Which Israeli figures have used the term apartheid themselves?

Israel’s own top leaders, politicians, generals, and jurists have used the word “apartheid” about their own state, long before groups like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem¹ did.

Ehud Olmert’s apartheid warning quote

Former prime minister Ehud Olmert warned in 2007 that if the two-state solution collapsed, Israel would face “a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights” — “as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished.”

Ehud Barak’s apartheid statement

Ehud Barak, decorated former army chief, defense minister and former PM, has said since 2010 that if one entity rules from the Mediterranean to the Jordan, “it is going to be either non-Jewish, or non-democratic… If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state.” In 2017 he added that Israel was “on a slippery slope” toward apartheid (CBC News²).

Ben-Gurion, security chiefs and jurists

David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founder, warned as early as 1967 that keeping the territories would make it “an Apartheid State.” Former Mossad director Meir Dagan said Netanyahu’s policies “are leading to either a binational state or an apartheid state”; former attorney general Michael Ben-Yair wrote that “we established an apartheid regime in the occupied territories immediately following their capture”; education ministers Yossi Sarid and Shulamit Aloni, and former ambassador to South Africa Alon Liel (“Israel is standing at the apartheid cliff”) agreed. These Israeli officials and politicians use the term apartheid about Israel itself (Together Against Apartheid¹; JVP³).

Why this matters

This record demolishes the claim that “apartheid” is an antisemitic slur invented by Israel’s enemies: it was routine inside Israel’s own discourse, issued most urgently by the very leaders who built and defended the state. Only in America has the word been treated as radioactive, with defenders of the Israeli government smearing anyone who repeats it — including Jimmy Carter — in what JVP called a “McCarthyite” campaign. As JVP put it: “Using the term ‘apartheid’ is acceptable in Israel – it should be acceptable in the U.S.”