The Palestinians have been living under the misery and brutality of modern-day "Israel’s" apartheid policies for roughly three-quarters of a century now. The plight of the Palestinians has always been known and felt by its neighboring Arab states. However, the world has largely turned a blind eye to "Israel’s" human rights violations towards Palestinians and its neighbors. It is only now after 75 years, that the rest of the world has started to recognize "Israel" as a country exercising apartheid policies.  

In order to understand, how and why "Israel" resorts to such ruthless policies, one has to turn a few pages of history and start from the days of the creation of modern-day "Israel". The history of modern "Israel" begins in the 1880s, when the first Zionist immigrants came to Palestine, then under Ottoman rule, to join the small Jewish community in Palestine, portraying to contribute towards local agriculture and industry, restoring Hebrew as the spoken national language. After World War I, Palestine came under the control of Great Britain, whose Balfour Declaration had called for a Jewish National Home in Palestine. Britain’s control was formalized in 1920 when it was given the Mandate for Palestine by the League of Nations. The British rule lasted till May 1948 during which a lot of people lost their lives at the hands of Zionist militia groups.  This abrupt end to the British rule in 1948 was brought about mainly by the Zionist-paramilitary groups; the Irgun, the Lehi, the Haganah, and the Palmach, their organization, leadership philosophy and actions were inseparable in their operations and their strong Zionist aims. The Lehi was also responsible for the assignation of the British minister of state in the Middle East Walter Edward Guinness, Lord Moyne in 1944, the successful assignation of Lord Moyne emboldened these groups and the frequency as well as the intensity of their attacks increased significantly. They used tactics like letter bombs and other types of explosives to target British officials and were responsible for bombing the British Administrative Headquarters and the British embassy in Rome. They were engaged in the destruction of the Reuters Tel-Aviv office; they perpetrated the brutal Deir Yassin massacre killing hundreds of Palestinian villagers, and failed to launch attacks against the White House in USA, and the final blow was struck in 1948 with the assassination of the United Nations mediator Folke Bernadotte because he was deemed pro-Arab. Such violent attacks contributed heavily in the removal of the British from Palestine, the abandonment of the League of Nations mandate and the creation of a Jewish state of "Israel".

On May 28, 1948, less than two weeks after the establishment of the “State of Israel”, the provisional government established the "Israel Defense Forces", in which the Haganah, Irgun and Lehi were combined; this merger gave the Israeli defense forces their brutal ideology of terror. To this day, Palestinians and "Israel’s" neighbors witness and bear the brunt of this ruthless cold-blooded ideology of terror maintained by the "Israel" Defense Forces. This ideology has helped "Israel" create and maintain an apartheid state.

Over the years, people have been calling "Israel" out on its apartheid policies; the first one to do so was South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd. He called "Israel" an apartheid state when he rejected "Israel's" vote against South African apartheid at the United Nations in September 1961. Later in 1967, "Israel" was again called out on its apartheid policies 1967 which resulted in the six-day war with Arab states as 325,000 Palestinians were displaced from the West Bank and Gaza.

In 1973 the United Nations' International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid was signed and "Israel" was seen vehemently condemning South-Africa while exercising the same policies against the Palestinians. Three years later in 1976 "Israel’s" fifth prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin himself expressed his fears of "Israel" following apartheid policies. Before the 1990s the term apartheid was typically associated with South Africa, however during and after the 1990s the term apartheid was slowly and steadily being associated with "Israel" by writers and political commentators alike. In 2001 The World Conference against Racism equated; ‘Zionism’ with ‘Racism’ this irked "Israel" and the US, who boycotted the conference. In Toronto 2005, Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) started and the purpose behind this endeavor was raising awareness regarding Israeli apartheid policies for a week usually in February and March each year. The IAW movement has spread to at least 55 cities, including places in Australia, Austria, Brazil, Botswana, Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Jordan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Norway, Palestine, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In 2014 the UN also described Israeli actions in the West Bank and Gaza as actions leading to apartheid. Later the same year John Kerry the US Secretary of State also expressed fears towards "Israel" becoming an apartheid state. In 2021 Human Rights Watch described "Israel" committing “the crime against humanity of apartheid.” In 2022, Amnesty International also called out on "Israel’s" apartheid policies. These two organizations are the most renowned Western-oriented non-governmental, international human rights organizations whose reports on human rights violations are considered significant.

The reason why the echoes of calling out "Israel" on its brutal apartheid policies are getting louder is that "Israel’s" cold-blooded policies have now started to thwart the voices from within. In July 2023, the right-wing government loyalists voted 64-0 in favor of stripping the Israeli Supreme Court of some of its powers of judicial review. This gives the right-wing government freedom to commit more atrocities without accountability. It is because of such actions being committed by the right-wing government in "Israel", that longtime Pro-"Israel" political commentators like Thomas Friedman of the New York Times has started to lose confidence in "Israel" and in a recent opinion piece stated; “Netanyahu has destroyed the happy “fiction” that the occupation of the West Bank is temporary, so "Israel" is “practicing some form of apartheid there.” Apart from Friedman, Benjamin Pogrund the renowned South African born Israeli writer has also come out with his opinion piece titled “For Decades, I Defended "Israel" From Claims of Apartheid. I No Longer Can”.

A group of notable professors in the United States and "Israel" have joined together to publish a statement with an apt title “elephant in the room”. This was published on the internet a week ago and it has already gathered more than a thousand signatures from renowned intellectuals which include many people who are self-proclaimed Zionists, like the celebrated historian Benny Morris. The statement titled “elephant in the room” boldly addresses the elephant in the room and states; “There cannot be democracy for Jews in "Israel" as long as Palestinians live under a regime of apartheid”.

It is sad to see that the world has only recently started to acknowledge the brutality of "Israel’s" policies. It’s even sadder that this realization comes after their right-wing government started to clampdown on their own. The world kept silent at the constant bullying and killing of thousands of (estimated between 20,000 to 30,000 innocent civilians) Lebanese people inside Lebanon by Israeli defense forces. The world turned a blind eye towards Israeli defense forces when they killed international journalists. Syrian lives lost at the hands of "Israel" didn’t matter. Torture of Palestinian detainees including children was not cause enough for the world to speak out. Evicting thousands of Palestinians from their homes and ancestral lands didn’t serve as a wake-up call. According to Data from the United Nations Office for Coordination on Humanitarian Affairs (UN-OCHA) in the past 15 years an estimated 7,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces roughly amounting to 460 innocent Palestinians killed every year. In comparison; operations by Palestinian freedom struggle groups have resulted in 303 Israeli casualties in the last 15 years, yielding a year on year average of 20 Israeli casualties.

It is so ironic that "Israel" opened its arms to welcome tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine; these Jewish Ukrainians are being allowed to settle under the 1950 Israeli ‘Law of Return’, while continuously denying millions of Palestinian refugees their right to return. There are an estimated 500,000 plus Palestinian refugees in refugee camps in Lebanon and the numbers are much higher if one is to include the refugees not residing in the camps in Lebanon. The number of Palestinian refugees in Jordan is around 2 million with high numbers is Egypt as well. United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for Palestine refugees cites 5,149,742 registered refugees in total, of whom 1,603,018 are registered in camps across neighboring countries. If one is to ask the people directly involved with trying to help the Palestinians, they would conclude that "Israel" is not only an apartheid state, but it is a brutal belligerent occupation of Palestine and other Arab lands.