Student groups at several New York universities are attempting to equate present-day Israel with Apartheid-era South Africa with a series of “Israel Apartheid Week” lectures and panel discussions.

While anti-Israel activists have long tried make such an equation, some Jewish leaders say a bestselling new book by President Carter, “Palestine Peace Not Apartheid,” has given legitimacy to an unfair comparison. “Carter’s book has made it kosher to call Israel an apartheid — and that’s very distasteful,” Rabbi Yehuda Sarna, who works at the Bronfman Center for Jewish Life at New York University, said.

NYU Students for Justice in Palestine has joined with similar groups at Columbia University and Hunter College, in addition to other pro-Palestinian Arab organizations, to put on nine events that make the case that Israel, a democracy home to about 5 million Jewish citizens and 1 million Arab citizens, is as dangerous as the racist regime that ruled South Africa for nearly 50 years.

A member of Columbia’s Arab Student Association, one of the sponsor groups, Saifedean Ammous, 26, said Israeli policies are even more oppressive than those of Apartheid-era South Africa. Mr. Ammous, who grew up in the West Bank city of Ramallah, said this week’s events provide a forum to “express this point of view” and are not an opportunity to have a dialogue with Jewish students or supporters of the state of Israel.

Since 2005, Israel Apartheid Week has been held in various cities in Canada and Britain. This week marks the first time the event has made its way to America, though pro-Palestinian Arab groups have hosted a handful of conferences on university campuses in recent years.

Locally, sessions will focus on Israeli government policies organizers consider discriminatory and Palestinian Arab resistance efforts.

Two sessions — scheduled for tonight and Thursday evening — will attempt to further campaigns to encourage the divestment of private capital from Israel. Such efforts have been widely thwarted in recent years.

Last Saturday’s inaugural lecture, organized by the Palestine Club at Hunter College, took place at the school’s Upper East Side campus. A college spokeswoman did not know whether conference organizers were charged for their use of the room. This Saturday, a teach-in sponsored by NJ Solidarity-Activists for the Liberation of Palestine will take place at St. Peter’s College in Jersey City, N.J. All other events will be held in churches, foundation offices, and other venues not associated with a university.

A member of NJ Solidarity, Charlotte Kates, said Mr. Carter is not hard enough on Israel in his book, but that his use of the word apartheid is “powerful.” “I don’t think he legitimizes the term — it has always been legitimate — but it has helped popularize it,” she said.

A pro-Israel advocacy group, the David Project, is organizing meetings this week at which students can voice opposition to the characterization of Israel as an apartheid state.

When it comes to Israel, “the specter of apartheid should not be raised in any form,” the director of the American Jewish Committee’s Koppelman Institute on American Jewish-Israeli Relations, Steven Bayme, said.

Mr. Bayme said it is unfortunate that Mr. Carter’s book has given credibility to those who would like to see Israel abolished. “I’m sure that was not his intent, but it is the effect,” he said.