The Knesset, Israel’s legislature, provoked immediate outrage early Thursday when it passed a controversial law that critics within and beyond Israel have denounced as “an apartheid bill.” It proclaims “the state of Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people” and “the actualization of the right of national self-determination in the state of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.”

Following the 62-55 vote—with two abstentions—Arab lawmakers reportedly ripped up paper copies of the legislation in protest, then were forced to leave the Knesset hall. Ayman Odeh, chairman of the Joint List, a coalition of Israel’s four Arab-dominated political parties, said in a statement that Israel has “declared it does not want us here,” and that it “passed a law of Jewish supremacy and told us that we will always be second-class citizens.”

“Israel is now openly and unblushingly a racist, apartheid state,” responded human rights activist Craig Murray, a former British diplomat.

Rebecca Vilkomerson, executive director of the U.S.-based Jewish Voice for Peace, weighed in on Twitter:

“I announce with shock and sorrow the death of democracy,” Ahmed Tibi, an Arab lawmaker, told journalists. Tibi and fellow Arab legislator Ayeda Touma-Souliman confronted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the vote, according to Haaretz, by yelling at him, “You passed an apartheid law, a racist law.”

“Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people, and respects the rights of all of its citizens,” Netanyahu claimed Thursday. “This is our country, the Jewish state. In recent years there have been those who have tried to undermine that and question the principles of our existence. Today we made it into law: This is the country, the language, the anthem, and flag.”

About 1.8 million Arabs—primarily descendants of Palestinians who stayed on their land during and after the war of 1948—live in Israel, making up about 20 percent of the country’s population.