Apartheid Before Israel

How Dhimmi Status Restricted Jews

We often hear that Jews and Muslims lived in harmony before Zionism. And they did in many ways, especially compared with two millennia of European violence. But it was more the status quo of apartheid than any form of equality.

Jews were classed as dhimmi — a tolerated minority under Muslim rule, protected but never equal. The repression wasn’t always violent. But the subjugation was structural, and it lasted over a thousand years.

Prohibition on living in certain areas
Ineligibility for high office or public authority
Ban on bearing arms or riding horses
Requirement to wear distinctive clothing or markers
Prohibition on building new synagogues or repairing old ones
Punishments for public religious expression like blowing the shofar
Obligation to host Muslim travelers and give up seats in public
Inadmissibility as witnesses in Muslim courts
Severe penalties for criticizing Islam
Heavy jizya taxation, and onerous penalties for missing payments

Pact of Umar — detail of the treaty codifying dhimmi law — The Pact of Umar
*The treaty, traditionally attributed to the 7th century, that codified dhimmi law across the Muslim world.*

Dhimmi Laws and the UN’s Definition of Apartheid

The word apartheid has a legal definition, codified in a 1973 UN Convention. It names eleven specific conditions that, taken together, constitute a crime against humanity. Apply those conditions to the system Jews lived under for 1,270 years, and eight of the eleven are met.

UN Apartheid Convention Criterion	Met Under Islamic Rule
(a)(i) Murder of members of the group	Recurring state-sanctioned expulsions; massacres of Jewish quarters
(a)(ii) Serious harm; cruel or degrading treatment	Mandatory marking garments; corporal punishment for non-payment of jizya; public subservience required
(b) Living conditions calculated to cause physical destruction	Mass expulsions to uninhabitable terrain; punishing jizya levels; prohibition on building or repairing synagogues
(c) Denial of political and cultural life	Barred from government office; inadmissible as witnesses against Muslims; forbidden arms and horses
(c) Denial of freedom of movement and residence	Mandated Jewish quarters, locked at night; public deference required
(c) Denial of freedom of expression	Shofar prohibited in public; criticism of Islam punishable by death
(d) Creation of separate reserves and ghettos	Mandated residential separation across Muslim-ruled lands; the mellah system
(d) Expropriation of property	Jizya as permanent wealth extraction; expulsion-era property seized; Temple Mount access restricted

Three Convention criteria — arbitrary imprisonment, forced labor, and formal persecution of organized dissent — were not systematic features of the dhimmi system. Other methods of control were. Forced conversion of Jewish adults, forced conversion of Jewish orphans, and periodic mob violence against Jewish communities were used across the Muslim world for centuries.

These rules varied by time and place — but the underlying message was consistent: Jews were allowed to survive, not to thrive.

Genocidal Moments Under Islamic Rule

Despite these prohibitions, Jews attempted to thrive in their homeland. And when they became too powerful or inconvenient, they were crushed.

“Settler colonial regimes are structurally prone to genocide, and may indulge in ‘genocidal moments’ when they become frustrated by the resistance of a colonized or occupied people.”

Center for Constitutional Rights, The Genocide of the Palestinian People, 2016

The centuries of Islamic rule in Palestine produced numerous episodes of targeted violence against Jewish communities — events that today we would call ethnic cleansings or genocidal acts, but which are largely absent from the modern historical conversation.

Event	Date	Location	Details
Fatimid Repression & Expulsion	1009–1015	Jerusalem	Holy sites and synagogues destroyed; Jews forcibly converted then expelled from Jerusalem
Seljuk Anarchy and Mass Violence	1070s–1090s	Palestine-wide	Murder, captivity, pillage, arson, destruction of holy sites; Jewish letters from Palestine largely stop after 1078
Khwarazmian Sack of Jerusalem	1244	Jerusalem	Christians massacred; Jews “driven out”
Safed & Hebron Pogroms	1517	Safed & Hebron	Looting, rape, murder during Ottoman conquest
Destruction of Safed & Tiberias	1660	Safed & Tiberias	Synagogues and homes destroyed by Druze and Arab forces; communities dispersed
Expulsion from Jerusalem	1720	Jerusalem	Synagogue burned over debt; Ashkenazi Jews banned from the city for 100 years
Safed Pogrom	1838	Safed	33 days of violence. 500 Jews murdered, uncounted rapes, synagogues looted. Less than 10% of possessions recovered
Ottoman Expulsions	1914–1917	Palestine-wide	19,000 Jews expelled in waves. 1,500 died or were murdered in transit, their possessions stolen

Selected events, 1009–1917. These episodes are largely absent from the modern historical conversation about Jewish–Arab relations.

Why This Matters Now

Albert Memmi — The Arabs were colonized, it is true. But weren't we?

The typical antizionist story is that Jews were victims elsewhere and then made victims in Palestine.

But Jews were also victims in Palestine. And when you can see that, you can start to see how Zionism’s insistence on Jewish sovereignty was a reaction to that — not an export of European violence, but a response to Middle Eastern history in its own right.

This history isn’t intended to justify Israel’s military regime in the West Bank. Many consider it an occupation, and a military occupation that becomes permanent becomes indistinguishable from apartheid.

But the word apartheid isn’t a description of the situation in the West Bank — it’s a prescription. If you say apartheid, the prescription is for one state. If you say occupation, the prescription is for two states.