‘Apartheid’ is more a signal of the accuser’s tribal affinities than an objective description of conditions on the ground in Israel.
We already know that Israel is history’s most inept genocidaire. If its critics were right and the Jewish state had set out to exterminate, in whole or in part, the Palestinian people, engineering an outbreak of childhood obesity in a war-torn territory in which the population experienced more growth in 2025 than almost any other country is a terrible way to go about it.
Well, it turns out that the Israelis can’t get apartheid right either:
.@NoahCRothman on CNN NewsNight on the polls that show more Americans now sympathize with Palestinians than Israelis: "There’s been a very effective propaganda campaign."
Rothman on the prospect of the expanded representation in the Knesset by Israeli Arabs in the wake of the… pic.twitter.com/LkdLdcyyUv
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) October 28, 2026
The votes are still being counted following Israel’s first national election since the October 7 massacre. Whatever the final count produces, it’s clear that Israel’s Arab minority had a historic night.
The Jewish state’s Arab parties are on track to win as many as 17 seats in the 120-member Knesset. Indeed, despite a promise by both Benjamin Netanyahu and the Gadi Eisenkot-led opposition to eschew a governing coalition with the Arab parties, Israel’s Muslim minority may hold the future of Israel’s government in their hands. “With the numbers we have now,” said United Arab List leader Mansour Abbas, “there is no government.”
The strong turnout in this year’s election among Israeli Arabs has been attributed to many factors — the ceaseless antagonism of some elements within Netanyahu’s government perhaps foremost among them. That kind of thermostatic reaction happens in democracies, and it’s valuable. This civic churn is not only essential to any liberal political covenant, it’s also a corrective mechanism that staves off governmental sclerosis. That’s a value proposition that almost all of Israel’s Arab neighbors reject.
And yet, none of this appears to occur to Israel’s critics — particularly those who insist that a genocide inside Gaza is ongoing even today, one year after combat operations in Gaza ceased with Hamas still in charge of about 40 percent of the strip. The claim that Israel is an apartheid state also predates our era by decades, and the charge maintains a similarly independent relationship with anything resembling supporting evidence. It is a faith-based proposition.
In that light, the cravenness of the politicians who have coasted along with the rising tide of anti-Israel pathology within the Democratic Party should be obvious for all to see. Take, for example, New York Governor Kathy Hochul.
In a recent interview in which she implied that the rising threat of antisemitic violence inside the United States is attributable to Netanyahu’s actions, Hochul was asked how “much easier” her job would be if Bibi’s coalition was voted out. “A lot easier,” she insisted.
She predicated her claim on the notion that Netanyahu alone is the obstacle to a “two-state solution.” Either she’s ignorant of the political consensus inside Israel, which turned against the peace processors’ fixation at the outset of the war, or she hopes that you are. What’s more, her lament is a red herring.
The violent, addlepated extremists who attack Jews on New York’s streets and the Democratic Socialists whose agitation seems designed to inspire those attacks have no interest in the facts on the ground inside Israel’s borders. New York City’s Democratic Socialist mayor doesn’t care that he cannot support the “apartheid” charge he so often retails, nor has he renounced his affiliation with a group that organized anti-Israel protests on October 8, 2023. When Democrats nominated Darializa Avila Chevalier to represent New York’s 13th district, did they do so because they believed her role as a co-founder of a group that pledged to “undermine and eradicate America” by translating “resistance in Gaza to unrest and violence in America” was a measured response to a foreign crisis? Of course not. These are expressions of a pre-political hysteria that politicians cater to at their own peril.
In much the same way that “genocide” has become a shibboleth — an orthodoxy that is enforced with an urgency that suggests its promulgators know their window of opportunity is closing — “apartheid” is more a signal of the accuser’s tribal affinities than an objective description of conditions on the ground in Israel. Maybe they hope you won’t notice. Unfortunately for them, counterevidence as portentous as Israel’s election results is hard to miss.