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Despite differences, Israeli and South African apartheid practices are defined by similar dominant features. Three legislative pillars underpinned South Africa's:
-- the first demarcated people into racial groups through the 1950 Population Registration Act; it institutionalized racial discrimination by affording special rights, privileges and services to whites and denied them to blacks;
-- the second segregated people by geographic areas, allocated by law to different racial groups; it restricted passage from assigned areas to others to insure white supremacy; overall, it constituted "grand apartheid" by establishing "Homelands" or "Bantustans" in which "denationalized" blacks were transferred and forced to reside, while whites got special political rights denied blacks;
-- the third was a matrix of draconian security laws and policies, employed to suppress opposition and reinforce racial domination "by providing for administrative detention, torture, censorship, banning, and assassination."
In the OPT, Israel has the same three pillars:
The first legally establishes Jewish identity and affords preferential legal status and material benefits to Jews alone. Palestinians are discriminated against as inferior by religion, ethnicity, and subsequent social status.
Israel's citizenship laws underpin the system under which Jews anywhere in the world automatically qualify for citizenship in an exclusive Jewish state. The 1950 Law of Return defines Jewishness and begins saying:
"Every Jew has the right to immigrate to this country."
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