As no anti-war political protest is allowed now in “democratic Israel,” I spent most of the last weeks writing my war diaries, describing my daily experiences, describing how Israel has become a full-scale dictatorship. I concentrate on what happens within 1948 Palestine, as this is where I live, and as this is the segment of Apartheid Israel that is least known and understood globally. Unfortunately, many people still believe the fake propaganda as if Israel is a democratic state within its 1948 borders, and see the 1967 occupation is an external unresolved problem. You can read these diaries in Mondoweiss and, of course, in Free Haifa.
Time to ask the big questions
Stifling of internal debate is not directed only at the Palestinians or the very few critical voices within the local Jewish society. Israel was deeply divided before October 7, but it soon united around the necessity “to win the war,” with no questions asked about what that might mean. Without internal debate, the whole society is moving blindly behind hollow slogans toward devastating escalation of the conflict, with no other option even being considered.
Israel is like a car driving crazy ever faster down this road of bloody calamity, without any internal discussion that would allow it to critically assess the situation. The driver is blind and deaf and the car has no brakes to prevent it hitting people on the road, bumping over stones that might turn it upside down or crush into a final wall.
The main thing that I want to convey to you from here, from the middle of this blinding eruption of fear, hate and rage, is my impression that “the West” simply does not understand what this war is all about. And, saying this, I do not speak about my deep moral revulsion toward all those “democratic” leaders that revealed their white supremacist inner selves by supporting Israel’s Apartheid regime and backing its complete disregard to Palestinian lives and Human Rights.
Western leaders revealed their white supremacist inner selves by supporting Israel’s genocidal campaign
I think the leaders of the West, first and foremost Biden, simply do not understand the devastating damage that they are causing to their beloved racist Israel by pushing it to continue this massacres campaign against Gaza’s people.
As Israel is not able to make any rational considerations regarding the direction it is heading, it is up to the Western politicians, media and public, which enable this war, finance it and send daily the bombs that destroy Gaza, to ask the big questions, pull Israel out of its crazy race to mutual destruction, and immediately stop the killing and ethnic cleansing. Only when the road to genocide will be blocked, we would be able to start the search for a real solution, a solution that will guarantee decent living, freedom, equality and security to all.
Premeditated Madness: The Dahiya Doctrine
Israel’s current massacres campaign is not coming out of the blue. It is not a spontaneous response to the (real) shock caused by the unexpected devastating attack by Hamas on October 7, and the total failure of all Israel’s mighty security apparatus on that day.
Since the second Israeli invasion of Lebanon, on the summer of 2006, there is an officially endorsed Israeli strategy, which they call “The Dahiya Doctrine”. The essence of this doctrine, modeled on the destruction caused in Beirut’s Dahiya neighborhood, is the usage of excessive force against the civilian population, creating massive destruction, in order to gain unproportional deterrence that can’t be achieved by confronting military forces. The death and suffering inflicted on the civilian population, according to this doctrine, is not “collateral damage,” but the main goal of the war effort.
Of course, Israel can not speak openly, “in real time,” about this well-documented doctrine. They must declare that they are out “to fight terrorists.” But it is not by chance that, more than a month and a half into “the war,” Israel could not portray any, even slightly feasible, “end game.” The only real solution is, of course, to dismantle the colonialist racist system, but for all Zionist parties this is absolutely out of any consideration. But their claimed goal of “destroying Hamas” is recognized by all experts as completely unrealistic.
Hamas was established in the Gaza Strip and became its main political party when it was under full Israeli occupation and as a direct result of this occupation. History is full of lessons about how war, occupation and oppression resulted in galvanizing fierce resistance. The Israelis could have learned it from their 18 years of occupation of southern Lebanon, where they converted the friendly, peaceful poor Shia minority into their most formidable enemy in the form of Hezbollah. The United State, at the height of the power of its empire, experienced the same frustrating results from their 20 years of “educating” the Afghan people by bombing and shooting them.
The only thing that Israel’s racist leadership (not me) could hope to achieve from this war is to make a frightening impact that will resume their “deterrence” for some time, and to try to convince their army not to sleep on duty.
What Went Wrong
If you understand this logic behind Israel’s madness, you can understand that what the saner Israeli generals, politicians and public want is that their big imperialist brothers will hold them back. If, for example, Biden would tell Israel that killing 20,000 Palestinians, 7,000 of them children, is enough, they could pretend to be angry and say: “We could have killed two hundred thousand”, and return home proud of themselves. This would also protect the big egos of failed generals and politicians that could explain to the lynch-mob public that they wanted to kill more, but they need America to keep their back.
What prevents this war from reaching its “logical end” is the fact that the Western politicians, mostly the US Democrats, and Biden at their “core,” have no brain, and they are carried away by their hypocritic rhetoric. They object to the ceasefire that Israel could accept only if it was enforced on it. By what they see as brave support of Israel, they push it into an ever-bloodier massacres campaign.
For the United States this is just one more imperialist adventure that they can easily allow themselves to abandon, like they abandoned Vietnam and Afghanistan after orgies of bloodshed. For the Israelis, the extreme violence that they are encouraged and pushed into by their “Western friends” might eliminate any chance that they would ever be able to live peacefully in the Middle East.
Israeli police are setting up roadblocks to catch “illegal” Palestinian workers and shutting down businesses that employ them. But this isn’t a new story, and the “Bread Prisoners” have always been forgotten.
(The following article was published in Mondoweiss on November 25, 2011.)
Regular remand hearings in the Haifa court are held in the basement, on the “minus 2” floor. Regular hearings are still suspended due to the “war situation,” but the remand courtroom and the adjacent waiting hall are bustling. There are still many new political detentions, mostly for social media posts. As part of the “situation,” Palestinian political prisoners, who are all categorized as constituting a “security” risk, are not brought to court and are only “attending the hearings” through video. With the gradual relaxation of the emergency measures, all other suspects may be present physically.
The crimes of working and of being arrested
On Thursday, November 23, there were two dozen of us waiting for that day’s political trials, so I decided to sneak into the courtroom. A young, thin guy was standing in the suspect’s cage guarded by two “Nakhshon Combatants” — threatening-looking bullies from the special units of the prisons’ authority. There were only four other people in the courtroom: Judge Ihsan Halabi, his typist, the police prosecutor, and the suspect’s Arab lawyer, apparently from the public defender office.
Israeli police lay roadblocks to hunt Palestinian workers
I soon learned that the accused was from Yamoun, a town near Jenin in the West Bank, and that he was caught by the police at 37 Allenby Street in Haifa. These were all the facts of the criminal indictment that were presented to the court. It goes without saying that he did not have permission to be in Haifa, as all permits have been revoked since October 7 for Palestinian workers from the West Bank and Gaza — as part of Israel’s total war on Palestinians. It was not stated in the indictment, but the defense lawyer explained that his client came to Haifa for work. As there was no other claim regarding what he did in Haifa, the judge accepted it as a fact.
If it was not justice, at least it was efficient. The defense attorney pleaded guilty to the charge on behalf of the accused. The judge even made the effort to verify, in Arabic, with the Yamoun guy whether he understood what the lawyer said in Hebrew on his behalf. With the conviction closed and sealed, they turned to arguments about the appropriate punishment.
The police prosecutor was very enthusiastic to prove her case. She stressed the fact that the state of Israel was in an existential war after the cruel attacks of October 7, and that the accused, by entering the state’s borders illegally, “trampled with a rough foot over the sovereignty of the state!” She added that, in these dire days, the police are busy with multiple tasks, and the accused, by the fact that the police had to arrest him, diverted police forces from other important tasks and caused significant damage to state security. It reminded me of the soldier who accused me in court, claiming that his toenail was broken while he was kicking me.
Raising the range of punishment
The judge asked the prosecutor what, in her view, was the adequate range of punishment for the offense. She mentioned previous cases, including cases that were appealed and decided in higher courts — some of them from before October 7 and some of them newer. I learned that before October 7, the range of punishment for working without a permit was between suspended imprisonments and actual imprisonments for five months. Now, because of the war and the danger that the man’s “illegal presence” constitutes to public security, the minimum punishment for working without a permit has been raised to two months of actual imprisonment, in addition to a fine and suspended imprisonment. The higher end of “the accepted range” was also raised to seven months of imprisonment.
A policeman hangs administrative decree, ordering the closure of a shop in the Galilee that employed workers from the West Bank
This means that any worker from the West Bank or Gaza who is caught on the wrong side of the apartheid walls (where there is work) should be punished with at least two months in prison to avenge the October 7 attacks.
The judge asked the prosecutor where, within this range, the Yamoun guy’s punishment should fall. She said it should be somewhere in the middle. He asked why and reminded her that usually those who are accused for the first time are punished at the lower end of the range. She said that the accused has already crossed the border several times before.
As she had no evidence to prove her claim, the judge said he would have to ignore it. Later, she claimed that the accused was already working in Haifa for eight months when he was caught. I hope she was right; at least he could have earned some money for his efforts before paying with his liberty. Again, the judge said there is no evidence for the time that the accused man spent, so he could not rely on it for setting the punishment.
Within less than a quarter of an hour from the beginning of the trial, the judge issued a verdict: two months imprisonment, two months suspended imprisonment, and a 1,000 shekel fine.
The untold story of the ‘bread prisoners’
Israel controls all the area from the river to the sea, and its Jewish citizens can move freely around and enjoy full political, social and economic rights everywhere. But for the Palestinians, the territory is divided into enclaves, ruled by different laws, and their movement is strictly controlled. The economy is also divided, as Israel “generously” leaves for the Palestinian Authority (PA) the burden to care for the social needs of the West Bank and Gaza population, while the occupation keeps control of all the natural resources and all kinds of taxes. It also has the habit of “punishing” the PA, as well as individual Palestinians, with draconian fines.
Between other things, it created a sharply divided economy. The Israeli-Jewish economy is operating by first-world standards, while West Bank Palestinians (but not settlers) are living in miserable third world conditions, and residents of the Gaza strip are completely deprived of any opportunity for decent life. No wonder that the opportunity for people from the West Bank and Gaza to work in the Israeli economy is coveted. Typically, a single worker that manages to get such work does not only earn the bread for his family but is also a source of livelihood for destitute relatives.
The ability to control the “privilege” of working in the Israeli economy is a central tool of coercion for the occupation, building a complex system of permits, interrogations, and licensing. This system is intentionally arbitrary and, in many cases, also a source of corruption and blackmail. On the other side, many Israeli employers prefer to employ Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza because they have no social rights. They are ready to work for long hours and for less money and sacrifice almost everything in order to stay on the job.
This discrepancy between limited supply and strong demand creates a strong “black market” of Palestinian workers. In better times, the army, desperate for the rigidness of its own “licensing” bureaucracy and trying to release some steam to lower tensions in the areas under its control, turns a blind eye to the thousands of workers who put their lives in danger while crawling under the apartheid fence in search for work. From time to time, soldiers suddenly shoot and kill workers at these unofficial crossing points. And when they do find work and a place to sleep, those unlicensed workers might be arrested and thrown into prison at any moment. We call them “Bread Prisoners.”
In several “involuntary visits” in Israel’s detention centers, I always had the impression that the Bread Prisoners were a big part of the population there. I always felt that their story was the most heartbreaking. They constitute a different kind of population, distinct from the criminal types on one side and the political types on the other. But theirs is an almost untold story.
As I explained in a previous post, the phenomenon of people from the post-1967 occupied territories crossing the walls without permission to find work is so prevalent that it has a special word for it in Hebrew. It is based on the Hebrew acronym for “Illegally Present,” and the shorthand term is Shabah, which also has its plural form, Shabahim.
For writing this post, I tried to search in the Hebrew and Arabic press for news about the detention of Shabahim, or unlicensed workers. There is almost none. But there is one obvious exception. In Zionist right-wing-religious sites, there are almost daily news dispatches praising the police for arresting more Palestinian workers. Combing through them, I learned that the different regions of the police are regularly publishing PR statements boasting of their raids on small and big businesses that might employ Shabahim, as well as on Arab towns and neighborhoods where they might find a place to sleep — constantly on the hunt for workers without permits. As part of the more vigilant effort to chase out Shabahim, they also detain some of their employers and put them on trial. In recent press releases, they also boasted of issuing administrative orders to close businesses where Shabahim were employed.
“Respectable” Zionist news sites like Haaretz, Ynet, Maariv, and even Israel Hayom, simply ignore these press releases, as they are clearly non-events that would not be of interest to their readers.
Yet, there is also an entire spectrum of “alternative Israeli media” sources that celebrate each detention. These are the sites that serve the growing public of religious and right-wing extremists. Many in this public are now organizing local militias, armed by the National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. Some of them volunteer to join the police in their manhunt. Their helpful presence is even mentioned in some of the police statements.
Well, I missed one report. One case was recently reported in detail by Ynet — maybe the most popular Hebrew news site. On November 14, under the title “Shabah from Gaza was caught in the Petah Tikva area — this is what he did there,” the article stated:
Ynet was shocked to report that a carpenter from Petah Tikva paid his Gazan worker above minimum wage
“While the Israeli economy is suffering a severe blow as a result of the war, and many have been forced into unpaid vacation, a resident of Petah Tikva is accused in court of employing an illegal present, a resident of Gaza, in his carpentry business. He even paid him 50 shekels per hour of work. This is when the minimum wage in Israel is about 30 shekels.
According to the indictment, the owner of the carpentry located in the Petah Tikva area, employed the Shabah from January 2022 until November 5, when he was caught without a permit to be in Israel.
As mentioned, the payment to which the Shabah was awarded was 50 shekels per hour of work, and more in cash. If that is not enough, the indictment also claims that the owner of the carpentry shop, since the beginning of October, let the Shabah sleep at a bakery in the area.”
Arresting workers on a daily basis is no news, but having the owner of a carpentry pay his Gazan workers above the minimum wage is what was so shocking. A blow to the Israeli economy in a time of war.
Overcrowded rotten prisons
To be honest, even we, the people struggling for freedom, democracy, and social justice, tend to ignore the fate of the Shabahim. While we organized hundreds of vigils and demonstrations in solidarity with Palestinian political prisoners over the last decades, I can recall only a single demonstration that was dedicated to the fate of the “bread prisoners.” It happened in 2001, at the height of the Second Intifada. In the year 2000 the Damun prison on Mount Carmel — a series of tobacco warehouses from the British Mandate period that were converted to be used as a prison in 1953 — was declared by the Israeli Prison Services as unfit for housing human beings. But it was reopened specifically to hold the “Bread Prisoners” in 2001. The Arab-Jewish Ta’ayush (intentionally using the Arabic word for “coexistence”) movement organized a demonstration in front of the prison, demanding its immediate closure. A poster was made for the demonstration by artist Iris Bar.
It was a good demonstration, but Damun prison was not closed. In recent years, it was expanded with special wings for Palestinian female political prisoners, as well as a wing for Palestinian child prisoners. Some of Damun’s prisoners were released yesterday, November 24, or are expected to be released soon as part of the prisoners’ exchange.
But the Bread Prisoners, the heroes of the struggle for existence, as well as the heroes of the struggle for freedom, will continue to fill the occupation prisons as long as the apartheid system is not dismantled.
The poster for Ta’ayush 2001 demonstration in support of the Bread Prisoners – artist Iris Bar
The Israeli justice system has been marshalled to criminalize any expression of public protest in Palestinian communities in ’48 Palestine. This week, Palestinians from Umm al-Fahm and Haifa were on trial.
(The following article was published in Mondoweiss on November 23, 2023.)
Since Israel unleashed its campaign of mass killing against the people of Gaza, it also started an unprecedented repressive onslaught against all other Palestinians under its rule — from the river to the sea. In the West Bank, it includes terrorist attacks by armed settlers and the occupation army and constant army raids on towns and villages, including targeting residents from airplanes. These attacks have already killed more than two hundred Palestinians.
In 1948-occupied Palestine, hundreds were detained and interrogated, many of them tortured. An unknown number (maybe about one hundred) were indicted and are held for an indefinite period in “security” prisons, as the courts tend to declare any Palestinian opposed to Israel’s barbaric attacks as a “terrorist supporter” and claim that he or she is too dangerous to be released on bail.
Of the many dozens still awaiting trial in harsh conditions in these so-called “security” prisons, there are only two cases of people who consciously went out to protest the war — two activists accused of leading an anti-war demonstration in Umm al-Fahm on October 19, and another two who are accused of spraying anti-war graffiti on Haifa’s walls. All the rest are simply accused of sharing images or comments on social media and were completely surprised to be dragged from their homes and thrown into prison.
As the interrogation period finished and the two pairs of political activists were indicted, the accusations against them became official and public. It is a case study of the criminalization of non-violent political protest.
The Umm al-Fahm “Stop the War” demo
Umm al-Fahm has a very important political role in ‘48 Palestine. For one, it was not occupied in 1948, but was handed to Israel for free by the Hashemite rulers of Jordan a year later. Umm al-Fahm is located some 20 kilometers northwest of Jenin and 40 kilometers southeast of Haifa. Its “Mount Iskander” is higher than the Carmel, and its densely populated narrow and winding alleys discourage police intervention. The legendary Palestinian caricaturist, Naji al-Ali, once praised its militant tradition by saying, “Umm al-Fahm is the code name for Palestine.”
Umm al-Fahm the code name for Palestine – caricature by Naju al-Ali
Umm al-Fahm used to be dominated by the communist party, but in 1989 switched to the Islamic Movement. It was also where Abna’ al-Bald was established in 1969, to become the most leftist Palestinian National Liberation movement within ‘48 Palestine. The mass struggle in the area around “The Roha Lands” in 1998 was one of the rare cases where Palestinians succeeded in forcing Israel to return confiscated lands to their original owners. In the year 2000, with the eruption of the Second Intifada, several demonstrators in Umm al-Fahm and the surrounding townships of “the Little Triangle” were killed by Israeli police snipers.
Fast forward to the present, and Herak Umm al-Fahm (the Umm al-Fahm Movement) has become the most formidable grassroots movement in ‘48 Palestine. Its main cause for protest was against organized crime, especially the wave of indiscriminate murder for which they held the Israeli police and Shabak responsible, succeeding in mobilizing thousands to take part in demonstrations and, on some occasions, managing to shut down main streets.
No wonder Umm al-Fahm was the only place in ‘48 Palestine where there was a proper demonstration in solidarity with Gaza over the last month and a half (it happened on October 19, two days after the bombing of the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital). The demonstration, however, was muted relative to local tradition, only two or three hundred strong, with not a Palestinian flag in sight, and moving through the alleyways rather than closing down any main streets. When it was about to disperse quietly, it was attacked by a large force of police and border guards. Twelve people were arrested and beaten during the attack, and two organizers were later indicted. They are still in prison awaiting trial for “supporting terrorism.”
Trying to be on the safe side
The two detainees from Umm al-Fahm are the educator Muhammad Taher Jabarin and the lawyer Ahmad Khalifa. Ahmad specializes in human rights, specifically the right to expression, and was working for a human rights organization defending political prisoners. For transparency’s sake, I must admit that I know Ahmad personally from my political activity. But, even without knowing Ahmad, the political logic of the October 19 Umm al-Fahm demo was obvious. As everybody in the Palestinian public was full of (justified) fear of Israel’s furious oppression after Hamas attacks on October 7, there was no protest of the daily massacres in Gaza. The organizers of the demonstration wanted to prove that you can still have a peaceful demonstration, express solidarity with the people of Gaza without supporting Hamas, and go home safely.
Judge Bogdanov prevented supporters of the Umm al-Fahm Two from entering the courtroom while she read her ruling
This context is obvious to anybody who wants to know the truth, as the demonstration was filmed live by a local news site named “al-Jarmaq net.” The police used the video as their main piece of evidence, describing its content in detail in the indictment.
Before the demonstration even began, “defendant number 1” Jabarin, told the participants that Khalifa, as a lawyer, would explain to them what is lawfully permitted in a demonstration. Khalifa insisted that all would repeat only the agreed slogans so there would be no excuse for the police to intervene. At the end of the demonstration, Khalifa took the stage again, thanked everybody for coming, and called on everybody to disperse quietly. He said they proved that one can demonstrate peacefully, and called on Palestinians in other towns not to be afraid to do the same. He could not finish his short speech as the crowd was attacked from all directions by stun grenades and batons.
All these efforts to conduct a peaceful and orderly demonstration did not prevent the police from accusing Jabarin and Khalifa of supporting a terrorist organization, praising terrorist activities, and calling on people to perform terrorist acts. How come? It is all based on a far-fetched misinterpretation of the slogans that were used in the demonstration.
What were the criminalized slogans?
The indictment of the “Umm al-Fahm Two” includes more than twenty slogans used in the demonstration. As the indictment claims, they were translated from Arabic to Hebrew “by a policeman that knows Arabic.” Some of the translations are clearly distorted, but, even with these distortions, it is clear that no “terrorist organization” was mentioned, and no violent act was praised or called for.
Here are some of the slogans that the indictment cites (in Arabic, they have a rhythm and rhyme):
Resist, resist, resist, on your rights do not compromise!
There is no solution, other than the uprooting of the occupier!
The unity of your people, oh Palestine, a thorn in the throat of the occupiers!
Join us, masses, the people of Gaza are dear to us!
Oh Gaza, stay strong, your land gave birth to lions!
Hashem’s Gaza (*) will not bow to the tank and the cannon!
Shout and raise your voice, death is better than humiliation!
In Gaza, al-Aqsa, and Sheikh Jarrah, my people call for struggle!
(*) Hashem’s Gaza is an old traditional nickname for the city.
All these slogans are old slogans repeated millions of times in hundreds of demonstrations before, and nobody was ever charged for them.
The writers of the indictment did not care to write which of the slogans, in their interpretation, constituted an offense. After listing the slogans, they simply conclude:
“In their actions listed above, the defendants together committed an act of identification with a terrorist organization by publishing words of praise, support, and sympathy for the organization, in public, and with the aim of identifying with it, and published a direct call to commit an act of terrorism, and published words of praise, sympathy, and encouragement for acts of terrorism, supporting it and identifying with it, and according to the content of the publication and the circumstances in which it was published, there is a real possibility that it will lead to an act of terrorism.”
(It is all one long run-on sentence in the original).
For them, any Palestinian call for struggle can only be interpreted as a call to perform terrorist attacks.
The power of repetition
The prosecution requested Judge Maria Pikus Bogdanov of the Haifa Magistrate Court to extend the detention of Jabarin and Khalifa till the end of their trial. Advocate Hassan Jabarin, the director of Adalah, the legal center for Arab minority rights, tried to convince the judge that the indictment was out of touch with the reality of the peaceful demonstration. He noticed a strange feature of the indictment document. Instead of listing specific slogans and explaining what was wrong with them, the same slogans are cited again and again over more than a full page.
Attorney Hassan Jabarin from Adalah was interviewed after the remand of the Umm al-Fahm Two
In the demonstration, which was relatively short — lasting just about half an hour — the organizers wanted to keep stick to what they regarded as “safe slogans,” repeating them to prevent “improvisations.” It would appear that the film was transcribed with all the repetitions and later pasted into the indictment. The sheer weight of the repetitions seemed to the prosecution to create a “threatening” impression. Advocate Jabarin objected that this is not a professional way to write an indictment, and requested that every slogan that is claimed to be offensive be mentioned only once.
The judge did not only ignore the defense lawyer’s request but went further along with the prosecution’s strange habit. In her ruling from November 21, where she explained why she agreed that the accused should be detained until the end of their trial, she essentially “copied and pasted” the entire indictment, including the repetitions. But this was not enough for her. While reasoning her ruling, she cut and pasted again an even longer version of the repetitive slogans from the transcription. Later, she cut and pasted long sections of it into five different sections of her ruling for each article of the law included in the indictment.
Naturally, she avoided any attempt to understand what the slogans might be talking about and satisfied herself by stressing that it was clear that they constituted the claimed offenses.
Finally, she set another hearing for December 28 to consider whether the accused can be transferred to house detention out of Umm al-Fahm.
Indictment for spraying graffiti multiplied by three
I already reported here about the two Palestinian Haifa activists, Assaf and Ran, who were accused of spraying the wall with graffiti in solidarity with the suffering people of Gaza. The two were arrested on November 12. When I last reported about them on November 15, the appeal judge in the district court overruled a decision to release them and extended their detention for two days. Their lawyer, Afnan Khalifa, warned us that the prosecution will try to indict them within this short period, to trap them in a long detention period until the end of their trial.
As feared, on Friday, November 17, the prosecution submitted to the remand judge an indictment against the two, with a request for an unlimited detention. Based on this request, their detention was automatically remanded until the request is set to be heard on Thursday, November 23.
In this case, the prosecution is on shaky legal grounds. Spraying graffiti is defined in the law as “vandalism of real estate,” but this article of the law does not allow prolonged detention before trial. To close the gap, the prosecution added two more offenses based on the same graffiti. They claimed that by their graffiti, the accused also “caused nuisance to the public” and “behaved in a way that could violate public peace.” The extra offenses from the graffiti were caused, according to the indictment, due to the special war situation. Accordingly, the “facts” section of the indictment starts on the morning of October 7, and details all the awful things that happened (only to the Israeli side) since then.
Lawyers Afnan Khalifa and Tamim Shihab defended the two activists accused in spraying graffiti on Haifa’s walls
It is strange to see how a “repetition pandemic” is spreading in the Israeli justice system. Though the graffiti indictment (as it related to relatively minor offenses) was prepared by the Haifa police prosecution department, unlike the prosecution in the “Ministry of Justice” that prepared the Umm al-Fahm indictment, they also repeated, again and again, the same slogans — apparently trying to match the number of writings on Haifa’s walls.
They also did not point to any specific writings and did not even try to explain how they constituted the offense in the indictment. They assumed that everybody reading texts like “Children killers, stop the war on Gaza” (written in English), or “Sorry my beloved Gaza, Gaza is annihilated” (in Arabic) would immediately understand that, beyond the damage to the walls, it disturbed the public order.
In this case, we have one strong card for the defense. The Haifa police wanted to accuse the graffiti writers (or suspected writers) of “incitement,” which could convert the whole case into a “security” category and almost automatically entail long detention. But they admitted in the court that they consulted the responsible people in the prosecution and were told that the content did not imply incitement.
In the latest hearing, the judge asked the police how, after the state decided there was no incitement, they still treated the case as if there was. So, in this case, at least, we have some hope of seeing Assaf and Ran released today.
The first anti-war demonstration in Tel Aviv since October 7 offered an important look at the current state of the protest movement in Israel, as well as how the government will seek to repress it
(The following report appeared on November 18, in Mondoweiss.)
Since October 7, Israeli police have implemented full dictatorship from the river to the sea. This has included preventing any anti-war protest within the Green Line and filling the prisons with ‘freedom-of-expression’ prisoners. Today, November 18, after a month and 11 days of massive bloodshed, there was the first anti-war demonstration in Tel Aviv. I joined the protest mostly because I felt obliged to support the call for immediate ceasefire and call for an “all for all” captives and prisoners’ exchange. But I also wanted to assess what this demonstration teaches us about the current policies of the repressive Israeli regime and about the protest movement.
Court ruling allows demonstration
Hadash (“The Democratic Front for Peace and Equality,” organized around the Israeli Communist Party) applied for a license to demonstrate in Tel Aviv against the war and for a prisoners’ exchange. Their initial application was refused by the police, which suggested they hold a meeting in a closed venue instead. Then Hadash, with the help of ACRI (The Association for Civil Rights in Israel), appealed to the Bagatz (Hebrew acronym for “High Court of Justice”), which finally forced the police to allow the demonstration.
As I reported before, the same Bagatz, headed by the same judge, Yitzhak Amit, opposed a previous appeal by Hadash to hold anti-war demonstrations in Sakhnin and Umm al-Fahm. In their new appeal, in order to receive the license, the applicants explained the differences between the previous demonstration that was denied and this new request: “Sakhnin and Umm al-Fahm are not the center of Tel Aviv, a demonstration against the war in Gaza is not a demonstration that calls for the return of the captives, the north and beach districts are not the Tel Aviv district, and the appeal there was rejected for its specific circumstances… the verdict in this case strengthen the duty of the police to enable the holding of the demonstration in our case, because of the distinct difference between the cases.”
On ACRI’s website you can read in Hebrew the protocol of the deliberations in the Bagatz. I must say that I was astonished by the details of the discussion and how much it reveals about the political interplay.
Judge Amit himself asked the police, “Was there any big demonstration from this side till now?”
The commander of Tel Aviv police, Peretz Amar, answered: “No, they have behaved well, they did not even request one.”
Then Judge Amit explained: “They claim that they have a feeling, and the police should make extra effort. This side of the political map did not yet have its day. Because we disallowed the demonstration in Sakhnin, we heard about your lack of personnel, etc. Because of that… we must give this side the feeling that it is not deprived.”
Later in the discussion, when the organizers almost despaired from the police restrictions and suggested postponing for the next week, Judge Amit stressed his point: “It is very important that the demonstration will take place, for us to remove the cloud that we don’t allow the Arab sector to demonstrate and this side of the political map.”
In the end, under pressure from the court, the organizers and the police agreed on the location of the demonstration, in a public park between Yaffa (Jaffa) and Tel Aviv, and to limit the number of participants to seven hundred. I could not avoid thinking that compensating for the silencing of two million Arabs by allowing a muted demonstration in a corner of Tel Aviv is really emblematic of the “Jewish and Democratic” state.
Police limit protest message
When we arrived at the site of the demonstration, the designated section of the park was all closed by police railings. There was just a small opening, and each one willing to enter was checked by the police.
Banners that were refused by the police: “Massacre does not justify massacre,” “Political solution,” “Bibi should be imprisoned,” “No to Apartheid,” “Food instead of bombs,” and “Return the captives, stop the revenge.”
Local Call‘s report about the demonstration was titled “At an anti-war demonstration, the police forbade the waving of anti-war signs.” They went on to report what banners were refused by the police: “Massacre does not justify massacre,” “Political solution,” “Bibi should be imprisoned,” “No to Apartheid,” “Food instead of bombs,” and “Return the captives, stop the revenge.” They also tried to prevent people with t-shirts with the phrase “Looking at the occupation in the eyes” (a very mild expression) from entering, claiming that even using the word “occupation” constituted incitement, but after a long argument, they let them in. I must admit that the police censorship was not hermetic, and similar signs were later seen in the demonstration.
After more than a month of intense oppression, speaking the truth terrified everybody. Organizers pleaded with the participants not to raise any flags and not to use any slogans that might provoke the police. This meant the Palestinian flag was forbidden. A single demonstrator with an Israeli flag and a sign calling for a ceasefire walked on the margins of the demonstration, and nobody dared to talk with him.
Speakers call for ceasefire, prisoner exchange
If we could demonstrate safely in Palestinian towns and villages and Arab neighborhoods in mixed cities, you would see tens of thousands coming out in solidarity with Gaza’s people. However, the police are terrorizing the Arab population, and many people believed that this demonstration in Tel Aviv would be attacked even though it was permitted. Besides, there is a real danger of lynch mobs in the Jewish areas, especially as the Ben-Gvir police distributed tens of thousands of weapons to local militias. The militia in Tel Aviv is headed by a right-wing rapper called “The Shade,” well known for organizing attacks against peace demonstrations during previous wars.
There were about five hundred brave demonstrators who dared to gather in the park. Haaretz, by the way, always under-reporting leftist protest, headlined their report “Tens demonstrated in Tel Aviv.” About 80% of the demonstrators were Jews. It was all held in Hebrew, and the content was adjusted to challenge but not break with the current awful mood in the Israeli Jewish society.
The main demands of the demonstration were immediate ceasefire and the return of all captives, POWS, and prisoners through a comprehensive exchange deal, “all for all.” These are the most essential demands in the current situation, and they made this demonstration important.
There were different positions among the speakers, but none of them confronted the current situation of daily genocide as it is. Most speakers tried to create some artificial “balancing” and parallelism between the occupation and the occupied, stressing the suffering on both sides and calling to keep civilians out of harm’s way. I do not blame them. In today’s Israel, any position hinting that the struggle against the occupation is legitimate may land you in jail.
On the positive side, there is a continuous shift in the political discourse. Many speakers, Arabs and Jews, talked about the fact that there are millions of Arabs and Jews living between the river and the sea and that the only solution is to have full human rights and equality for all.
For many decades, the Israeli “peace camp” thought that its role was to be a pressure group within the “Israeli side” to promote a “peace process” with the Palestinian side. Now, almost everybody is aware that there is no peace process and that there should be a united struggle against the single Apartheid system.
Even though the demonstration was organized by Hadash, Sami Abu Shehadeh, the leader of the National Democratic Alliance, came to take part. The organizers spontaneously added him to the list of speakers, giving a boost to the most needed unity in these hard times, overcoming painful divisions that resulted from the splits in the last Knesset elections.
Abu Shehadeh mentioned at the beginning of his speech that the location of our demonstration was on the land of the destroyed village of Manshiya; many of its descendants are now refugees in Gaza and bombed by the Israeli army.
The last speaker was Mohammad Barakeh, The head of the Follow Up Committee, the united leadership of the 1948 Palestinian public. He started his words by mentioning that his family was expelled from Saffuriya, and most of them are now refugees outside Palestine. While lamenting suffering on both sides of the conflict, he mentioned that more than a hundred thousand Palestinians lost their lives before October 7. As the illusion of a state-level political solution is fading, the narrative is returning to the basics of human existence.
The fascists in the government and in the streets
Being an irredeemable optimist, and as there are not many encouraging facts on the ground just now, I try to raise morale by reminding myself how many things were even worse not so long time ago.
In 2014, while Israel was massacring people in Gaza at an unprecedented rate (vastly surpassed in the current “round”), Hadash tried to organize an Arab-Jewish anti-war demonstration in Carmel Center, in a Jewish area in Haifa. There was a nationwide fascist mobilization to prevent them, and the brave peace demonstrators were chased all around. It was sheer luck that nobody died. Some of the activists who participated in today’s protest were still terrified by that experience. At the time, I published an eyewitness testimony in my blog.
Now, the fascist mob is in the government and the media, but they did not attack us with the same numbers and the same ferocity. There were, maybe, between one to two hundred fascists demonstrating around us, and they were kept, mostly, at some distance by the police. When we finally dispersed and were supposed to go through a safe passage northward, the police disappeared and allowed the fascists, many of whom were armed, to harass and curse the demonstrators. They especially concentrated on Mohammad Barakeh and blocked his car to prevent him from driving away. But, finally, the police intervened and let him go.
Since October 7, dissent inside Israel has been violently put down by the government under the leadership of Itamar Ben-Gvir.
(This is the second dispatch from my Haifa Gaza-War diaries, describing how repression is deepening inside the Israeli dictatorship. It was initially published in Mondoweiss on November 11, 2023.)
A main achievement of Israeli Apartheid over the years was the division of the Palestinian people. While Jews (and other colonialist settlers of all creeds) may roam freely from the river to the sea and enjoy the whole spectrum of privileges, from free speech to the “right” to expropriate Palestinian land, the native Arab Palestinians are confined to enclaves and divided by different systems of discrimination and oppression, different leaderships and different (illusory) political perspectives.
The semblance of democracy in ‘48 Palestine was a strong weapon in Israel’s propaganda war to claim itself as “basically a democracy,” disturbed only by “temporary occupation” (already 56 years old) of the West Bank and Gaza. The reality for Palestinians in the -48 occupied areas was never democratic: major political parties (al-Ard in the fifties and sixties and the Islamic Movement in the previous decade) were disbanded, and their leaders and activists were persecuted. Systematic ethnic cleansing, home demolition, and land confiscation continued uninterrupted throughout the state of Israel’s 75 years. The participation of some Arab parties in the Zionist Knesset was used internally to constantly incite racist public opinion against them while marketed internationally as proof of Israel’s “lively” democracy.
While estimating what political activity in 48 would not put us behind bars, we are used to speak of the “democratic margins” that are tolerable by the regime. The width of those margins has changed over the years. From 1948 until 1966, Palestinians under Israeli rule were subject to a military regime that was stricter than what was later imposed in the West Bank: you had to ask for special permission from the military governor even to visit your relatives in the next village. Later, when Israel felt it had become a world-class empire, and when Israeli society became more capitalist and more individualistic, these margins expanded gradually, but never to the level that allowed the Palestinians, who are formal citizens of Israel, any real influence over their, or the country’s, fate.
As that empire began dismantling, when Israel was forced to withdraw from Lebanon (in 2000) and Gaza (in 2005), Israeli society began abandoning its liberal pretensions for the sake of messianic religious nationalism, and the margins of democracy sharply narrowed. Since October 7, the state’s self-confidence has collapsed following the attacks by Hamas, and the oppressive apparatus and Zionist public have turned hysterically against Palestinians everywhere, crushing any democratic margins altogether.
The repression deepens
I already reported here in detail about the repression of the first attempts to protest against Israel’s massacres in Gaza and to demand an end to the bloody war. In this second post about Israel’s full-scale dictatorship, I will describe how repression is deepening as the new rules of the game become clear.
Start with Haifa. In the previous post, I described how, on October 18, police prevented a Gaza-Solidarity demonstration by Herak Haifa even before it started. Six of us were arrested but, as we did not have the time to do anything at the demonstration, were released the next day.
On the morning of October 29, the Haifa police did not wait for another demonstration and invaded my house in a big show of force. They confiscated Palestinian flags, posters, and banners from old demonstrations. They arrested me for the night. The next day, they requested to extend my detention on the grounds that by having flags and banners at home, I performed the crime of “behavior that might disturb public order” (this was the article of the law they used). They explained that I might take part in some future demonstrations. Due to my poor health, I was detained mostly in a hospital, where I was handcuffed to a bed and guarded by two armed policemen. The police also sent to the Israeli press some photos of the mess they made in my house and a photo of me in custody, boasting that they detained “a Hamas supporter.”
After making a mess in my house, the police organized a posters’ exhibition, took this picture and distribute it to the press – October 29, 2023
I was duly released on the second day, because, once again, I was arrested for doing nothing. In response to my release, Israel’s minister of “national security,” who oversees the police, the notorious extremist Itamar Ben-Gvir, also posted my picture on social media describing me as a “Hamas supporter,” but the main subject of his attack was the judge that ordered my release. As the judge happened to be Arab, Ben-Gvir labeled him “the enemy within.”
In my previous post, I also reported a peaceful “stop the war” demonstration that succeeded in marching in the streets of Umm al-Fahm on October 19. As it was dispersing, it was violently attacked by the police, and 12 of the demonstrators were arrested. After a few days, most of the detainees were released on bail, but the police concentrated on two activists whom it regarded as the organizers, and indicted them of “supporting terrorism.” The two are lawyer Ahmad Khalifa and educator Muhammad Taher Jabarin.
The demonstrators in Umm al-Fahm were very careful not to use any slogans that might be considered illegal. Yet, every single slogan that they used was distorted in a way that misconstrued the actual meaning. One of the most common slogans in Palestinian demonstrations is, “Oh masses, join, join, our people are sacrificing their blood.” The Palestinian blood refers to the victims in Gaza, most of whom are civilians and many of them children. The slogan is meant as a call to action to the people around you to join the demonstration in solidarity. According to the prosecution, the people sacrificing their blood are only Hamas fighters, and thus, the slogan is calling on people to join them in the fight!
The police requested the court to remand the detention of Khalifa and Jabarin until the end of the trial, which might take many months or even more than a year. The two are still held in harsh conditions, with hundreds of other new political detainees in the “security prison” in Megiddo, prevented from essentials like changing clothes, soap, electricity, or a toothbrush. The next remand hearing was set for November 13.
More attempts to protest
I also reported how the police prevented an Arab-Jewish gathering against the war in a closed hall in Haifa, by threatening the owner of the hall. The gathering was due to take place on October 26 and was called for by the High Follow Up Committee, which is the united leadership of ’48 Palestinians. On the same day, the committee called for a press conference in its Nazareth offices instead. Muhammad Barakeh, the committee’s head, promised that the voice of the Palestinian public (in 48) against the war would not be silenced. When asked what would be their next steps, he replied, “We would ask for a license for a demonstration.”
Finally, it was Hadash, the Arab-Jewish front organized around the Israeli Communist Party, that requested licenses to hold two demonstrations against the war on Tuesday, November 7, in Umm al-Fahm (in the Triangle) and in Sakhnin (in the Galilee). The police refused both requests. Hadash, together with Adalah (the legal center for Arab minority rights in Israel), appealed to Israel’s Bagatz (Hebrew acronym for “High Court of Justice”), claiming that the police are preventing any form of protest by Arab citizens at the time of the war. They cited the chief of the Israeli police, Shabtai, who declared that there would be zero tolerance for anyone who wanted to show solidarity with Gaza and promised to put protesters on buses and drive them to Gaza.
The three Bagatz judges tried to distance themselves from the provocative declarations of the police chief but rejected the appeal on the grounds that the police did not have enough forces to keep order in the planned demonstrations. They ignored the fact, proved by countless previous protests, that in any Palestinian demonstration in Palestinian towns, the best way to prevent disorder is for the police to stay away. In fact, what the police claimed was that they did not have enough forces to attack and oppress the demonstrators, as they did in Umm al-Fahm on October 19.
As the last fig-leaf, the judges emphasized the police promise to consider any new request for protest according to the circumstances, and not to apply a total ban on protest.
Police detaining Tajamu3 (National Democratic Alliance) leaders, Sami Abu Shehadeh (Right) and Yousef Tatour, before the planned vigil in Nazareth could eve begin. November 9, 2023. Photo: Arab 48
The court decision was given on Wednesday, November 8, and was tested the next day. The High Follow Up Committee informed the Nazareth police that they plan to hold a small anti-war vigil, that was not publicly announced, in the center of the city on Thursday morning. They promised that there would be very limited attendance, less than 50 people, and reminded the police that such a vigil does not require any license. They said they only informed the police in advance to prevent any misunderstanding.
On Thursday morning, November 9, the police laid a checkpoint on the entrance to Nazareth and detained Mr. Barakeh, before he could even get anywhere close to the site of the vigil. Five more prominent Palestinian leaders were detained in “the spring square,” in the middle of Nazareth, even before the vigil could start. Four of the detainees, including Mr. Barakeh, Haneen Zoabi, and the head of The National Democratic Alliance, Sami Abu Shehadeh, were former members of the Israeli Knesset. When they argued with the police about the prevention of their minor quiet protest, they learned how the police interpreted the court decision: you do not have the right to demonstrate against the war.
Silencing a protest against the silencing of protest
The news of the “preventive detention” of the leadership of the Arab public was received as a shock in what remained of the small democratic sphere in Israeli society. They could easily ignore the suppression of the “radicals” in Herak Haifa and Umm al-Fahm, but the detention of the leaders of the Follow-Up Committee was sharp evidence that the extreme right-wing Ben-Gvir is not only the nominal figure at the head of the police but is also setting the tone and giving the orders. The “high court,” which many liberal Israelis hoped could limit the fascist wave, proved (again) useless.
Demonstrating against the war in the current mood in Israel is apparently too dangerous. So, some activists had the idea that it might be possible to demonstrate against the curtailing of the basic democratic right to protest instead. There was a quick call, spreading in WhatsApp groups, to hold vigils to protest silencing on the same day, November 9, at 17:00, in front of the police headquarters in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
I attended the protest in Tel Aviv. When I arrived, there were only some 20 people that were preparing to protest. The police were setting iron railings around us, so we thought they might allow the vigil to take place. But within minutes, a big police force arrived, and their commander declared that “there would be no protest, no megaphones, no banners.” Without caring for the regular declaration of illegal gatherings and without demanding that the protesters disperse, he ordered his men to attack, and they started to tear banners and drag with them the more vocal protesters.
Detention in Tel Aviv protest against silencing – November 9, 2023
I was standing in the back with Jonathan Pollak, a well-known activist from Jaffa. A special police group came and arrested him while he was standing quietly at my side, just because they recognized him.
Meanwhile, the crowd was growing, and there were already around a hundred of us, but we were pushed away from the police headquarters and into a side street. Some of us tried to shout “Jews and Arabs, refuse to be dumb,” “Police State,” or “No to political police, no to a fascist state!” Every time we raised our voice, the police attacked violently again, dragging with them more detainees, and pushing us farther down the street. All in all, 18 protesters were detained in the Tel Aviv demonstration.
Siha Mekomit (“Local Call”) reported about the Jerusalem demonstration:
About twenty demonstrators gathered for a protest vigil in the Russian Compound, with sticky paper on their faces in protest of the gagging. In less than three minutes, police officers from the station came out and announced that it was an illegal gathering. The police pulled out batons, started beating the protesters, and chased them in the streets of Jerusalem for over half an hour.
One of the protesters was severely beaten and arrested as he needed medical treatment. Four other protesters sought medical treatment, after receiving severe blows from batons in their heads, ribs and limbs. During all this time, there were no calls, banners or megaphones.
Well, you should not be too concerned about the freedom of expression in Israel. On the very same day, there was a right-wing demonstration in Tel Aviv in support of the occupation of Gaza. It was licensed by the police, and there were no detentions.
As far as I know, all the detainees from Nazareth, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem, were released on the same day.
A secret demonstration
The tireless Follow Up Committee proved that it would not be silenced. Today, Saturday, November 11, they held a meeting in the town of Ar’ara in the Triangle. This time they did not tell anybody in advance, especially not the police. At the end of the meeting, they went out to the nearby street and held banners calling for the end of the war.
Although the police were not there to guard the public order, the event finished without any noticeable disturbances.
Secret Anti-War vigil by the High Follow Up Committee – Ar’ara, November 11, 2023
Free Haifa 