I occasionally grow a little tired of this overdone cause célèbre among the university Left and the Muslim political community that keeps throwing out the word "apartheid" in regard to Israel and Palestine. First off, it is a cheap debating point to simply glom onto an Afrikaner word (not as though many of these folks have any interest in Boer culture and language) that was popularly and almost universally villified a couple decades ago; like reductio ad Hitlerum, it is making a point chiefly by associating Israel with something generally considered evil. But what really rankles me is the flaming hypocrisy involved.

Years ago, my boss who has travelled extensively in the Middle East and particularly the U.A.E. relayed the same basic information as is in this article. It's lengthy but well worth a read; the caste system of the Emirates is much more analogous to apartheid in my opinion than the interaction between Israel and the Palestinean authority.