Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign (SEAMAC): “More than 5 million Palestinians are denied equal rights by the state of Israel under a system of apartheid, a deliberate policy of racial or ethnic segregation. Under Israeli military occupation, millions of Palestinians live in conditions which closely resemble the apartheid system that existed in South Africa:
No right of free speech, assembly or movement
Arrest and imprisonment without charge or trial
Torture
House searches without warrant
Assassination, extra-judicial murder
No right to vote for the Israeli government (even though it controls their lives)
Israel controls all Palestinian borders, all imports and exports, and all movement between towns and cities.
THE GAZA STRIP, still surrounded, besieged and controlled by Israel, has been sealed off and effectively turned into the world’s largest open-air prison… These are just some of the many aspects of Palestinian life affected by the Israeli government’s apartheid policies. Fortunately, an international solidarity movement has formed around the world and is heeding the call of Palestinian civil society to boycott, divest, and sanction (BDS) Israel for its flagrant violations of human rights. Just as in South Africa and the American South where whites joined with blacks to fight segregation and white supremacy, many Israeli Jews are also repudiating their government’s policies. They have actively joined with Palestinians to fight apartheid” (Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign, “Equal rights for Palestinians”: http://www.seamac.org/equalrights.htm ).