Israeli parliament passes bill defining country as the nation-state of the Jewish people

The Israeli parliament has passed a controversial bill defining the country as the nation state of the Jewish people, granting an advantageous status to Jewish-only communities and downgrading Arabic from an official language to one with a “special status.”

The bill passed at 3 a.m. Thursday, squeezing by with 62 votes out of 120. The new law defines Israel as the historic homeland of the Jewish nation, with “a singular right to national self-determination within it.”

Arab members of Israel’s parliament confronted Netanyahu as he left the venue.

“You passed an apartheid law, a racist law!” shouted Ahmad Tibi, a member of the Arab Joint List. “Why are you afraid of the Arabic language?”

At: http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-israel-nation-state-bill-20180718-story.html

Separate but equal? Jewish and Arab Israelis together in Jaffa.