Israel’s Got Major Problems, but It’s Not an Apartheid State
Katie Halper, the left-wing writer and commentator, wrote earlier this month for The Daily Beast about being “canceled” from her job on The Hill TV’s YouTube show, Rising, for criticizing Israel. That’s a respectable, almost heroic claim: a journalist losing her job for speaking the truth and standing up to the bad guys.
I don’t know what happened behind the scenes of Rising and I’m not writing on behalf of Halper’s former bosses. Regardless, the commentary that got her fired—which defended Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s characterization of Israel as an apartheid state—played fast and loose with the facts and was, ultimately, simply incorrect.
Israel is not an “apartheid state.” According to Merriam-Webster, apartheid is a “racial segregation” and specifically, “a former policy of segregation and political, social and economic discrimination against the nonwhite majority in the Republic of South Africa.”