According to The New York Times, The Guardian, and even the Forward, California governor Gavin Newsom “likened Israel to an apartheid state”. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency story, run by TOI, simply said that Newsom “agreed with claims that Israel is an ‘apartheid state’.” Well, no, he didn’t.

Here’s what Newsom said: “Bibi…is trying to stay out of jail. He’s got an election coming up. He’s potentially on the ropes. He’s got folks, the hardline, that want to annex the West Bank. I mean, Friedman and others are talking about it appropriate [sic] as sort of an apartheid state.” You can listen here.

Newsom is referring to Thomas Friedman’s New York Times column on February 17, where Friedman wrote:

I believe that this messianically driven endeavor [to ethnically cleanse parts of the West Bank controlled by Israel] will make today’s Israel permanently indistinguishable from apartheid South Africa and will have seriously detrimental implications for both American interests and the interests and security of Jews all over the world. If Netanyahu’s government stays on this course, it will rip apart Jewish institutions everywhere as members of the Jewish diaspora are forced to decide whether to stand with or against an apartheidlike Israel.

I believe that this messianically driven endeavor [to ethnically cleanse parts of the West Bank controlled by Israel] will make today’s Israel permanently indistinguishable from apartheid South Africa and will have seriously detrimental implications for both American interests and the interests and security of Jews all over the world. If Netanyahu’s government stays on this course, it will rip apart Jewish institutions everywhere as members of the Jewish diaspora are forced to decide whether to stand with or against an apartheidlike Israel.

Did Gavin Newsom say Israel is now an apartheid state? No! He said that if Israel annexes the West Bank (meaning: without making West Bank Palestinians full citizens), then Israel would become an apartheid state.

1) That is simply a factual statement: the only thing stopping Israel from fitting the definition of an apartheid state now is that it has not formally annexed the West Bank, and therefore can (barely) claim to not be a state that has second-class citizenship for those in the not-Jewish ethnic underclass.

2) It is not a big stretch to say that Israel is already a de facto apartheid state. There are facts that contradict that conclusion, like the fact that Israel’s High Court (= the Supreme Court) includes an Arab justice, Khaled Kabub. But even legally, Likud’s Nation State law of 2018 already nudged Israel in the direction of apartheid-like second-class citizenship.

3) There is no significant difference between a full apartheid system and the conditions that already exist in the West Bank, including the unbridled violence against Palestinians by settler extremists, which is mostly supported by the IDF.

4) The hardliners that Friedman and Newsom are talking about include actual fascists, for whom Jewish supremacism is their guiding principle and becoming an apartheid state is an aspirational goal.

So all this hand-wringing about what Newsom said is kind of a lie. Not that the people doing the hand-wringing are lying, but rather, they have been fed lies about what Newsom said. The lies, started in the mainstream media, parroted by The Forward, are now trumpeted by every Jewish organization that refuses to think critically about what is happening inside Israel, and by every Jewish leader who didn’t assay the evidence for themselves.

This horse don’t ride, except in circles. We should get off the carousel.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)