Chanting ‘resist apartheid’ and ‘we are all brothers’, thousands of protesters rallied in Tel Aviv against the controversial new law that has proclaimed Israel to be the nation-state of just the Jewish people.

Protesters carried banners demanding equality between the Jews and other nationalities and religions in Israel.

"We are here to call for equality, for full citizenship and equal rights on individual levels and on the rational level. We are here also to say 'Netanyahu, you cannot decide to continue the occupation and to deny the rights of the Palestinians only by law'," Aida Touma-Suleiman from the Joint List Party told RT’s Ruptly.

The controversial law, which had been in the works since 2011 and was strongly supported by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has sparked a wave of protests, which have spilled over the Israeli border and angered the influential Jewish diaspora in the US. The critics of the bill argue that its wording makes some 1.8 million Israeli Arabs, a quarter of the population, second-class citizens.

READ MORE: Mass protest in Israel over ‘discriminating’ nation-state law

Meanwhile supporters of the law argue it is not different from what is written in the Israeli constitution, and is rather symbolic. “This is the homeland state of the Jews,” Middle East expert Reuven Berko told RT, noting that no one in Europe protests against crosses on national flags.

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