John Dugard, A UN human rights envoy and South African lawyer, has described Israel’s treatment of Palestinians as “apartheid” while reporting to the UN Human Rights Council yesterday. Dugard said that anyone who has experienced apartheid would be struck with a sense of “deja vu” while visiting the occupied territories. He also noted that apartheid was “contrary to international law”, and that the situation in the territories “places in danger the whole international human rights enterprise”.

As expected, Israel dismissed the report, saying it was “one-sided, highly selective and unreservedly biased”. Dugard also said that Gaza was an imprisoned society, while the West Bank was hardly any better. Speaking of the 500,000 Israeli settlers now illegally living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, he said; “Settlers, largely unrestrained by the Israel Defense Forces [the Israeli military], subject many Palestinians to a reign of terror - particularly in Hebron.” In January, former Israeli Justice minister and Holocaust survivor Yosef Lapid was blasted for saying that Israeli settlers are comparable to Nazis.

Israel’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Itzhak Levanon, said the remarks made by Dugard were “inflammatory and inciteful”. This isn’t the first time Israel has gotten a failing grade from Dugard. In September, he described the process in Gaza as “ethnic cleansing“. As you can guess, Israel promptly accused him of being disconnected with reality.

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