdan spoke at the UN Security Council to oppose calls for a cease-fire in Israel’s ground offensive to destroy Hamas in the Gaza Strip. He decided to make it all about the Nazis. He declared that Israel would continue its campaign “until we eliminate the Nazi Hamas,” and that it would persevere “despite the blatant genocidal Nazism of the Islamic Reich of Iran” and its supreme religious leader, “the führer” Ali Khamenei.
For good measure, in the middle of the speech, Erdan attached to his jacket a yellow Star of David with the words “Never Again,” as did the obviously discomfited Israeli diplomats sitting behind him.19
It’s not only American politicians who label military enemies as the New Hitler.
The foundation of international law against genocide is the Genocide Convention (Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide) adopted in 1948 by the UN General Assembly, which went into effect in 1951. The two major cases of genocide that were prominent in convincing the world of the need for such a law were the Holocaust against the Jews, Roma, Senti and the Nazis’ other targets for extermination, and the Armenian Genocide of 1915-16.20 The first was planned, ordered, and carried out by the German government under Hitler, the second by the “Young Turks” Turkish government led by the “Three Pashas”: Enver Paşa, Talât Paşa, and Cemal Paşa. Both took place in wartime conditions.
The man credited with coining the word “genocide” is Raphael Lemkin (1900-1959), a Polish-Jewish jurist educated in what is now Lviv, Ukraine, and author of Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposal for Redress (1944). Lemkin supported the Genocide Convention but it does not cover “cultural genocide,” a concept Lemkin favored.
The Convention also did not cover targeted mass killing aimed at political targets. So, the government of Indonesia could kill 500,000 (and perhaps many more) who were targeted as Communists in 1965-66 and that was mass murder and a crime, but not the crime of genocide because the victims were supposedly targeted as political enemies. The victims of course, were just as dead no matter what the label.
When it comes to the concept of genocide being inflated in the political vocabulary, sometimes to the point of meaninglessness, it happens in two major ways. One is to apply it to much broader historical events like the Transatlantic Slave Trade, an event involving various countries and private companies and individuals from the 16th to 19th centuries. Or to the very diverse series events that constituted the various Indian Wars of the Americas over a somewhat longer period. Were those two events two large collective genocides? Or were they hundreds, thousands of separate genocides? Or is the concept of genocide simply difficult to meaningfully apply to them?
The other way is to expand the concept so broadly that it covers a range of acts that don’t constitute mass murder anywhere near the scale of the Armenian Genocide or the Holocaust. And if we add “cultural genocide” into the mix, then we could be talking about the endless struggles over national and ethnic language politics that have played out and are still playing out in eastern Europe as cases of genocide.
Mass relocation of targeted populations can also be a feature of a genocidal project, as it was in the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide. But should we treat all forced relocations with some ethnic or nationalist or religious identities as genocide? Did the currently-much-discussed Nakba, the forced expulsions of Palestinians around the Israeli War of Independence in 1948, constitute genocide? Is the Russian transfer of Ukrainians and particularly of Ukrainian children out of Ukraine to Russia itself a case of genocide?
Right now, we hear repeatedly about Russian genocide, Israeli genocide, or the alleged aspiration of Hamas to commit genocide. But the general usage of the term really seems to be getting to the point where every act of war that harms civilians, or that displaces populations, and maybe even all acts of war by the Other Side (whoever that happens to be in context) are also called acts of genocide. The Genocide Convention was not meant to declare every war crime and every breach of humanitarian law to be “genocide.”
Expulsions or forced relocations of populations can also raise some confusing questions about what constitutes genocide. Was the internment of Japanese-Americans during the Second World War not “just” a hideous, unjust act against fellow American citizens but also an act of genocide? Was the expulsion of ethnic Germans from eastern Europe in the wake of the Second World War - expulsions at least in part sanctioned or encouraged by the Yalta Agreements - acts of genocide? (That one can also quickly open an ugly can of rhetorical worms in the German context!) Was the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 not just murderous, racially motivated violence by Oklahoma whites but also actually a genocide, since there was a clearly murderous racial motivation involved?
So, as I said, I try to be careful in how I use the term. Because I don’t want it to be trivialized out of its original meaning.
A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. This is apartheid. B’Tselem, Jan. 2021. <https://www.btselem.org/sites/default/files/publications/202101_this_is_apartheid_eng.pdf> (Accessed: 2023-31-10).
Not A "Vibrant Democracy." This Is Apartheid. B’Tselem, Oct. 2021. <https://www.btselem.org/sites/default/files/publications/202210_not_a_vibrant_democracy_this_is_apartheid_eng.pdf> (Accessed: 2023-31-10).
A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution. Human Rights Watch 04/27/2021. <https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution> (Accessed: 2023-31-10).
Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians: Cruel system of domination and crime against humanity. Amnesty International 02/01/2022, Index Number: MDE 15/5141/2022. <https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde15/5141/2022/en/> (Accessed: 2023-31-10).
Israel's Apartheid Against Palestinians. Amnesty International: A Look Into Decades of Oppression and Domination. <https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-system-of-apartheid/> (Accessed: 2023-31-10).
Home Sweet Home: Short Film about Israeli's Apartheid. Amnesty International YouTube channel 03/01/2022. (Accessed: 2023-31-10).
Carter, Jimmy (2006): Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, 215. New York: Simon & Schuster.
This Is Ours – And This, Too: Israel’s Settlement Policy in the West Bank. B’Tselem, Mar. 2021.<https://www.btselem.org/sites/default/files/publications/202103_this_is_ours_and_this_too_eng.pdf> (Accessed: 2023-31-10).
State Business: Israel’s misappropriation of land in the West Bank through settler violence. B’Tselem, Nov. 2021. <https://www.btselem.org/sites/default/files/publications/202111_state_business_eng.pdf> (Accessed: 2023-31-10).
Tatour, Lana (2022): Amnesty report: The limits of the apartheid framework. Middle East Eye 02/08/2022. <https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-amnesty-apartheid-report-limits-framework> (Accessed: 2023-31-10).
See also: See also: Khalidi, Rashid & Seikaly. Sherene (2022): From the Editors. Journal of Palestine Studies 04/11/2022, 1-4. <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0377919X.2022.2048608> (Accessed: 2023-31-10).
Hawari, Yara (2022): It’s Undeniable: Israel Is an Apartheid State. Jacobin 02/01/2022. <https://jacobin.com/2022/02/israeli-apartheid-amnesty-international-report> (Accessed: 2023-31-10).
Hughes, Sara Salazar (2020): Unbounded territoriality: territorial control, settler colonialism, and Israel/Palestine. Settler Colonial Studies 10:2, 216-233. <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/2201473X.2020.1741763> (Accessed: 2023-31-10).
Erakat, Noura & Reynolds, John (2022): Understanding Apartheid: Embracing a radical critique of Israeli apartheid is a precondition for bringing it to a just end. Jewish Currents 11/01/2022. <https://jewishcurrents.org/understanding-apartheid> (Accessed: 2023-31-10).
Wolfe, Patrick (2006): Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native. Journal of Genocide Research 8:4, 387-409. <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14623520601056240> (Accessed: 2023-31-10).
Segal, Raz (2023): A Textbook Case of Genocide. Jewish Currents 10/13/2023. <https://jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-case-of-genocide> (Accessed: 2023-31-10).
Atrocities Present, Past and Future – Escalating Crimes and Consequences in Israel and Occupied Palestine. Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect 10/27/2023. <https://www.globalr2p.org/publications/atrocities-present-past-and-future-escalating-crimes-and-consequences-in-israel-and-occupied-palestine/> (Accessed: 2023-31-10).
Brnda, Nina (2023): Wie weit darf Israels Selbstverteidigung gehen? Falter 44:2023 (31.10.2023). <https://www.falter.at/zeitung/20231031/wie-weit-darf-israels-selbstverteidigung-gehen> (Accessed: 2023-31-10).
Cweéllo, Andrela (2023): President Lula says war in the Middle East is genocide. agênciaBrasil 25.10.2023. <https://agenciabrasil.ebc.com.br/en/politica/noticia/2023-10/president-lula-says-war-middle-east-genocide> (Accessed: 2023-31-10).
Lula criticó el bombardeo a la Franja de Gaza. Página/12 29-10.2023. <https://www.pagina12.com.ar/610078-lula-critico-el-bombardeo-a-gaza> (Accessed: 2023-31-10).
Phillips, Tom (2023): Bolivia becomes first country to sever ties with Israel over war with Hamas. The Guardian 10/31/2023. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/31/bolivia-israel-hamas-gaza-war-crime> (Accessed: 2023-31-10).
Cole, Juan (2023): Netanyahu declares a Holy War of Annihilation on Civilians of Gaza, Citing the Bible. Informed Comment 10/29/2023. <https://www.juancole.com/2023/10/netanyahu-annihilation-civilians.html> (Accessed: 2023-01-11).
Orly, Aidan (203): Christian Right Cites Violent Biblical Amalek Trope to Justify Israel’s Tactics. Truthout 10/22/2023. <https://truthout.org/articles/christian-right-cites-violent-biblical-amalek-trope-to-justify-israels-tactics/> (Accessed: 2023-01-11).
Stern, Zedidia & Sagi, Avi (2006): The Monsters in Our Minds. Haaretz 03/16/2006. <https://www.haaretz.com/2006-03-16/ty-article/the-monsters-in-our-minds/0000017f-e232-d75c-a7ff-febf2a3f0000> (Accessed: 2023-01-11).
Wilkens, Brett (2023): Netanyahu Accused of 'Genocidal Intentions' in Gaza After 'Holy Mission' Speech. Common Dreams 10/30/2023. <https://www.commondreams.org/news/netanyahu-genocide> (Accessed: 2023-01-11).
Far-right German legislator arrested after 'Sieg Heil' salutes heard. Reuters 10/30/2023. <https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/far-right-german-legislator-arrested-after-sieg-heil-salutes-heard-2023-10-30/> (Accessed: 04/26/2021).
Mendel, Meron (2023): Über Israel Reden.Eine Deutsche Debatte. Kohl: Kidenheur & Witsch.
Pfeffer, Anshel (2023): Why Israel Should Not Compare Hamas to the Nazis. Haaretz 10/31/2023. <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-31/ty-article/.premium/why-israel-should-not-compare-hamas-to-the-nazis/0000018b-8692-d055-afbf-b6b34f9e0000> (Accessed: 2023-31-10).
Bloxham, Donald (2003): The Armenian of 1915-1916: Cumulative Radicalization and the Development of a Destruction Policy. Past & Present 181 (Nov. 2005), 141-192. <https://www.jstor.org/stable/3600783> (Accessed: 04/26/2021).