We are told that Israel is an apartheid state.

Well, what is an apartheid state? According to dictionary.com apartheid is any system or practice that separates people according to color ethnicity caste etcetera. The word is typically associated with the Republic of South Africa which formerly had a rigid policy of segregating and economically and politically oppressing the nonwhite population. A more clarifying definition by Karen Hurvitz in the Times of Israel is that apartheid is the legal institutionalized segregation of a country into a caste system. It forcibly separates a society by gender by race or a combination of the two.

According to the Israel central Bureau of Statistics as reported on Wikipedia, the population of Israel is 73.2% Jews, 21.1% Arab and 5.7% other. The Arab 21% are Palestinian, Druze, Circassians, Christian Arabs and Armenians.  The other 5.7% are a diverse group comprised of those with Jewish ancestry but not recognized as Jewish by religious law, non-Jewish family members of Jewish immigrants and Christians other than Arabs and Armenians and residents without a distinct ethnic or religious categorization. These are all free citizens with full participation rights in Israeli society. If Israel is an apartheid state what are they doing with this population demographic?

If Israel is an apartheid state, why did it allow the immigration of thousands of Ethiopians into Israel from 1948 to the present? And why did it not only allow this immigration but at different times actually sponsor mass immigration programs for Ethiopians?

If Israel is an apartheid state, why is its governing body, the Knesset, made-up of Jews, Arabs a Druze member and a healthy number of women?

If Israel is an apartheid state, it’s not very good at it.