Israel and its ally the US are pushing back against a United Nations report accusing Israel of imposing an "apartheid regime" of ethnic discrimination against the Palestinians.

The scathing report prepared by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) alleged that "Israel has established an apartheid regime that dominates the Palestinian people as a whole".  It urges governments to "support boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) activities and respond positively to calls for such initiatives".

Israel's UN envoy Danny Danon condemned the report:  "The attempt to smear and falsely label the only true democracy in the Middle East by creating a false analogy is despicable and constitutes a blatant lie," he said.

And the US is standing by its long-time ally in the Mideast:  "The United States is outraged by the report," said US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley.  "The United Nations secretariat was right to distance itself from this report, but it must go further and withdraw the report altogether."

It does not appear that a report using such language has a lot of support at the top:  UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told The Times of Israel "the report as it stands does not reflect the views of the secretary-general" Antonio Guterres and was done without any dialogue with the UN secretariat.  It was prepared by two long-time critics of Israeli policy, Virginia Tilley, professor of political science at Southern Illinois University, and Richard Falk, former UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, and professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University.

The authors purport to document how Palestinian citizens of Israel are "subjected to oppression on the basis of not being Jewish"; and how Palestinians in East Jerusalem experience "discrimination in access to education, healthcare, employment, residency and building rights", as well as "expulsions and home demolitions".