I refer to the letter ‘End global complicity with apartheid Israel’ by SM Idris on behalf of 41 NGOs published by Malaysiakini on March 3, 2015.

The writer claims that Israel is an apartheid state which forms the basis for organising Israel Apartheid Week in Malaysia. However, the truth is Israel has accommodated its Palestinians citizens well. In Israel, Palestinians are often referred as Israeli Arabs who comprise almost 20 percent of the total Israeli population.

It is the official policy of the Israeli government to foster the language, culture, and traditions of the Palestinian /Arab minority. How many of us know that Israel recognises the Arabic language together with the Hebrew language. There are more than 20 Arabic newspapers together with radio and TV programmes.

All religious communities in Israel enjoy the full protection of the state. Israeli Arabs, mostly Muslims, as well as many Christian denominations are free to exercise their faiths, to observe their own weekly day of rest and holidays and to administer their own internal affairs. Each community has its own religious councils and courts, and has full jurisdiction over religious affairs, including matters of personal status, such as marriage and divorce.

The holy sites of all religions are administered by their own authorities and protected by the government.

In contrast to the non-Israeli Arab world, Arab women in Israel enjoy the same status as men. Israeli law grants women equal rights, including the right to vote and to be elected to public office, prohibits polygamy, child marriage, and the barbarity of female sexual mutilation. It has thus vastly changed the status of women far above that of any country in the Middle East region.

More information of status of Arab citizens in Israel can be read here .

Israeli health standards are by far the highest in the Middle East. Israeli health institutions are freely open to all Arabs, on the same basis as they are to Jews.

It might come as surprise but Palestinians have been allowed to form their own political parties and to become Members of Parliament in the Israeli Knesset, the national legislature of Israel since 1949 itself. There have been 69 past and present Members of Parliament of Knesset. The list is available here .

I, too, hope for lasting peace between Israel and Palestinians living in Gaza/West Bank but I certainly do not agree that Israel is an apartheid state that discriminates against its own Israeli Arab population.