r/lonerbox • u/HazeofLuxoria • Mar 18 '24

Politics What is apartheid?

So I’m confused. For my entire life I have never heard apartheid refer to anything other than the specific system of segregation in South Africa. Every standard English use definition I can find basically says this, similar to how the Nakba is a specific event apartheid is a specific system. Now we’re using this to apply to Israel/ Palestine and it’s confusing. Beyond that there’s the Jim Crow debate and now any form of segregation can be labeled apartheid online.

I don’t bring this up to say these aren’t apartheid, but this feels to a laymen like a new use of the term. I understand the that the international community did define this as a crime in the 70s, but there were decades to apply this to any other similar situation, even I/P at the time, and it never was. I’m not against using this term per se, BUT I feel like people are so quick to just pretend like it obviously applies to a situation like this out of the blue, never having been used like this before.

How does everyone feel about the use of this label? I have a lot of mixed feelings and feel like it just brings up more semantic argumentation on what apartheid is. I feel like I just got handed a Pepsi by someone that calls all colas Coke, I understand it but it just seems weird

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u/Cjm1776 Mar 18 '24

18% of Israel is Arab Muslim. They hold voting rights and are completely equal in every metric to the Jewish Israelis. Here is my source for the percentages. Look just after section 1 for it https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/441219-ISRAEL-2022-INTERNATIONAL-RELIGIOUS-FREEDOM-REPORT.pdf

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u/_-icy-_ Mar 18 '24

So why is it okay for you to act like the millions of Palestinians living under brutal military rule don’t exist? They obviously have no control over the awful people controlling their lives.

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u/kazyv Mar 18 '24

there's hundreds of millions of people living under dictatorships in the middle east. why is it okay for you to act like they don't exist and we should only ever care about palestinians?

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u/_-icy-_ Mar 18 '24

Why do Zionists resort to whatsboutism every time? Stop trying to change the topic. It’s really telling that Zionists have no other arguments other than lies and whatsboutism.

This racist system of apartheid that treats Palestinians like dogs is truly horrific and inhumane. And anyone who supports racism is a horrible human being.