In 1975, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 3379 declaring Zionism “a form of racism and racial discrimination.” Sixteen years later, the resolution was revoked in the political context surrounding the Madrid Peace Conference. Western politics subsequently behaved as though the argument itself had been buried. It had not. History did not end in 1991, and neither did the political question the resolution raised.

Today, that question has returned under circumstances far more devastating than those of 1975.

Apartheid is no longer a term confined to Palestinian activists or to the margins of political debate. Major international, Palestinian, and Israeli human-rights organisations, UN experts and scholars have documented a system of domination, segregation, dispossession, demographic engineering and unequal rights imposed on Palestinians.

Apartheid is no longer a term confined to Palestinian activists or to the margins of political debate. Major international, Palestinian, and Israeli human-rights organisations, UN experts and scholars have documented a system of domination, segregation, dispossession, demographic engineering and unequal rights imposed on Palestinians.

Gaza has taken the argument into even darker territory. Genocide is no longer merely a warning about what could happen, but a conclusion reached by major human-rights organisations, UN experts and genocide scholars.

We therefore need to stop behaving as though the central political task is to prove, for the thousandth time, that Palestinians are subjected to systematic oppression. The evidence has been documented for decades. The more difficult question is what follows from it.

When I wrote about Zionist apartheid in 2013, even the terminology was largely excluded from mainstream Western political discourse. The argument was routinely dismissed before it could even be examined.

Today, the vocabulary has changed dramatically. Words that were once considered beyond the boundaries of respectable debate, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide have moved into mainstream legal, academic and political discussion. But language alone changes nothing.

Today, the vocabulary has changed dramatically. Words that were once considered beyond the boundaries of respectable debate, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide have moved into mainstream legal, academic and political discussion. But language alone changes nothing.

If we recognise apartheid while refusing to examine the political system that produces it, we have achieved little. If we condemn individual settlements while leaving untouched the ideology that makes settlement and demographic domination politically meaningful, we have avoided the central question. If we condemn individual military operations while refusing to confront the structure within which Palestinian life has been made permanently subordinate, we are describing consequences while protecting causes. That is no longer enough.

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If apartheid is structural rather than an accidental deviation........

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