“He is stirring the dirt,” said Gabriel Abdullah, an Arab citizen of Israel who runs a tourism company in Jerusalem, of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. “That’s very, very dangerous, but he will use anything.”

Abdullah was not alone among members of Israel’s Arab minority on Monday in lambasting Netanyahu for saying the country was “not a state of all its citizens”. Many characterised his comments as a racist ploy to try to win the forthcoming general election.

Facing a tight race in the run-up to the 9 April polls, Netanyahu has sought to appeal to far-right religious and nationalist voters who fear the political influence of Israeli Arabs, who broadly support the Palestinian cause.

On Sunday evening the prime minister, who has served 13 years on and off in office, sparked outrage when he wrote on Instagram: “Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people – and only it.”

“He is using his last bullet,” said Abdullah. While Israeli Arabs felt discrimination, he said, Netanyahu’s words showed it had become entrenched “as the pattern of the state”.

Israeli Arabs are Palestinians who remained in their towns and villages after the war surrounding the creation of Israel in 1948, and their descendants. Hundreds of thousands of others fled or were expelled.

The ones who stayed make up roughly a fifth of the country’s nearly nine million citizens, and Israel’s supporters have long touted their position as a sign of a healthy democracy. “It’s democratic for Jewish Israelis, and it’s an apartheid regime for non-Jews,” said Abdullah.

Hassan Jabareen, director of Adalah, a non-profit human rights group supporting Palestinian citizens of Israel, said Netanyahu’s statement was “racism par excellence.”

“What is taken for granted in democratic countries around the world – a state based on the principle of equality for all citizens – is considered anathema in Israel under Netanyahu’s racist regime,” he said.

In his post on Sunday, Netanyahu referenced a controversial “nation state” law passed last year declaring that only Jews have the unique right of self-determination. It also downgraded Arabic’s status as an official language.

Jabareen said the legislation “defines Israel’s constitutional identity on the basis of racial exclusivity and Jewish supremacy”.

Netanyahu’s post was a response to Rotem Sela, an Israeli model and television actor who had accused his firebrand culture minister, Miri Regev, of fear-mongering against Arab citizens of Israel.

Regev had repeated in a television show that Netanyahu’s main election foes would form a government with Israeli Arab parties, a situation that has never occurred.

“When the hell will someone in this government convey to the public that Israel is a state of all its citizens and that all people were created equal?” Sela wrote on Instagram. “Even the Arabs – believe it or not – are human beings,” she said.

Ayman Odeh, an Israeli Arab politician, thanked Sela on Twitter for her support. “In Israel 2019, to say that the meaning of democracy is a state for all its citizens and that Arabs need to be full citizens – yes, that demands great courage. Rotem Sela, we’ve never met, but well done,” he wrote.

But another prominent Arab lawmaker, Ahmad Tibi, said that for Sela’s stance to be considered brave indicated the “dark times we live in”.

Sela received torrents of sexist abuse online for her post, as well as the rebuke from the prime minister. “Dear Rotem,” Netanyahu replied. “Israel is not a state of all its citizens.”

Abu Samir, from the majority Arab city of Kfar Qasim in central Israel, said Netanyahu could not be clearer in what he meant. “It is a racist declaration against the Arab people,” he said by phone. “You have to understand this is because of the election and he is always against us, and he delivers. He does what he says. These remarks are to increase his share of the radical Jewish vote.”

Netanyahu received widespread condemnation among Israeli Jews, including from the president, Reuven Rivlin, and the actor Gal Gadot.

“There are no first-class citizens, and there are no second-class voters. We are all equal in the voting booth. We are all represented at the Knesset [parliament],” said Rivlin, who holds a largely ceremonial role.

Gadot wrote on Instagram: “Love your neighbour as yourself. This isn’t a matter of right or left. Jew or Arab. Secular or religious.”

Netanyahu, who leads the most rightwing coalition in Israel’s history and intends to form a similar one if he wins in April, has been accused of demonising Israeli Arabs in previous elections. In 2015 on voting day he said Israeli Arab voters were coming out to vote “in droves”.

Abdullah, the Jerusalem tour operator, said Israel could not “ignore all the Palestinian” citizens of Israel. He said he ran a successful business and paid his taxes.

“I am a Christian by faith. I’m Palestinian and Arab by customs and traditions. I can also be an Israeli as a citizen. I have paid my dues, I want my rights.”