Israeli elections debunk the “Israel=Apartheid” lie
In Apartheid South Africa, black South Africans were denied their right to vote in national elections, there were no black political parties that were allowed to run for election, and no black South Africans were elected to the South African parliament.
While sundry UN figures, self-declared “human rights” organizations, and the Palestinian Authority are engaged in a concerted campaign to brand Israel as a Jewish supremacist “Apartheid State,” Israel’s recent elections are another example that exposes the claim as a bogus lie.
On Nov. 1, Israel held its 5th election for the Israeli parliament since 2019. Statistical information about the potential voters published by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics in the run-up to the election said that of the 6.2 million potential voters who are permanent residents in Israel, 77% are Jewish, 6% were defined as “other” and 17% - 1,044,000 people - are Israeli Arabs.
While many Israeli Arabs live in mixed towns, and it is impossible to know who they voted for, Palestinian Media Watch did an analysis, based on statistics released by the Central Elections Committee, of the voting patterns in the Arab-only cities, towns, and villages.
The statistics exposed a wonderful democratic reality:
- In the Arab-only settlements, 477,552 Israeli Arabs cast their votes.
66,812 (17%) Israeli Arabs who live in the Arab-only settlements voted for Zionist parties, while the rest voted for one of the three Arab parties that ran in the elections.
In the overall elections, the three Arab parties, Ra’am, Hadash-Ta’al, and Balad that ran in the elections received a total of 511,379 votes. While Ra’am and Hadash-Ta’al received enough votes to pass the electoral threshold (3.25%), Balad did not.
In the new parliament, the Arab parties will hold 10 seats. There will be 8 Muslims, 1 Christian Arab and 1 Druze.
While Israel has once again proved that it is a robust democracy, the same cannot be said about the Palestinian Authority. While PA law prescribes that elections for the position of PA President and for the PA parliament be held every 4 years, in practice, the last elections for PA President were held in 2005, and the last elections for the PA parliament were held in 2006. And as PMW recently demonstrated, in the last 4 years, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has implemented a number of decisions to consolidate the dictatorial rule of his party, Fatah, and obliterate even the last remnant of Palestinian democracy. These steps included dissolving the PA parliament and the cancelation of elections, after Abbas realized that his party Fatah would lose.
Conclusion: Israel is a multicultural plurality of its citizens, all of whom – Jews, Arabs, and “others” - have an equal right to vote.
So next time you hear the “Israel=Apartheid” libel, just know, that it lacks any factual basis.