A RACE OR A RELIGION?:

But there was another aspect to the protest that should worry the right far more than any Palestinian flag: the ease with which the Jewish left is abandoning the term "occupation" and adopting the term "apartheid" to describe the reality on the ground in Israel-Palestine.

Until not very long ago, one would typically encounter one of two responses from the Jewish left to the attempt to use the term. The first was to deny the comparison by claiming that there is no equivalency between South Africa's former regime and Israel's regime in the occupied territories. The second response was to turn apartheid into some kind of future threat. That is, to say that currently there is no apartheid, but we are on our way there should Israel not change course.

Saturday night's speakers, including Meretz MKs Nitzan Horowitz and Tamar Zandberg, used the word. It seemed that only Labor MK Merav Michaeli refrained from uttering it.

This change is significant for two central reasons. The first is moral and legal: an occupation can be temporary and even recognized by international law. It is not an optimal situation, certainly if that situation has been exploited for 53 years, but it is neither morally nor legally unacceptable.

Apartheid, on the other hand, is a clear moral injustice, including under international law, which views it as a crime against humanity. The moment Israel is deemed an apartheid regime, there is no moral option but to fight it. This definition sounds the death knell for the illusion that it is possible to create a Jewish-Zionist consensus in Israel.

The second and no less important reason is that the occupation can be ended through Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories. This has been the Zionist left's position for over 40 years. It is one that assumes that the moment the occupation ends, the State of Israel will regain its legitimacy. But apartheid can only be ended by bringing about equality -- through the termination of the supremacy of one group over others. In Israel's case, that would mean an end to Jewish supremacy.

In other words, the moment the Israeli regime is defined as one of apartheid, ending that regime demands a fundamental change in its very structure.

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