Published – September 17, 2026 by Günther Jikeli and Philippe Karpe
This is an important study of the three charges made against Israel by two scholars of antisemitism and international law. I recommend that you read the entire paper. The Abstract is as follows, and the bios of the two scholars are below.
Abstract
This article examines three recurrent classifications of Israel and its conduct: apartheid, settler colonialism, and genocide. It treats apartheid and genocide as legal classifications with defined elements and settler colonialism as a historical-comparative framework. After reviewing the principal arguments and evidence, it concludes that apartheid and genocide are not established and that settler colonialism is an inadequate classification, including in the settings where each accusation is strongest.
The evidence does not establish apartheid in Israel’s citizenship regime or in the West Bank. [my emphasis] The latter presents the stronger case because of prolonged occupation, settlements, unequal legal arrangements, and movement toward de facto annexation. Yet Palestinian self-government, the negotiated origins of the present structure, security considerations, judicial review, and repeated negotiations over withdrawal and statehood leave the required purpose or intent to establish or maintain systematic racial domination and oppression unproven. Settler colonialism illuminates aspects of pre-state settlement, Palestinian displacement, and the post-1967 West Bank settlement enterprise, but does not adequately account for Zionism’s national and refugee character, Jewish historical attachment, or the absence of a conventional or functionally equivalent metropole. Even in the West Bank, divergent territorial strategies and negotiations over withdrawal complicate the claim of a continuous project of permanent incorporation. The record establishes extensive Palestinian death, injury, deprivation, and civilian suffering, but does not establish the specific intent to destroy Palestinians, in whole or in substantial part, as such, required for genocide under the Convention.
More broadly, expansive definitions and selective evidence allow the three accusations to reinforce one another, shift the burden of proof, and erode the distinctions they are meant to capture, converting bounded legal and historical categories into comprehensive claims about the illegitimacy of Israel as such.
Read the full paper here – https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=7501120
Authors’ Bios
Günther Jikeli – Interim Director 2025-2026, Borns Jewish Studies Program, Erna B. Rosenfeld Associate Professor for the Study of Antisemitism at Indiana University’s Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, Associate Professor in the Borns Jewish Studies Program and Germanic Studies. He is a historian and sociologist of modern Europe, with particular interests in the history of antisemitism and in critical antisemitism studies. His research focuses on online and offline forms of contemporary antisemitism. He runs the research lab “Social Media & Hate.”
Philippe Karpe – Senior Researcher and international expert at CIRAD-UR GREEN (Gestion des Ressources Renouvelables et Environnement). He is also a lecturer (University of Strasbourg (France) and University of Hokkaido (Japan). He holds a PhD in law and an Accreditation to Supervise Research in Law. Conducted over about thirty years, his research has covered several successive legal topics, including the protection and promotion of human rights, (especially those of the indigenous peoples, peasants, rural youth and women), the compliance with human rights obligations by businesses (with a focus on land grabbing and biopiracy), the legal recognition of the local, minority and indigenous customs and the relations between Human and Nature.
