The passing of Nelson Mandela reminds us of his fight against apartheid in South Africa. Apartheid still exists in places around the world, one of which is Israel. Israel legally imposes strict bias against non-Jewish people who live in or near Israel. The most obvious, of course, is the Palestinian population that lives in Israel, but there are other affected populations. How many blacks live in Israel? There are groups of blacks who claim to be descended from Jews for hundreds or thousands of years, but they are not particularly welcome in Israel. In general there is a huge Israeli bias against people who are not Jews. There may be reasons for this, going back to the Holocaust or discrimination against Jews by gentiles for thousands of years, but that does not erase the fact that discrimination by Israelis exists.
There are many countries that engage in worse racial discrimination than Israel, but Israel claims to belong to the advanced group of civilized countries who were united in their opposition to South African apartheid. Israel developed its nuclear bomb program in cooperation with the old, white, pre-Mandela South African government, with which it maintained close ties throughout its existence. There is a legacy of discrimination that Israel needs to overcome.
Israel needs its own Nelson Mandela.
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