Israel’s rightwing parliament overwhelmingly passed a permanent law barring the naturalization of Palestinians from the West Bank or Gaza married to Israeli citizens yesterday. The law in earlier forms has been cited as an “apartheid” law by human rights organizations, but even Israeli centrists voted for it with “a heavy heart.” While the Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked celebrated the law as a triumph of the Jewish state.

“The Zionist left is the real enemy of freedom, of fighting the occupation in Israel, much more than the right wing is,” says Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy. “They are the founding fathers for the settlement project. Who started it? Netanyahu, Begin, Sharon? No no no no no! Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin– Nobel Peace Prize winners, peacemakers– they are responsible. They also enable us Israelis to feel so good about ourselves. Because they were always the laundry of any crime. We have this prestigious, world-famous Supreme Court, this castle of liberalism and freedom, part of the Zionist left, and this Supreme Court enabled any crime of war, from the settlements to the tortures, everything went through the Supreme Court and everything was washed there, and it was accepted. If the Supreme Court says there are no torturing or the settlements are legal– so who are we to say or to think different?”

Israelis hope that their comprehensive military and economic alliance with the apartheid regime in South Africa is forgotten now that Amnesty International is leveling the apartheid accusation against Israel. But in 1976 Israelis were willing to ignore South African Premier John Vorster’s support for the Third Reich during World War II, which earned him imprisonment in Britain.

Leaders of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) issued a Pastoral Letter this week opposing Christian Zionism and saying “Israeli policies and practices that discriminate against Palestinians—Christians and Muslims alike—are consistent with the international definition of the crime of apartheid.”

The first time I was called a “self-hating Jew” was almost 15 years ago by someone I considered a close friend. It stung and I felt confused. Why does supporting Palestinian rights make me self-hating? And what does that have to do with my Judaism? Israel/Palestine seemed like a clear-cut situation to me. How could taking a country away from the people who had been there for centuries be right? 15 years later I have never felt stronger in my stance as a self-loving anti-Zionist Jew.

Adam Horowitz speaks to Lana Tatour about the Amnesty International apartheid report and the need to understand Israeli apartheid in the context of settler-colonialism.

Amnesty International’s failure to recognize apartheid within the context of settler colonialism is not only an inaccurate description of the situation on the ground, but also disregards the root cause of the denial of Palestinian rights for over a century.

The conclusions the UN Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination reaches may have huge consequences for Israel as it tries to weather the apartheid storm, and for Palestinians seeking justice.

Exposing the true face of the occupation is vital in defeating it, and we might be much closer to achieving that than we think.

The New York Times’s failure to report on the Amnesty International report accusing Israel of apartheid is no oversight — it is a deliberate effort to suppress the news.