When I visited the powerful Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg many years ago, I learned life lessons that will never leave me.
The most obvious was how horrible institutionalized racism could be. What non-whites endured in South Africa left a terrible stain on human history.
But there were also a couple of lessons that surprised me: I learned of the tremendous courage and self-sacrifice of Jews like Helen Suzman and Denis Goldberg in fighting against the Apartheid regime, which I hope ordinary South Africans nowadays are taught in schools and never forget.
And I learned how offensive it is to compare South African Apartheid to any other tragedy in human history, just as the Holocaust should never be compared to anything else that ever happened anywhere else in the world.
Since then, I have been even more disgusted when anyone of any repute uses that sacrosanct word to demonize Israel. For instance, when New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani offensively called for the end of Israeli policies he denounced as apartheid on the second anniversary of the Oct. 7 massacre.
The apartheid canard has always been one of the easiest false charges against Israel to disprove. Apartheid policies unjustly facilitated minority rule over the majority on racial grounds, far from the situation in a democracy in which 73.2% of the population is Jewish.
Israel isn't perfect, but is far from apartheid
Israel is far from perfect, and the fate of the people over the pre-1967 border remains complicated. But Arab citizens of Israel maintain equal rights that blacks in South Africa could only dream of during Apartheid.
Arab judges George Karra and Salim Joubran sending Jewish president Moshe Katsav and prime minister Ehud Olmert to prison is as far from apartheid as it gets.
Nevertheless, the world needs constant reminders that Israel remains democratic and not racist, especially at sensitive times like these. That is why it is especially significant that this election is about to make a mockery of Mamdani and all the other unrepentant antisemites.
Unlike in Apartheid South Africa, where non-whites were barred from voting and running for office, it is becoming increasingly clear that in Israel, it will be Arab citizens who will be deciding our October 27 election.
While turnout among Jews in Israel has remained relatively consistent, the Arab vote has fluctuated, depending on whether their parties unite and whether recent news developments made Israeli Arabs feel empowered.
The last Knesset elections, going backward, have seen Arab turnout of 53.2%, 44.6%, 64.8%, 59.2%, 49.2%, and 63.5%. The two peaks came in 2015, when the Joint List of Arab parties was founded, and in 2020, when the Joint List won 15 seats and became Israel’s third-largest party. The nadirs came after the Joint List split up.
That large difference between those highs and lows could be decisive enough to determine whether a candidate for prime minister obtains enough support to form a government or whether we will be going back to the polls at the beginning of 2027.
Then there is the Ra’am (United Arab List) factor. Prime ministerial candidate Gadi Eizenkot has suggested that he would welcome Ra’am’s support in one way or another. It may end up being support from outside the coalition that could enable him to form a government.
Ra’am leader Mansour Abbas has said that he wants to return to the coalition as a full partner. But he has added that if the so-called change bloc did not obtain 61 seats without him, he would still be willing to do his part to help oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition partners.
“I want the change bloc to get 61 mandates,” he told Yediot Aharonot columnist Nahum Barnea. “If they don’t get 61 mandates, what will we do? Will we let [Itamar] Ben-Gvir and [Bezalel] Smotrich continue leading us?”
Last weekend, a poll in Israel Hayom predicted six seats for Ra’am. Channel 13’s poll predicted seven if Ra’am was joined by former deputy internal security minister Yoav Segalovitz, who left Yesh Atid and was instrumental in lowering crime in the Arab sector in former prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid’s government.
Plenty still has to happen ahead of Ra’am’s August 22 convention to make Segalovitz’s joining a reality, but a Jewish former police investigations and intelligence department chief running in a religious Arab Muslim party doesn’t sound like apartheid to me.
How will Mamdani be able to explain that?
Even before the news about the potentially groundbreaking partnership with Segalovitz, a poll taken by political psychologist Dr. Nimrod Nir of Agam Labs found that nearly three-quarters of voters for parties outside the current coalition back relying on Ra’am from outside the coalition if it is the only way to form a government.
Even though 63% of Yisrael Beytenu supporters were ready to back such a scenario, the poll found surprisingly non-apartheid-like results for what could be the next coalition’s most right-wing party.
IDF veteran Yosef Hadad may form new party
There is also another party that could be formed soon by pro-Israel Arab activist Yoseph Hadad, an IDF combat veteran who speaks for Israel around the world and heads an organization that works to integrate Arab Israelis into Israeli society.
A source close to Hadad told me his polls found that he could get five seats and would not need to take a reserved slot on the Likud list that he is expected to be offered.
If Netanyahu forms the next government and appoints the right-wing Hadad a cabinet minister, could anyone call Israel apartheid anymore without looking ridiculous?
The haters will always find their excuses. And neither Mamdani nor the current leadership of South Africa will change their opinion of Israel overnight.
But regardless of the final outcome of this election, it looks like this race could finally bury the apartheid myth about Israel.
The writer served as the chief political correspondent and analyst of The Jerusalem Post and executive director of HonestReporting and has lectured about Israel in all 50 US states.