Image copyright AFP Image caption Zouheir Bahloul branded Israel's parliament as racist and destructive

An Israeli Arab politician has resigned in opposition to a controversial new law which declares Israel to be the nation state of the Jewish people.

Zouheir Bahloul, 67, branded parliament "racist" and "destructive" for passing the law, which also puts Hebrew above Arabic as the official language.

"[The law] removes the Arab population from the path of equality in Israel," he told Israeli TV network Reshet.

The bill passed on 19 July, provoking anger from Israel's Arab minority.

Arab members of the Knesset tore up copies of the bill and shouted their disgust, before some were thrown out of the chamber.

"I am resigning from the Knesset," Mr Bahloul, a member of the opposition Zionist Union party, said on Saturday.

"Should I sit on the fence? Should I give legitimacy to this destructive, racist, extremist parliament?"

He added that he could not face telling his grandson that he had kept his seat in the Knesset.

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Israeli Arab MPs protest and rip copies of the bill after Knesset passes nation state law

After the bill was passed, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised it as a "defining moment" in the country's history.

"A hundred and twenty-two years after [the founder of modern Zionism Theodore] Herzl made his vision known, with this law we determined the founding principle of our existence," he said.

Called The Basic Law: Israel as the Nation State of the Jewish People, the legislation essentially defines Israel first and foremost as a Jewish state.

Image copyright Reuters Image caption Israeli Arabs have long complained of discrimination

It was created because some Israeli Jewish politicians consider the founding principles of Israel's creation, as a state for Jews in their ancient homeland, to be under threat.

But Israeli Arabs, who comprise about 20% of the country's population, see it as evidence that Israel is downgrading their status.

They have equal rights under the law but have long complained of being treated as second-class citizens and say they face discrimination and worse provisions than Israeli Jews.</s>In protest of Israel's controversial "Jewish nation-state" law, a Israeli Arab lawmaker from opposition Zionist Union lawmaker on Saturday quitted the parliament.

According to Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, Zouheir Bahloul termed the parliament (the Knesset) "racist" for passing the law, which sparked international criticism of Israel.

Bahloul said the law brushed the Arab citizens aside, both officially and constitutionally.

The Arab lawmaker said his resignation will come into effect in September when the Knesset returns from its summer recess and vowed not to step back from his decision.

The law defines Israel as a Jewish state with a “united Jerusalem” as its capital. It has also promoted Hebrew as the only official language, stripping Arabic as an official language while recognizing its “special status”.

The new legislation risks further alienating the Arab minority who argue they already face discrimination from Israeli Jews and the government and already feel as though they are second-class citizens.

Palestinians, who have Israeli citizenship make up 21 percent of the population, are known as Israeli Arabs and have members in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset.</s>JERUSALEM (JTA) — An Arab-Israeli lawmaker resigned from Knesset in protest of the nation-state law.

Zouheir Bahloul of the Zionist Union announced his resignation on Saturday during a live appearance on Israel’s “Meet the Press” television show.

“The law oppresses me and oppresses the population that sent me to the Knesset,” he said during his announcement.

“The government submits the Knesset to its whims. The Knesset has become a rubber stamp of exceptional and racist legislation. I will run from it as one runs from raging fire,” he said. “I was burned, I cannot remain silent anymore, and it’s better for me to escape before this ship sinks. It may still remain above water, but I won’t be on it.”

He said he would work for change from outside the government. “I will be one of the founders of the popular movement that is supposed to rise in this country. This will be a popular movement of Arabs and Jews who will prove that eventually, in spite of Netanyahu and his friends’ opposition, we can live here together and direct this ship to other places,”

The Labor Party, one of the two parties that makes up the Zionist Union, said in a statement that it was “sorry to hear” about Bahloul’s decision to resign.

“The Nationality Law is a kick in the head to over one fifth of the population of Israel—which is a Jewish country with or without it. When we return to the government, we will amend this law as well and add what should’ve been obvious—the word ‘equality.'”

Labor Party leader Avi Gabbay also said the party will work to make sure there is appropriate Arab representation in the Knesset.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday met with the Druze local council heads as part of his ongoing talks with Druze community leaders in the wake of the approval of the nationality law.

“There are unending attempts to rescind the definition of the State of Israel as the national state of the Jewish people. We legislated the Nation-State Law in order to ensure that Israel will remain the national state of our people – this is the purpose of the state’s existence. The law does not detract at all from the individual rights of anybody. It is designed to make the necessary legal balance, the time for which has come, in order to ensure the character of the State of Israel,” Netanyahu told them.

“You are describing genuine feelings and we must find a solution. I will continue [holding] consultations,” he also said, and announced the establishment of a team to submit recommendations “for actions that will strengthen the important ties between us.”

Netanyahu also defended the law Sunday morning at the weekly Cabinet meeting.

“The State of Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people, with full equal rights for all of its citizens. This is the meaning of the words ‘a Jewish and democratic state’,” he said. “Over decades the opposition has preached to us that we must withdraw to the 1967 lines in order to ensure that Israel remains the national state of the Jewish people in which there is a Jewish majority in the state. Then suddenly when we pass a basic law to ensure exactly this, the left cries out in protest? What hypocrisy.”

“The Israeli left must search within itself. It needs to ask itself why the basic term Zionism, ‘a Jewish national state of the Jewish people in its land’, has become a rude term for it, a rude word, a principle that one should be ashamed of. We are not ashamed of Zionism. We are proud of our state, that it is a national home for the Jewish people, which strictly upholds – in a manner that is without peer – the individual rights of all its citizens,” he also said.</s>A prominent Israeli Arab lawmaker resigned Saturday from what he described as a "racist" and "extremist" parliament that passed a controversial law declaring Israel to be the nation-state of the Jews.

The law passed in the Knesset earlier this month states that "national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people." It also downgrades Arabic from an official language alongside Hebrew.

Zouheir Bahloul, of the main opposition Zionist Union alliance, said he was resigning over a "dangerous" law that undermines the democratic nature of the Israeli state.

"The nation state law officially, constitutionally, removes the Arab population from the path of equality in Israel," he said in Hebrew on the television show Meet the Press.

"Should I sit on the fence? Should I give legitimacy to this destructive, racist, extremist parliament?"

"This is a painful moment. If I'm giving up, it means all hope is lost," the Arab lawmaker continued.

Israel has 1.9 million Arab citizens, or about 21 percent of the total population of 9 million. Another 5 percent of the population consists of non-Arab Christians or other groups such as Druze.

Bahloul is considered a moderate political voice who sought understanding and equality between Jews and Arabs. He is a member of the Labor Party, which along side Hatnuah make up the center-left Zionist Union alliance.

Read more: Opinion: Israel's new nation-state law and the politics of superiority

Incoming opposition leader and head of Hatnuah, Tzipi Livni, said in comments translated by Ynet News that she regretted Bahloul's decision, "particularly in days in which the tyranny of the majority and extremist nationalism are hurting minorities in society. This is the time for all of those who believe in the State of Israel being both Jewish and democratic—with equality for all—to join forces."

Labor Party said in a statement that it lamented Bahloul's exit from the Knesset and vowed to fight the nation-state law.

"The nation-state law is a kick in the head of more than a fifth of Israel's population, which would be a Jewish state with or without it. When we return to power we will amend this law as well, and add to it what is supposed to be obvious, the word 'equality.'"

The nation-state law enters Israel's Basic Law, a quasi-constitution. It has drawn widespread criticism from the main opposition, Israeli Arab lawmakers with the Joint List, the international community and liberal Jewish groups abroad.

The 150,000 strong Druze community has come out strongly against the nation-state bill and the absence of references to equality. Unlike Muslims and Christians, Druze are drafted into the military and considered in alliance with Jews.

Druze lawmakers and community leaders have filed a challenge to the nation-state law with the Supreme Court.</s>There is no connection between the substance of Israel’s newly passed Nation State of the Jewish People law, and the debate its passage unleashed.

On the one hand, supporters of the law led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insist that the law is a vital step in entrenching and protecting Israel’s Jewish identity. After the law passed last Thursday night, Netanyahu declared, “This is a pivotal moment in the annals of Zionism and the annals of the State of Israel. 122 years after [Theodore] Herzl published his vision [of a Jewish state] we affixed in law the founding principle of our existence.”

On the other hand, Arab members of Knesset theatrically condemned the law and claimed that with its passage, Israel had officially embraced “apartheid.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Israel is the heir of Nazi Germany. PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas and his deputies said the UN should reinstitute its definition of defined Zionism, the Jewish national liberation movement as a form of racism.

Israeli leftists, including members of Knesset, the supposedly center-left Zionist Union Party, backed by Haaretz, parroted the Arab-Turkish talking points with Hebrew accents. The American-Jewish leadership, like the New York Times, argued that the passage of the law is proof that Israel is on the verge of rejecting democracy.

Given the unreconcilable claims of the Right on the one hand and the Arabs, the Left and American-Jewish leadership on the other, it is imperative to read the text of the law itself. In reading you discover something remarkable.

This a nothingburger without a bun, or a patty, a plate or a pickle.

It does nothing new and it says nothing new.

Israel was the Jewish state for 70 years before the law was passed and it remains the Jewish state a week after it passed.

 The clause in the law which is supposed to render Israel an “apartheid” state deals with Jewish settlement of the land of Israel. Its language is weak and declaratory. It refers to Jewish settlement as “a national value.”

In contrast, the League of Nations 1920 Mandate for Palestine explicitly enjoined the British mandatory government to “encourage… close settlement by Jews on the land.”

Because it does nothing, the Nation-State Law is like a hologram. It means whatever you want it to mean. Which means that the maelstrom surrounding it tells us more about the sides to the argument than it tells us about the law.

What does the vacuous law tell us about the nationalist camp that has championed it since its first draft was written 14 years ago?

 It’s possible that members of the nationalist camp that promoted the law didn’t understand what they were doing. They thought that by legislating the obvious, they were, in the words of George Orwell, performing “the first duty of intelligent men.” They thought that by legislating that “The land of Israel is the historic homeland of the Jewish people, where the State of Israel was established,” would protect Israel’s status as the Jewish state from those who deny its right to exist.

The problem with the Right’s narrative – that Israel’s Jewish identity is under attack and that steps must be taken to protect it – is not that it is wrong. Israel’s Jewish identity is under assault from post-Zionists and anti-Zionists in Israel and abroad. The problem is that far from protecting Israel’s Jewish character, the Nation-State Law serves as a red flag for Israel’s detractors, inviting them to attack it.

This brings us to the law’s three groups of opponents: the Arabs and their would-be savior Erdogan; the Israeli Left; and the American Jewish leadership.

The Arab members of Knesset, like Abbas and his deputies are using the law as a means to sell their rejection of Israel’s right to exist. Erdogan uses his hostility and rejection of Israel’s right to exist to advance his goal of leading the Sunni Arab world.

 While there is nothing new about their positions, the law has given the Arabs an excuse to ratchet up their assaults. The distressing fact that Arab lawmakers have convinced many of Israel’s Druze citizens and its Arab citizens who seek to integrate into Israeli society that the law harms their civil rights redounds directly to the Arab Israeli lawmakers’ cynical, but predictable exploitation of the law to bash the state.

The amazing thing about the rhetoric of leftist Israeli lawmakers is its radicalism. Without the Israeli accents, it would be hard to distinguish statements by Meretz leader Tamar Zandberg and editorials in Haaretz from denunciations of the law by Arab Joint List leader Ayman Odeh.

The close resemblance of the Left’s talking points with the Arab narrative reflect a profound, and fast-paced process of radicalization that the Israeli Left has undergone over just the past few years. Case in point is the self-proclaimed “Zionist Union” Party’s response to the law.

In 2014, Zionist Union MK Shelly Yacimovich wrote a letter regarding the then circulating draft of the law to the bill’s author, then-Kadima MK Avi Dichter. The draft bill circulating then was more substantive than the law passed last week.

 Yacimovich told Dichter that while she couldn’t see anything objectionable about the law, she couldn’t understand why its passage was necessary given that it was merely an aggregation of laws that were already passed.

In her speech in the Knesset plenary ahead of the law’s passage last week, Yacimovich did a full about face. She referred to the law that simply aggregates previously passed statutes, “racist” and “xenophobic.” Likewise, Zionist Union leader Tzipi Livni condemned the law she once supported in the most extreme language.

It is hard to align Yacimovich and Livni’s positions with even the lowest common denominator definition of Zionism. How can it be racist to define Jewish settlement of the historic Jewish homeland as “a national value”? Of course it is a national value. If it weren’t Israel would never have been established in the first place.

This brings us to the American-Jewish leadership. The Jewish Federations of North America lobbied strongly against the bill. In an email to members, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the JNFA Richard Sandler said the Jewish Federations, “were disappointed with the law that ultimately passed.”

The Federation’s Israel office sent out a detailed explanation of the law to members. While the language was careful, it strongly intimated that the law is racist for making Israel’s Jewish character explicit. The Philadelphia Federation’s letter to its members alleged that the law’s provisions “are a dangerous check on Israel’s democratic principles.”

Like the self-proclaimed Zionist Union’s condemnation of the law as racist, the American-Jewish response marks a stark departure from past responses of the Jewish Federations and other Jewish groups to Israeli laws and policies. For Israel’s first 60 years, the Federations, like the other major Jewish groups weren’t quick to air their disagreements with Israel’s elected officials. Their gut response was to support Israel and let others attack it.

Now the longstanding instinct has been turned on its head. Underlying the Federation’s reactions to the law is a profound discomfort with the fact that Israel is the Jewish state and intends to remain the Jewish state. This pronounced discomfort speaks to a profound shift in Federation values from Zionism to post-Zionism.

Moreover, as Sandler noted, the Federations were intensively engaged in the legislative process. As a consequence, their representatives and leaders knew the law changed nothing in the status of Israel’s non-Jewish citizens. That is, they knew that the law was an anodyne statement of principles that did nothing more than enshrine the situation that has existed in Israel since its founding. And yet, they hate it.

From the nationalist camp’s perspective, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the Nation-State Law and the controversy it sparked and intensified demonstrates that its members and leaders have forgotten the lessons of the past.

On July 30, 1980, the Knesset passed Basic Law: Jerusalem, Israel’s Capital. The law declared that “Undivided, unified Jerusalem” is Israel’s capital. But that declaration did nothing to change Jerusalem’s status as Israel’s capital. Jerusalem has been the capital of Israel since 1949. Its municipal boundaries were extended and the city was united by government decision shortly after the 1967 Six Day War.

Then-prime minister Menachem Begin said the law would protect Israeli sovereignty over unified Jerusalem. Instead, the law undermined Israel’s control of the city.

Seizing on the law as an opportunity to condemn Israel, rabidly anti-Israel then-US president Jimmy Carter orchestrated the drafting and passage of UN Security Council Resolution 478. The resolution, which the US abstained from, declared the Knesset law null and void and ordered the nations who had set up their embassies in Jerusalem to withdraw them. In short order, 14 of the 16 nations whose embassies were in Jerusalem removed them from the capital.

To the extent the Israeli Left opposed the bill, like Yacimovich in 2014, they did so not because they disagreed with its provisions but because it had no substantive value.

The American-Jewish community was so angry with Carter for stabbing Israel in the back that Jewish support for the Democratic president reached an all-time low in the 1980 presidential election. Carter received a mere 50% of the Jewish vote. Ronald Reagan received a whopping 35%.

This then brings us to the lesson the nationalist camp ignored from 1980. Back then, Begin would have done far more to protect Israeli sovereignty over unified Jerusalem if he had built new Jewish neighborhoods throughout eastern, southern and northern Jerusalem and invested in road infrastructure. Instead, Begin opted for a law that changed nothing in relation to Jerusalem’s legal status and caused harm to Israel’s international standing.

Again, the nationalist camp is right to be concerned about protecting Israel’s Jewish character. It is under attack both at home and abroad. There are substantive steps that the Knesset can and must take to secure it. The Knesset must undertake a significant overhaul of Israel’s legal system. It must revoke the tax exempt status and other privileges of political NGOs financed by foreign governments. It must apply Israeli law to Area C in Judea and Samaria. These steps, taken separately and together will do more to protect Israel’s Jewish character than a hundred nation-state laws.

It’s too late for regrets. The milk has been spilled. The law has passed. Amending it will only prolong the bloodletting and empower the anti-Zionists.

But the time has come – 38 years late – to finally learn its lesson. Declarative laws do not protect Israel. Action protect Israel.

Reprinted with author’s permission from The Jerusalem Post</s>An Israeli-Arab legislator says he is resigning from parliament for “ideological reasons” to protest against the recent passage of a controversial law enshrining the state’s Jewish character.

An Israeli-Arab legislator says he is resigning from parliament for “ideological reasons” to protest against the recent passage of a controversial law enshrining the state’s Jewish character.

Labour lawmaker Zuhair Bahloul said he can no longer serve in a country that officially marginalises the 20% Arab minority he represents.

Mr Bahloul, formerly a popular sports broadcaster, is regarded as a symbol of Jewish-Arab co-existence.

His departure marks further fallout from the explosive bill, which has also seen strong opposition from a Druze minority that serves in the military and feels slighted by the legislation.

Israel’s 1948 declaration of independence defined its nature as a Jewish and democratic state. The government says the bill merely enshrines the country’s existing character but critics say it undercuts its democratic values.</s>An Israeli Arab lawmaker resigned on Saturday and branded the parliament "racist" after it passed a controversial new law which declares Israel the nation state of the Jewish people.

The new legislation speaks of Israel as the historic homeland of the Jews and says they have a "unique" right to self-determination there. It also revokes the longstanding status of Arabic as an official language alongside Hebrew.

Zouheir Bahloul, of the opposition Zionist Union party, said he could not face telling his grandson that he remained part of the same chamber which passed the law.

"I am resigning from the Knesset," he said on Reshet TV, in reference to Israel's parliament.

"The nation state law officially, constitutionally, removes the Arab population from the path of equality in Israel," he said in Hebrew.

"Should I sit on the fence? Should I give legitimacy to this destructive, racist, extremist parliament?"

Bahloul said that his resignation would officially take effect when parliament returns from its summer recess in September, but he pledged not to reconsider in the meantime.

"I faithfully promise that I shall not go back," he said.

After the law was approved earlier this month Arab members of parliament branded the legislation "racist" and ripped up copies of the bill in the Knesset chamber.

Arab citizens make up some 17.5 percent of Israel's more than eight million population.

The law makes no mention of equality and Israel's democratic character, implying the country's Jewish identity takes precedence.

Leaders of Israel's 130,000-strong Druze Arab community, which unlike Muslims and Christians is subject to the military draft, has filed a challenge to the law with the country's Supreme Court.

On Friday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held talks with Israeli Druze spiritual leader Sheikh Muafak Tarif and a retired Druze general.

"Prime Minister Netanyahu made no commitment and said that he would continue to hold consultations," the premier's office said in a statement.

Also present at the meeting was Communications Minister Ayoob Kara, a member of Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party.

He voted in favour of the law and has since reportedly received death threats.</s>An Israeli Arab lawmaker says he is resigning from parliament for "ideological reasons" to protest the recent passage of a controversial law enshrining the state's Jewish character.

Labor lawmaker Zuhair Bahloul says Sunday he can no longer serve in a country that officially marginalizes the 20 percent Arab minority he represents.

Bahloul, a former popular sports broadcaster, is regarded as a symbol of Jewish and Arab coexistence.

His departure marks further fallout from the explosive bill, which has also seen strong opposition from a Druze minority that serves in the military and feels slighted by the legislation.

Israel's 1948 declaration of independence defined its nature as a Jewish and democratic state. The government says the bill merely enshrines the country's existing character but critics say it undercuts its democratic values.</s>Susan Abulhawa - More than 80 years after Nazi Germany enacted what came to be known as the Nuremberg Race Laws, Israeli legislators voted in favour of the so-called "nation-state law". By doing so, they essentially codified "Jewish supremacy" into law, which effectively mirrors the Nazi-era legislation of ethnoreligious stratification of German citizenry.

Israel's "nation-state law" stipulates in its first clause that "actualisation of the right of national self-determination in the state of Israel is unique to the Jewish people". In other words, the 1.7 million Palestinian citizens of Israel, the native inhabitants who managed to remain in their homes when European Jews conquered parts of historical Palestine in 1948, shall be without sovereignty or agency, forever living at the mercy of Israeli Jews.

In similar fashion, the first of the Nuremberg Laws, the Reich Citizenship Law, deemed citizenship a privilege exclusive to people of "German or kindred blood". The remainder were classed as state subjects, without citizenship rights.

Since there was no scientifically sound way to distinguish Jewish Germans from the rest of German society, legislators looked into people's ancestry to determine their Jewishness. Anyone who had three or four Jewish grandparents was defined as a Jew, regardless of whether that individual identified himself or herself as a Jew or belonged to the Jewish religious community.

That will not be necessary for indigenous Palestinian citizens of Israel because, since its creation in 1948, Israel put protocols in place to ensure that non-Jews do not assimilate into mainstream Jewish society.

This brings us to the second Nuremberg Law: Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, which sought to prevent mixing of Aryan blood, dubbed "race defilement".

The new "nation-state law" may not mention "race defilement" but in Israel, anti-miscegenation laws are already in place, masquerading as legislation meant to protect traditional values. Marriage can only be performed by religious officials and the Orthodox rabbinate has exclusive purview over Jewish marriages. Interreligious marriage within Israel is strictly forbidden by law.

The Reich Flag Law, which established black, red, and white as the national colours of Germany, and the swastika flag as the new national flag, was also part of the Nuremberg Laws.

The second clause of Israel's "nation-state law" regarding national symbols similarly indicates that "the flag of the state is white, two blue stripes near the edges, and a blue Star of David in the centre." Two days after it was passed, Israeli police and military soldiers arrested a Palestinian boy for holding a Palestinian flag outside the Al Aqsa mosque in occupied Jerusalem.

The third clause of the new nation-state law reiterates Israel's illegitimate claim to the whole of Jerusalem as its capital, an illegal and internationally unrecognised claim that has been emboldened by US President Donald Trump's controversial decision to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Interestingly, however, this new law does not define state borders and Israel remains the only country in the world without declared borders. This is not surprising, as Israel is a continuously expanding settler-colonial state, even though their admission to the United Nations in 1948 was based on their claim to the areas within the 1948 armistice line only, which does not include Jerusalem or any other part of the West Bank.

This new law also marks the beginning of the erasure of Arabic from the land, as it decrees Hebrew to be the only official language of the state, while Arabic has "special status". Its fourth clause further explains that use of "the Arab language [sic]" institutionally "will be regulated by law."

As for the 4.5 million indigenous Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank who do not have Israeli citizenship, the nation-state law eludes to their fate in the seventh clause, which states: "The state views Jewish settlement as a national value and will labour to encourage and promote its establishment and development."

Simply stated, Israel will continue to work in earnest to build Jewish-only colonies on seized Palestinian land, ostensibly where a Palestinian state was to be formed per the Oslo Accords.

We can expect that more settlement will simply accelerate Israel's ongoing displacement of Palestinians to replace them with imported Jews. We know from the past decades of settlement construction that this process is accomplished by systematic dispossession, marginalisation, ghettoisation and robbing of indigenous Palestinian inhabitants. This process more closely resembles the Manifest Destiny removal and marginalisation of First Nations in North America.

Western media should stop mincing words by calling the nation-state law "controversial" when in fact it is encoding the worst human impulses into law, the likes of which were promoted in Nazi Germany, Jim Crow and Indian Removal America and other abominable moments in human history. –Aljazeera</s>The head of the Arab Joint List Alliance at the Israeli Knesset (Parliament), Aymen Odeh, described the passing of the racist Jewish Nation-state Law as “the death of our democracy.”

Did Odeh truly believe that, prior to this law, he had lived in a true democracy? 70 years of Israeli Jewish supremacy, genocide, ethnic cleansing, wars, sieges, mass incarceration, numerous discriminatory laws, all aimed at the very destruction of the Palestinian people should have given enough clues that Israel was never a democracy, to begin with.

The Jewish Nation-state Law is merely the icing on the cake. It simply gave those who argued, all along, that Israel’s attempt at combining democracy with ethnic supremacy was racism masquerading as democracy, the munition they needed to further illustrate the point.

There is no escaping the moral imperative now. Those who insist on supporting Israel must know that they are supporting an unabashed apartheid regime.

The new law, which was passed after some wrangling on January 19, has divorced Israel from any claim, however untrue, to being a democratic state.

In fact, the law does not mention the word "democracy" in its wording, not even once. Reference to the Jewish identity of the state, however are ample and dominant, with the clear exclusion of the Palestinian people from their rights in their historic homeland:
• "The state of Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people …
• "The actualization of the right of national self-determination in the state of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.
• "The state will labor to ensure the safety of sons of the Jewish people …
• "The state will act to preserve the cultural, historical and religious legacy of the Jewish people among the Jewish diaspora," and so on.

But most dangerous of all is the stipulation that “the state views Jewish settlement as a national value and will labor to encourage and promote its establishment and development.”

True, illegal Jewish settlements already dot the Palestinian land in the West Bank and Jerusalem; and a de facto segregation already exists in Israel itself. In fact, segregation is so deep and entrenched, even maternity wards in Israeli hospitals separate between mothers, based on their race.

The above stipulation, however, will further accelerate segregation and cement apartheid, making the harm not merely intellectual and political, but physical as well.

The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, Adalah, has documented in its "Discriminatory Laws Database" a list of over 65 Israeli laws that “discriminate directly or indirectly against Palestinian citizens in Israel and/or Palestinian residents of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) on the basis of their national belonging.”

According to Adalah, “These laws limit the rights of Palestinians in all areas of life, from citizenship rights to the right to political participation, land and housing rights, education rights, cultural and language rights, religious rights, and due process rights during detention.”

While it would be accurate to argue that the Jewish Nations-state bill is the officiation of apartheid in Israel, this realization should not dismiss the previous reality upon which Israel was founded 70 years ago.

Apartheid is not a single law, but a slow, agonizing buildup of an intricate legal regime that is motivated by the belief that one racial group is superior to all others.

Not only does the new law elevate Israel’s Jewish identity and erase any commitment to democracy, it also downgrades the status of all others. Palestinian Arabs, the natives of the land of historic Palestine upon which Israel was established, did not feature prominently in the new law at all. There was a mere stipulation made to the Arabic language, but only to downgrade it from being an official language, to a "special one."

Israel’s decision to refrain from formulating a written constitution when it was founded in 1948 was not a haphazard one. Since then, it has been following a predicable model where it would alter reality on the ground to the advantage of Jews at the expense of Palestinian Arabs.

Instead of a constitution, Israel resorted to what it termed "Basic Laws", which allowed for the constant formulation of new laws guided by the "Jewish State’s" commitment to racial supremacy than to democracy, international law, human rights or any other ethnical value.

The Jewish Nation-state Law is itself a "Basic Law." And with that law, Israel has dropped the meaningless claim to being both Jewish and democratic. This impossible task was often left to the Supreme Court which tried, but failed, to strike any convincing balance.

This new reality should, once and for all, end the protracted debate on the supposed uniqueness of Israel’s political system.

And since Israel has chosen racial supremacy over any claim, however faint, to real democracy, western countries that have often shielded Israel must also make a choice on whether they wish to support an apartheid regime or fight against it.

The initial statement by EU foreign affairs chief, Federica Mogherini was lackluster and feeble. “We are concerned, we have expressed this concern and we will continue to engage with Israeli authorities in this context,” she said, while renewing her commitment to the "two-state solution."

This is hardly the proper statement in response to a country that had just announced its membership in the apartheid club.

The EU must end its wishy-washy political discourse and disengage from Apartheid Israel, or it has to accept the moral, ethical and legal consequences of being an accomplice in Israeli crimes against Palestinians.

Israel has made its choice and it is, unmistakably, the wrong one. The rest of the world must now make its choice as well, hopefully the right one: standing on the right side of history – against Israeli Jewish apartheid and for Palestinian rights.

Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle. His latest book is The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story (Pluto Press, London). Baroud has a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter and is a Non-Resident Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of California Santa Barbara. His website is www.ramzybaroud.net.
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Israeli Arab MP Zouheir Bahloul resigns over the "nation-state" law.