Last week, Olive Palestine, a pro-“Palestinian” Facebook page with over 140,000 followers, posted an image displaying a sunset over the Mediterranean adjacent to “the eternal capital of Palestine, Jerusalem.”

The irony is that Jerusalem is located at the top of a mountain in central Israel and is at least 32 miles from the Mediterranean Sea. 

The post has since been removed, but Olive Palestine continues to post inaccuracies and obfuscations. Another post claimed, “Palestinian American journalist #ShireenAbuAkleh was killed by an Israeli sniper with an American bullet.” Abu Akleh was shot in the head in a firefight in Jenin when caught in the crossfire between IDF troops and Palestinian terrorists. A full investigation into the death of Abu Akleh has yet to be carried out as the Palestinian Authority refuses to release the bullet to investigators.

 It is replete with posts accusing Israel of being an “apartheid state.” Apartheid was a system of institutionalized racial oppression in South Africa and southwest Africa from 1948 until the early 1990s. This system denied non-white South Africans fundamental human rights, such as the right to vote. Apartheid ensured that South Africa was dominated politically, socially, and economically by the nation’s minority white population. Public facilities were segregated by race.

It should be noted that as Israeli citizens, Arabs are afforded all civil rights and liberties. They vote, and the Arab bloc represents the third-largest party in the Knesset. The only restrictions are in some Jewish religious sites which are closed to Jews. Ironically, Palestinian citizens have not voted in 17 years as the PA has not held elections.

The false claim that Israel is an apartheid state has been promoted by left-wing extremist NGOs posing as humanitarian groups like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Btselem. This claim has been credibly refuted as many times as it has been made. 

The Anti-Defamation League slammed the claim of apartheid, writing, “While Israel’s policies and practices can certainly be criticized, it is not factually accurate to say they are akin to a permanent and institutionalized system motivated and designed by racism.”

The claim has most recently been made by a UN Commission of Inquiry to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC). It was refuted by Christian pro-Israel activist and Johannesburg native Olga Meshoe Washington, who debunked UN accusations of Israeli “apartheid” against the Palestinians.

“My people’s history and experience is being used as an antisemitic tool to politically, morally and with incredible pretzel-like twisting and legal gymnastics, legally delegitimize Israel with the hope to criminalize her,” said Washington.

“It trivializes the humiliation and injustices endured by black South Africans who lived through apartheid and who still, together with their descendants, bear the scars of its legacy.”