Asa Winstanley (London-based investigative journalist who writes about Palestine and the Middle East) (2018): “It’s time to admit that Israeli is an apartheid state… There are differences and there are similarities between apartheid Israel and apartheid South Africa. The white supremacist regime that once ruled South Africa, for example, did not tend to bomb into submission with fighter jets and attack helicopters the puppet Bantustan “homeland” enclaves that it controlled. Israel, however, regularly bombs the civilian population in the Gaza ghetto, using the pretext of “self-defence” against “terrorist” groups. It’s for this reason, and others, that some South African anti-apartheid struggle veterans have said that the Israeli regime is actually a worse form of apartheid than the late, unlamented regime in South Africa. The main point to remember, though, is that this entire debate is a red herring. According to international law, Israel can unequivocally be defined as an apartheid state. A 1976 United Nations document, the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, defines the term unambiguously, and Israel’s occupation regime in Palestine very much falls into the A-word category… Israel’s Palestinian citizens face discrimination on many levels simply because they are not Jews.The convention states that the term “the crime of apartheid” applies to acts including measures “calculated to prevent a racial group or groups from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country… including… [by violating] the right to freedom of movement and residence.”It’s time for people in the West to wake up to these facts and admit that Israel is, root and branch, an apartheid state” (Asa Winstanley, “It’s time to admit that Israeli is an apartheid state”, Middle East Monitor, 24 April 2018: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180424-its-time-to-admit-that-israel-is-an-apartheid-state/ ).