A Tale of Two Elections and the Apartheid Libel

For many years, sundry actors have repeatedly raised the claim that Israel is an apartheid state. In doing so, they not only cheapen the reality of the South African apartheid regime but also distort simple facts.

An example of this basic understanding is recent events surrounding the elections in Israel and in the Palestinian Authority.

Before discussing Israel and the Palestinians, it is important to recall the approach to elections in Apartheid South Africa. There, Black South Africans had neither the right to vote nor the right to stand for election. Those rights were limited to white South Africans.

In stark contrast, in Israel, Israeli Arabs have both the right to vote and the right to stand for election. In Israel’s upcoming parliamentary elections, 1,159,000 people, or 18% of all voters, are Israeli Arabs, all of whom have the right to vote.¹

In addition, dozens of Israeli Arab citizens are standing for election, whether in predominantly Arab parties or predominantly Jewish parties.²

As opposed to Israel, the elections in the Palestinian Authority (PA) have again been “postponed” by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

In theory, PA elections for the presidency and the parliament are meant to take place every four years.

In practice, Abbas last stood for election in 2005 and is now in the 22^nd year of his first four-year term. The last PA parliamentary elections took place in 2006.

As part of the deal to secure French, British, Canadian, and Australian recognition of the non-existent “State of Palestine,” Abbas promised to hold new elections.³ Feigning a genuine intention to fulfill his commitments, Abbas called for PA parliamentary elections in November 2026 followed by elections for the presidency in early 2027.

While the French, the British, the Canadian, and the Australian governments all fell for Abbas’s lies, in October 2026 Abbas issued a decree “postponing” the elections until September 11, 2027.⁴

The bottom line is that in democratic Israel, over 1.1 million Israeli Arabs can vote and run for election. In the PA, Abbas either does not call for elections at all or cancels the scheduled elections altogether. The libel calling Israel an apartheid state was – and will always remain – false.