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The hebrew wikipedia has this text:

The claim of apartheid policy by Israel was apparently first heard in 1954, when Knesset members Meir Vilner (Maki) and Rostam Bastuni (Mapam) submitted a proposal in the Knesset to abolish the military rule over Israeli Arabs, calling it a "regime of brutal national oppression, remaining in only a few countries, such as South Africa and the United States in their treatment of blacks."

original text:

טענה למדיניות אפרטהייד על ידי ישראל נשמעה כנראה לראשונה בשנת 1954, כאשר חברי הכנסת מאיר וילנר (מק"י) ורוסתם בסתוני (מפ"ם) הגישו בכנסת הצעה לביטול הממשל הצבאי על ערביי ישראל, וכינו אותו "משטר של דיכוי לאומי אכזרי, שנותר בארצות מעטות בלבד, כגון דרום אפריקה וארצות הברית ביחסן לכושים."

but the source used seems to a contemporary newspaper (thanks SIMEL)

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    Google translates it to "probably first heard". Can you comment on whether that is a good translation. It seems to be a very wishy-washy claim. Does it mean it is the first time it was heard in the Knesset, or was first publicly popularised by this instance? If a couple of people in a bar said it, would that invalidate the claim? If someone shouted it at a protest, would that count?
    – Oddthinking ♦
    Commented Jun 16 at 21:43
  • first notable use I would say. If a couple of people in a bar said it, no. if someone made a speech in a major protest yes.
    – Ona
    Commented Jun 16 at 23:15
  • Then no-one can ever say "Yes, it is true", only that it is false (with an example).
    – Oddthinking ♦
    Commented Jun 16 at 23:44
  • If there is a reliable source that writes they were first, then it's fine for me. A news article or an academic source or whatever. The current source in wikipedia though is not enough.
    – Ona
    Commented Jun 17 at 1:13
  • An important distinction is that while the term used is the same, "apartheid". This supposed claim that Israel had an apartheid policy in 1954 and the modern claim that Israel has an apartheid policy are very different. In 1954 the claim was that Israel supposedly discriminates against its Arab citizens, while today the claim is that the policy is enacted toward Palestinians who are not Israeli citizens but are subjects of the Palestinian Authority. And the martial law that the Vilner and Bastuni protest ended in 1966.
    – SIMEL
    Commented Jun 17 at 2:42

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The premise of the claim being made in the Wikipedia article is incorrect, and not supported by the source material referenced in the article. Meir Vilner and Rostam Bastuni did not claim that Israel had an "apartheid policy", so in particular they were not the first to make such a claim.

To be clear, Vilner and Bastuni did make claims that were quite critical of Israel's treatment of its Arab population, who were living at the time under martial law. This can be seen from your translated quote, and from reading the more detailed newspaper article linked from the Wikipedia article. (The newspaper article is in Hebrew and too long for me to translate, and not easily transcribable since it's an image of a scanned newspaper article.) However, Vilner and Bastuni did not mention the word "apartheid". They mentioned the treatment of blacks by South Africa and the United States. Saying that they claimed Israel engages in apartheid policies is misleading, in the same way that it would be misleading to characterize what they said by saying "Vilner and Bastuni were the first to claim that Israel had a Jim Crow policy".

Finally, it's worth mentioning that while the Wikipedia article you are citing is a notable source, that article (whose title translates as "Claims of apartheid policies engaged in by Israel") is a controversial one whose accuracy is already in dispute on Wikipedia itself. I am gathering that from reading its talk page, and it's also made pretty clear from the fact that the top of the article bears an editorial note that states (in Hebrew, my translation below):

This article needs to be rewritten. The reason is: the article is written from a non-neutral point of view, giving undue weight to claims from organizations that are biased against Israel, lacking mention of references to apartheid from either the left wing or right wing of Israeli politics, and lacking discussion of relevant Israeli jurisprudence.

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  • I'm not sure if you're aware but en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_apartheid exists in English too,so the general claim is accessible in English. That they were first to do it is not though but the source is not good enough. The goal if it was correct was to add it to the English article.
    – Ona
    Commented Jun 17 at 15:11
  • @Ona fair enough, I edited out of my speculation as to your motivation in asking the question. Anyway, for what it's worth, neither the claim that Vilner and Bastuni were the first to claim that Israel engages in apartheid, nor the implied claim that they made that claim at all, seems supported by the source material Wikipedia cites.
    – Dan Romik
    Commented Jun 17 at 16:46

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