…"Leading experts, including Richard Goldstone, a former justice of the South African Constitutional Court who led the United Nations fact-finding mission on the Gaza conflict of 2008 and 2009, have argued that comparisons between the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians and "apartheid" are offensive and wrong.

"One particularly pernicious and enduring canard that is surfacing again is that Israel pursues 'apartheid' policies," Goldstone wrote in The New York Times in 2011. "It is an unfair and inaccurate slander against Israel, calculated to retard rather than advance peace negotiations."

In a 2008 interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, then-Sen. Barack Obama shot down the notion that the word "apartheid" was acceptable in a discussion about Israel's treatment of the Palestinians:

"There's no doubt that Israel and the Palestinians have tough issues to work out to get to the goal of two states living side by side in peace and security, but injecting a term like apartheid into the discussion doesn't advance that goal," Obama said. "It's emotionally loaded, historically inaccurate, and it's not what I believe.":

http://news.yahoo.com/kerry-warns-israeli-apartheid-231200692--politics.html