Ta-Nehisi Coates, in his 2023 , The Message, based on a 10-day West Bank trip, makes broad claims about Israel’s treatment of its Arab citizens. He focused his rhetoric on demonstrating that Israeli practices amount to apartheid by showing parallels to past South African and Jim Crow experiences. This enabled him to view Israel as engaging in “white supremacy.” 

When it was pointed out that half of the Jewish population consists of nonwhite refugees from Arab countries and Ethiopia, Peter Beinart was quick to defend Coates: “In Israel, supremacy is based on Jewishness not (America’s) definition of whiteness. So Black and brown Jews — whatever discrimination they face — enjoy legal supremacy over Palestinians.”

What they ignore is the dramatic educational, occupational, and infrastructural advancements in Arab towns, villages, and neighborhoods. Gains were made under Netanyahu-led coalitions that employed substantial, sustained affirmative action programs. Today, there are Arab judges in the highest courts, senior administrators in the Israeli hospital system, and senior personnel in the police and other civil services. Indeed, the 2021 ruling coalition included an Arab party. While gaps remain large in many areas, it would be false to characterize them as evidence of a Jewish supremacist society.

The integration of Arab citizens is far greater in Israel than in nearby Arab countries. In Kuwait, 400,000 Palestinians, who had lived there for two generations, were expelled in the early 1990s when Yasir Arafat publicly supported the Iraqi invasion; a prime example of ethnic cleansing. In Lebanon, though they have lived there for more than three generations, Palestinians can only live in specified camps, and cannot work in almost all decent-paying professions; a textbook example of apartheid policies.