JERUSALEM — A leading Israeli journalist—writing in Haaretz, Israel’s oldest and most-prestigious daily newspaper—says “It’s Time to Admit It. Israeli Policy Is What It Is: Apartheid.”

The author, Bradley Burston, a Haaretz columnist and senior editor of Haaretz.com, is well-known in the Israeli media. He has all the journalistic bona fides and decades of experience at distinguished outlets under his belt. For years, Burston served as a Gaza and military correspondent for the right-wing Israeli newspaper the Jerusalem Post. Later, he reported for international news agency Reuters.

Burston writes:

“What I’m about to write will not come easily for me.

“I used to be one of those people who took issue with the label of apartheid as applied to Israel. I was one of those people who could be counted on to argue that, while the country’s settlement and occupation policies were anti-democratic and brutal and slow-dose suicidal, the word apartheid did not apply.

“I’m not one of those people any more.  Not after the last few weeks.

“Not after terrorists firebombed a West Bank Palestinian home, annihilating a family, murdering an 18-month-old boy and his father, burning his mother over 90 percent of her body – only to have Israel’s government rule the family ineligible for the financial support and compensation automatically granted Israeli victims of terrorism, settlers included.

“I can’t pretend anymore. Not after Israel’s justice minister, Ayelet Shaked, explicitly declaring stone-throwing to be terrorism, drove the passage of a bill holding stone-throwers liable to up to 20 years in prison.

“The law did not specify that it targeted only Palestinian stone-throwers. It didn’t have to.

“Just one week later, pro-settlement Jews hurled rocks, furniture, and bottles of urine at Israeli soldiers and police at a West Bank settlement and in response, Benjamin Netanyahu immediately rewarded the Jewish stone-throwers with a pledge to build hundreds of new settlement homes.

“This is what has become of the rule of law. Two sets of books. One for Us, and one to throw at Them. Apartheid.