California Governor Gavin Newsom has likened Israel to an “apartheid state,” warning that the country’s current leadership is pushing the United States towards reconsidering its long-standing military support for its ally.
Newsom made the remark when he was asked by the event’s moderator, Pod Save America host Jon Favreau, about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during an event in Los Angeles promoting his new memoir.
Responding to a question about whether Washington should rethink its military backing of Israel, Newsom suggested that Israeli policies are increasingly forcing that debate in the US.
“It breaks my heart, because the current leadership in Israel is walking us down that path where I don’t think you have a choice about that consideration,” he said.
The California governor also criticised Netanyahu’s domestic political position and the influence of hardline factions within Israel’s governing coalition, particularly those advocating annexation of the occupied West Bank.
“He’s got his own domestic issues. He’s trying to stay out of jail. He’s got an election coming up. He’s potentially on the ropes,” Newsom said of Netanyahu, referring to the Israeli prime minister’s political pressures. He added that some figures within Israel’s governing coalition are pushing to annex the occupied West Bank and that people are now “talking about it appropriately as sort of an apartheid state.”.
Newsom’s remarks come at a time when public opinion in the US is shifting noticeably on the Israel-Palestine issue. A Gallup poll released last month found that 41 per cent of Americans now sympathise more with Palestinians, compared with 36 per cent who say they sympathise more with Israelis. It marks the first time in more than 25 years of polling that Israel has trailed in overall sympathy among the US public.
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Among Democratic voters the divide is even more pronounced. According to the same survey, 65 per cent of Democrats say they sympathise more with Palestinians, compared with just 17 per cent who say they sympathise more with Israelis.
The use of the term “apartheid” to describe Israel’s system of rule over Palestinians has gained increasing prominence in recent years, particularly among major human rights organisations.
Amnesty International concluded in a landmark 2022 report that Israel maintains “a system of oppression and domination” over Palestinians that amounts to apartheid under international law. Human Rights Watch reached a similar conclusion in a 2021 report, arguing that Israeli authorities are committing the crimes of apartheid and persecution through policies that systematically privilege Jewish Israelis over Palestinians.
The Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem has likewise described Israel’s rule from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea as a regime of “Jewish supremacy”, while the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) previously concluded that Israeli policies toward Palestinians meet the legal definition of apartheid.
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