JERUSALEM, Israel – A United Nations special rapporteur accused Israel of apartheid in a report submitted Tuesday to the Human Rights Council in Geneva.
The rapporteur, Michael Lynk, argues that Israel gives Jews special rights and privileges while subjecting Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank to discrimination under permanent military rule.
Lynk, a Canadian law professor, does not directly compare Israel’s policies to apartheid-era South Africa, where a white minority subjugated a Black majority. However, he claimed that Israel’s policies meet the international legal standard for apartheid.
“With the eyes of the international community wide open, Israel has imposed upon Palestine an apartheid reality in a post-apartheid world,” Lynk wrote in the report, whose full title is “Report on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.”
“The political system of entrenched rule in the occupied Palestinian territory which endows one racial-national-ethnic group with substantial rights, benefits and privileges while intentionally subjecting another group to live behind walls, checkpoints and under a permanent military rule… satisfies the prevailing evidentiary standard for the existence of apartheid,” he said.
Israel rejected Lynk’s claims.
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“This report recycles baseless and outrageous libels previously published by NGOs that share the same goal as the author of this report: to delegitimize and criminalize the State of Israel for what it is: the Nation State of the Jewish People, with equal rights for all its citizens, irrespective of religion, race or sex,” the Israeli Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
“No report on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be taken seriously if the security challenges and threats faced daily by all Israelis — including the 20 percent non-Jewish minority — is not considered; if the terrorist organization Hamas, which rules Gaza with an iron fist, is not mentioned nor condemned; if the role and legal obligations of the Palestinian Authority towards its own population is not addressed; and if the extreme complexity of the situation is not comprehended,” the statement continued.
Gilad Erdan, Israel’s envoy to the UN, says the report fails to consider threats to Israel’s security and that its true aim is to “de-legitimize and criminalize” the Jewish state.
The report is Lynk’s last in his six-year term.
It’s the latest in a growing push from human rights organizations charging Israel with committing the crime of apartheid – an accusation Israel denies.
In February, Amnesty International released a report also accusing Israel of practicing apartheid.
The United States and Israel condemned that report.
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