Haaretz is Israel's leading newspaper, published by the Schocken family and maintaining a global reputation. Today it has an editorial titled "The apartheid prime minister" that states bluntly that thanks to the new "nation state of the Jewish people" law that Netanyahu spearheaded, Israel under Netanyahu is an apartheid regime.

The vote on the law has updated the political fault line in Israel: the discrimination camp vs. the equality camp; the supporters of apartheid against the supporters of democracy. It is true that Israel's Arab citizens have been discriminated against since the state's establishment by the governments on both the left and right. But liberal basic laws and High Court of Justice rulings during the past generation advanced the drive toward equality and integrating the minority, which Netanyahu is now seeking to destroy.

The opposition, now headed by Tzipi Livni, must unite, as it did in the vote on the nation-state law, and present the public with a strong, simple message: equality. There is no more appropriate foundation for Israel's future as a prosperous democratic society. Netanyahu must not be allowed to rip the Declaration of Independence to shreds and turn Israel into a whitewashed version of the occupation regime in the territories.