‘Israel Is Not an Apartheid State — We’re the Living Evidence’

By Dr. Shmuel Legesse: Former NYC Supreme Court Investigator/Detective/educator in conflict resolution, restorative peace, and moral diplomacy; Upcoming Author of Moral Diplomacy for a Broken World, inspired by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

Apartheid, after all, was a system in which the Black majority of South Africa could not vote, could not serve in the legislature, could not sit on the bench, and certainly could not represent the state abroad. If that is your definition, then using the same word for Israel is not a moral argument; it is a linguistic crime scene.

I say this not as a spokesperson for the Israeli government, but as a Black African Jew from Ethiopia, a proud Israeli citizen and Zionist who has experienced both African dictatorship and Western democracy up close. And so, to all my dear critics, I say this with love, humor, and truth: “I’m the Black African Jew you forgot in your apartheid theory.”

Let’s start with one stubborn fact: the only organized, voluntary migration of a Black African community into a modern state not as slaves, not as chained cargo, not as refugees pushed out by famine or war was the aliyah of African/Ethiopian Jews from Ethiopia to Israel. Operations Moses and Solomon airlifted tens of thousands of Ethiopian Jews to Israel in the 1980s and 1990s, including daring rescues that brought more than 14,000 people in roughly 36 hours. No colonial army dragged us onto those planes we begged to get on. For centuries, as living Zionists, we prayed facing Jerusalem, the Zion we longed for through 2,500 years of exile. And when the door finally opened, we ran through it. If Israel is running a “white-supremacist project,” it must be the first one in history to spend billions of dollars, diplomatic capital, Mossad operations, and military aircraft to import Black Africans as full citizens. That is not apartheid. That is the ingathering of exiles.

Real apartheid makes sure the “wrong” color never gets to judge the “right” color. In Israel, two women of Ethiopian descent, Adenko Sabhat-Haimovich and Esther Tapta Geradi, were appointed as judges in 2016 the first of our community on the bench, serving in the Central District Magistrate’s Court and Haifa’s Traffic Court. They are not tokens. They sit in the same courts that judge Jewish, Arab, religious, secular all of us.

And if Israel were an apartheid regime against Arabs, it has chosen a very strange way to show it. Arab citizens have served as justices on the Supreme Court of Israel itself: Abdel Rahman Zuabi, the first Arab justice (1999), Salim Joubran, Christian Arab justice (2004–2017), George Karra, Arab Christian justice (2017–2022), Khaled Kabub, Muslim justice, appointed permanently in 2022. In real apartheid, the oppressed do not send judges to the highest court to sentence the head of state.

Ethiopian Jews are not just in the courts; we are in the Knesset and in diplomacy. Since 1996, Israelis of Ethiopian origin have served as Members of Knesset, beginning with Adisu Massala, followed by Shlomo Molla, Mazor Bahaina, Avraham Neguise who later became Israel’s ambassador to Ethiopia, Pnina Tamano-Shata, and Shimon Solomon who later became Israel’s ambassador to Angola. Tamano-Shata even served as Minister of Aliyah and Integration, the first Ethiopian-born cabinet minister in Israel’s history. Again: apartheid regimes do not appoint Black African immigrants as ministers in charge of immigration. So when activists shout “apartheid,” they are not describing Israel. They are describing their own anger.

No Country Is Perfect — Including the Ones Shouting at Israel

Israel is not perfect! The United States, the self-declared gold standard of liberal democracy, has struggled with systemic racism, police violence, and racial inequality. When Black Americans chant “Black Lives Matter,” they are not saying the US is apartheid; they are saying it is not yet finished being a democracy. The same is true in Israel. We are not a perfect democracy; we are a developing democracy like every other western, democracy on Earth. If you are going to label Israel “apartheid” because it still grapples with inequality, you will need new insults for all Western Countries. So let’s be fair: no democracy is pure. But the difference between a struggling democracy and a dictatorship is that one allows you to complain loudly and the other does not.

Proof of Freedom: My Daily Columns

And please, to anyone still doubting Israel’s democracy, I have a funny little proof that costs nothing and runs daily in print. Have you ever noticed me a proud Black Ethiopian Jew, an Israeli citizen, and a former New York City Supreme Court investigator, detective, and educator in conflict resolution, restorative peace, and moral diplomacy writing in The Times of Israel or The Jerusalem Post, correcting, rebuking, even lecturing my own prime minister, ministers, and ambassadors? All that, without being arrested, silenced, or accused of lashon hara (evil speech). Yes, you’re right, that’s democracy. Try doing that in half the countries calling Israel “apartheid,” and see if you still have Wi-Fi by evening.

When I was eight years old, attending school in Addis Ababa’s Merkato neighborhood, I wasn’t even allowed to cross the schoolyard without a teacher’s written pass. And that was for a boy. Imagine what the grown women mothers and sisters needed, perhaps a passport and divine permission from their man. I could say more, but out of respect for other nations, I’ll keep my diplomatic silence. As my teacher, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, used to remind us: sometimes silence, too, can speak with grace.

But before you decide that Israel is the worst regime in the Middle East, please take an honest look around. Across parts of the region: Child marriage remains widespread; millions of girls are wed before age 18 in countries like Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Sudan and Yemen. Female genital mutilation still scars tens of millions of women in Egypt, Sudan, and Somalia. In Saudi Arabia, women only recently gained the right to drive and travel abroad but a husband remains the legal owner of the women and his children. In Iraq, proposed laws could allow child marriages as young as nine under certain religious rulings. Some radical movements in Africa have gone so far as to give more dignity to sacred trees and plants than to human life.

Now compare that to Israel, where Arab women serve as doctors, engineers, and professors; where Ethiopian women argue cases in court and sit on the bench; where Jews and Arabs, religious and secular, LGBTQ and traditional, all shout at one another in the same parliament. If you genuinely care about human dignity, Palestinian rights, and Jewish-Arab equality, then use language that helps rather than language that flatters your anger. But if you call Israel “apartheid,” you are not educating anyone; you are turning a complex conflict into a cartoon.

So, to my friends on the international Left who tweet “Israel is apartheid” from very comfortable cafés: If you still have doubts, invite me at educatordrshmuel@gmail.com to your campus or your TV studio. Bring your best evidence. I’ll bring mine as an African, Ethiopian, Israeli Jew who has lived under a dictator in East Africa/Ethiopia, under liberal democracy in New York, and now under the imperfect but real democracy of the State of Israel. I will show you that no, Israel is not color-blind. But yes, Israel is the only country that took a Black African Jewish community out of Africa and brought them home as citizens, not as slaves. If, after all that, you still insist on using the word “apartheid,” I can’t stop you. But please, say it to the face of an Ethiopian Jewish judge or Israeli Parliament member and explain how their very existence fits your theory.

Until then, the truth stands: Israel is not an apartheid state. It is a flawed, noisy, multi-ethnic democracy trying to live up to its founding promise that all its inhabitants, Jews and non-Jews alike, will enjoy equal rights and dignity. And if you really care about justice, that’s where the conversation should begin.