Tikva Honig-Parnass (anti-racist Jewish Israeli socialist activist and member of the Israeli Socialist Organization Matzpen (“Compass”); she is also a veteran of the 1948 War)(2019): “The Israeli regime encompasses by now all historical Palestine—from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River. Israel has settled half a million of its own citizens there; it has extended its own laws there and uses aquifers and airspace there every single day. In practice, Israel has annexed the West Bank without officially declaring it. Many among the left Zionists adhere to the misleading claim that the West Bank (and Gaza) are exterior to the state of Israel and that the 1967 occupation is only temporary and eventually these areas will constitute the independent Palestinian state. They thus conceal the fact that these areas have in fact been annexed and are part and parcel of Greater Israel—something that allows them to retain the image of Israel as “the only democracy in the Middle East.” Zionism has enforced its government on different parts of Palestine in different historical stages. Hence the different levels of civil rights and civil status of the Palestinian inhabitants of these parts—from no civil rights in the West Bank and Gaza, to formal citizenship granted to the remaining Palestinians after the Nakba of 1948, something that was a condition imposed on Israel in order to be accepted as a member of the United Nations. Therefore, the discussion of Israel’s democracy must include both the obvious and observable apartheid regime in the 1967 Occupied Territories—to which the left abroad is willing to admit—and the somewhat masked apartheid within the Green Line (“Israel Proper”), which they are reluctant to depict as such and still regard as a democracy” (Tikva Honig-Parnass interviewed by Leo Fischer, “Apartheid Israel and the contradictions of left Zionism”, International Socialist Review, Issue #72, 2 May 2019: https://isreview.org/issue/72/apartheid-israel-and-contradictions-left-zionism ) [the last issue after 22 years: https://isreview.org/issue/72 ].