Nothing brandishes the apartheid label on Israel's discriminatory policies more than the failure of its right-wing Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to attend the funeral of the anti-apartheid sovereign, Nelson Mandela.

Mandela was no saint, but saints make terrible champions against evil, and South Africa's apartheid government was the epitome of evil in the 1970s and 1980s.

And while Israel itself is not an apartheid regime, it embraces some of the most racist and ugly practices that were common in the apartheid regime of the Republic of South Africa.

In reality, Israel identified with South Africa for many years after its imposition on the people of Palestine in 1948. Israelis viewed Arabs the same way that Afrikaners viewed blacks.

The difference is Israel saw how brutal South Africa suffered for its open and unabashed racist policies and Israel applies similarly racist policies that were more strategic, clever and deceptive to the world. Those policies also enjoyed empathy from pro-Israel and Jewish writers in the Western media who always gave Israel a pass but constantly slammed South Africa.

As a young activist, I recall how then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and South Africa's racist Prime Minister P. W. Botha met, they discussed ways to standup to "terrorism." It was probably only one of many times that the fight of blacks in Africa was compared equally to the fight of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation.

"Apartheid," the word means "the state of being apart," which is exactly what both the Republic of South Africa and Israel practiced for many years, but in different ways.

Apartheid was the social incarnate of evil in the eyes of the mainstream Western news media, when it involved South Africa, a nation that openly showcased its discrimination in laws, policies, signs and rhetoric.

But the apartheid-like policies of Israel have always been "soft-balled," a term used by journalists to describe the weakening of an issue in their writing. American Jewish journalists and pro-Israel activists in journalism loved Israel and they also loved the fact that many American Jews fought side-by-side in the Civil Rights movement to free blacks in America who were subjected to "apartheid-like" policies in the United States in the 1950s.

Not unlike Israel, the media, though, never called America an apartheid nation, even though black Americans were subject to practices and laws and rhetoric that forcibly separated them from the rest of the American white population.

The definition of apartheid is not written by the legalities of the discrimination but by the journalists, many of whom compromised their ethics and professionalism to separate and protect Israel and even the United States. American journalism was as anti-black in the 1950s as it is anti-Arab today.

Why would Netanyahu want to remind the world about Israel's racist policies against Palestinians that are the redheaded stepchild of South African apartheid policies? By going to South Africa for Mandela's funeral, he would have stood out like a sore thumb. His remarks would have been criticized and analyzed and he would have become the focus of the post-apartheid debate in the dialogue about Mandela's legacy.

No nation is closer to apartheid than Israel and Mandela knew it, which is why Mandela so actively embraced the Palestinian cause and championed their rights in speeches, rallies and public events. He even embraced the rhetoric of peace, speaking out about recognizing Israel's right to exist, in the context of two-states and mutual recognition.

Mandela was a pragmatist, though. He recognized that in the era of peace talks and negotiations, screaming about Israel's racism would not be productive, and he did what he could to encourage Israel to make peace with the Palestinians. As the world knows, though, Israel has no intention of making peace with the Palestinians. They are using peace as a strategy to slowly consume the entire landmass of Palestine and slowly expel non-Jews from strategic regions of Israel's populated areas.

The pro-Israel activists and news media are scrambling to do what they do best, obfuscate the issue. Confuse it by piling on apologetic explanations. Some went even to the point of noting that the "turnout at the stadium for Mandela was very light," one of many Israeli posted on Facebook, suggesting maybe he wasn't the saint everyone was crying about.

Of course, these pro-Israel writers play with facts about Mandela the way they play with facts about Palestine. It was a heavy rain that held back the crowd at FNB Stadium in Soweto, and everyone could see the outpouring of respect was unprecedented. It was missing one "head of state," Netanyahu.

Mandela was a hero and Israel is finally taking its first real breaths in the wake of the

Mandela was no saint. And he was no different than Yasser Arafat who led the Palestinian revolution against the racist policies of Israel apartheid-like government. The Israeli occupation of the Palestinian West Bank is one of the most racist occupations in the world in the post-Mandela era.

Mandela was the leader of a resistance movement that was no different than the Palestinian resistance movement against Israel that rose after Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Jerusalem in 1967 — the imposition of oppressive, racist policies against non-Jews in the West Bank rings familiar.

But Israelis are hoping that with the passing of Arafat's close friend, Nelson Mandela, that the world will eventually and slowly forget about all those comparisons. They won't remember how close Israel and South Africa where when Mandela was imprisoned and apartheid was the official policy of South Africa.

Israel embraced South Africa's apartheid for strategic reasons and for reasons that touched it's soul.

Netanyahu had no choice but to stay home, given Israel's historical romance with South African apartheid.

(Ray Hanania is an award-winning Palestinian American columnist for the Saudi Gazette and the managing editor of The Arab Daily News at www.TheArabDailyNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @RayHanania. To find out more about Ray Hanania and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com.