These are crazy times for us, in 48 Palestine. Of course, it is nothing like the hell in Gaza, not even anything like the daily killings in the West Bank. And, even as we all see the catastrophe happening around us, and pray that it would stop NOW, we know that things will not return to what they were before.
To summarize the mood, I would say that people here are terrified. We are not crazy, but almost everybody would agree that the state of Israel is. And this craziness is not only expressed in the genocide in Gaza, but also in daily repression here. This time the repression is not directed mostly against political activists, but against Palestinians in general.
Part of it is because we are in the first major conflict after social media became widely prevalent, and almost everybody could write something or share something. Another part is that Palestinian society in 48 made great advances in education and integration in the economy, with many students, engineers, lawyers, medical professionals, artists, etc. There was an air of normality in daily life.
On October 7, as the shock from the attacks turned quickly into indiscriminate rage, many in the Jewish public turned on their Palestinian co-students or co-workers to expose signs of disloyalty and report them to the authorities. Automatic translation applications probably carry also part of the blame. Hundreds were interrogated and arrested for social media posts.
Visiting an apolitical friend in the neighborhood, I asked how he was doing. He answered: “I do not see, do not hear, do not speak!” In the corner grocery people were arguing whether you may be arrested for a “like” or only for sharing a post.
Perplexing prisoners’ exchange
Political prisoners are an important part of Palestinian life, even of popular culture. Over the last decades there was significant change in terminology. Initially people were speaking about “prisoners,” using the same term as is used for criminals and innocent victims of the capitalist system. Even the first association that defended Palestinians in the occupation prisons was called “the prisoner’s friends.” Later, the Arabic word “Asir” (plural “Asra’”, feminine “Asirah” and “Asirat”), meaning Prisoners of War, became the common term for anybody that was arrested in the context of the struggle for liberation.
Some of the “Asra’” were “Feda’iye” – fighters that decided to carry arms and fight against the expropriation of the Palestinian population. Others were “Siyasiyun” – political hard-core militants that the regime decided to shut up. To be an “Asir,” despite all the suffering, was in some ways to be part of the political elite.
Even the meaning of being political prisoner has change in these crazy times.
Take, for example the case of Mariam (not her real name), a student from a conservative Palestinian family. On October 7, some Jewish students found a mild political post in a Facebook page that carried her name. They complained about her to the Haifa university. Mariam claimed it is not her account, and displayed another Facebook account with her name, where she published pictures of her family and relatives. The university management, in addition to taking administrative measurements against Mariam, turned her case to the police.
The police arrested Mariam and started an intensive investigation. Their theory was that she held two Facebook pages, one for her conservative family and the other for her university friends. As Mariam denied, they invited her friends and acquittances to interrogations. Even as some other students with similar posts were released, Mariams detention was remanded, under the claim that if she would be released, she could disrupt the investigation. As she was still in prison as a security prisoner, she was released in the women’s prisoners’ exchange.
Or, to take another example, the case of two young impolite Palestinian women from Haifa that where arrested and indicted for two articles. According to the indictment, on October 12 they cursed a police woman by a vulgar message on WhatsApp. Later that day, they called the Haifa police hotline and said “I am from Gaza, from Palestine, I am Hamas. I am in Haifa to kill all the Jews now.” When arrested they said they were just joking, but they were kept under detention and later indicted.
These two young women were categorized by the Israeli prison authorities as “security prisoners” and were held in harsh conditions in the Damun prison. One of them was released as part of the prisoners’ exchange. The other was convicted yesterday (December 4) in the Haifa court, and she would stay in security prison for a third month until the hearing of arguments about the due punishment.
It is still not clear what Israel intends to do about the charges against the women who were released in the prisoners’ exchange before they were even sentenced. Many fear that they will now be a subject for revenge, even though they did not have any influence on the proceedings. Today it was reported the Zionist municipality of Jerusalem prevents released high-school students from attending their schools. The Technion announced that a female Palestinian student that was also detained for a Facebook post and later released in the prisoners’ exchange will NEVER be allowed to resume her studies. They published this extreme measurement even that they did not hold any relevant “disciplinary” proceedings to check the facts of the case.
Anyway, the arbitrary detentions of 48 Palestinians for minor accusations as security prisoners and their later release in the prisoners’ exchange enabled Israel to avoid the release of other “real” Palestinian female “Asirat.”
I wonder whether this messy way that Israel handled the prisoner’s exchange was one of the reasons why the whole deal came apart.
The prosecution of Palestinian protest in Israel vacillates between two poles: the messianic hardliners aiming to jail as many Palestinians as possible, and the “establishment” types trying to balance their regime.
(The following article appeared today in Mondoweiss.)
The current fascist-dominated Israeli government is not the result of the shock created by Hamas’ attacks on October 7. It was established by Binyamin Netanyahu on December 27, 2022. It was Netanyahu’s choice to appoint the extremist Itamar Ben-Gvir as Minister of National Security — in fact, the maestro of the state’s policy toward two million Palestinians in ‘48 Palestine and East Jerusalem. To make things clearer, another member of Ben Gvir’s party, Otzma Yehudit (“Jewish Power”), was appointed as “minister for the development of the Negev and Galilee,” where most 48 Palestinians live. The main goals of the state’s “development” plans in these areas are to destroy Arab homes and confiscate Arab land.
After October 7, when Israel started its bloody revenge attack on Gaza, there was strong pressure from the military establishment and from Israel’s imperialist backers to form a “unity government” and distance the openly racist troublemakers from the management of the war. Former generals Gantz and Eizenkot, with much more proven experience of fighting and killing Palestinians, joined Netanyahu in the inner war cabinet, but everybody was satisfied with leaving ‘48 Palestinians, who are formally citizens of Israel, to enjoy “Jewish Democracy” Ben-Gvir style.
Some contradictions within the establishment
As I have previously reported, after October 7, the police, the prosecution, and the courts all joined forces to stifle the right of expression of Palestinians and of anybody opposed to the mass killing of civilians in Gaza. They used the pretext of “the war situation” to forcefully prevent demonstrations and wage a campaign of hundreds of detentions and interrogations, even for minor posts on social media.
In the second month of the war, some internal conflicts started to appear inside the state apparatus. On November 20, Haaretz published an article (on November 21, it also appeared in English) titled “Israel’s State Prosecutor Warns Police: Unjustified Arrest of Dissenters Harms the Rule of Law.” According to the Haaretz article, even though some 99% of those arrested by the police for political reasons were Arab Palestinians (to say nothing of the over 3000 Palestinians arrested in the West Bank by the army), two out of the three cases criticized by the State Prosecutor — Amit Eisman — related to Jewish dissidents. The third case was the preventive detention of six leaders from the High Follow Up Committee (the united leadership of ‘48 Palestinians), including four previous members of Knesset — for their intent to hold a quiet anti-war vigil in Nazareth.
Eisman should also blame himself for his instructions to the police. As mentioned in the same article:
“Since the war started, Israel’s law enforcement agencies have adopted a broader policy regarding investigations and prosecutions for crimes of incitement – a tendency that encouraged the filing of indictments against Arab citizens. Eisman allowed the senior officers of the police investigation division to order the interrogation of suspects for these offenses without receiving prior approval from the State Prosecutor’s Office, as is customary, and supported the filing of indictments even for a single statement.”(emphasis added)
We could even feel the results of these internal conflicts in some of the cases that were brought to the courts lately. On Thursday, November 23, the police presented to the Haifa Magistrate’s Court an indictment against Na’im (not his real name) for “support of terrorism,” together with a request to hold him in prison until the end of his trial. Na’im studies law at Haifa University, and he is one of six students arrested due to the complaint filed against them by university management. The only basis for his indictment is a single post from October 7, showing Palestinian civilians celebrating upon an abandoned Israeli army vehicle, with the writing, “Good Morning, uncle.”
At the time, Na’im had already spent 12 days in the Megiddo security prison in harsh conditions. His lawyer, Afnan Khalifa, was pessimistic. She explained that she would have to study the evidence, which she could not see until the indictment. To argue in court against the indefinite remand by discrediting the evidence, she would have to agree to a temporary remand.
To validate the indictment, the police had to bring approval from the state prosecutor’s office. It had to be presented until 13:00, and time was running out. We were all surprised when the prosecutor finally appeared with the approval for the indictment and announced that they withdraw the request for remand. They did not even request house arrest.
Na’im was released with the sole limitation that he is not allowed to “touch the internet.” The judge commented that this does not make sense, as today, without the internet, one cannot even make appointments to the doctor or the bank. But he agreed to the police request, and we all were immensely happy to see Na’im released.
On Monday, November 27, three female students from “Nof Hagalil College” were indicted for social media posts. Unlike previous cases where the police insisted on detention till the end of the trial, one was released, and two were transferred to house arrest. The detention of the fourth student in this group was remanded for continuation of her interrogation.
I do not think that the divisions in the oppressive apparatus are between “democrats” and those “supporting dictatorship,” surely not between “left” and “right.” There is a growing messianic branch of Zionism that is an agent of chaos: they want to put as many Palestinians in jail as possible, to kill ever more Palestinians, to keep a permanent occupation of Gaza, and to build settlements there. Ultimately, they want to replace the al-Aqsa mosque with a Jewish Temple and complete the ethnic cleansing in all of Palestine. The more establishment types are more aware of the limitations of their power and try to balance their regime in a more sustainable way.
Very small cracks for Palestinian expression
Concerning the right to protest, I last reported how the Bagatz(Israel’s High Court) forced the police to allow Hadash (a front organized around the Israeli Communist Party) a muted anti-war demonstration in Tel Aviv on November 18. It was limited to 700 participants, and the police checked everyone at the entrance and censored the banners.
If you wondered whether this was the harbinger of a resumption of the right to protest — well, not really.
Hadash continued to work hard to get permission to demonstrate in Umm al-Fahm, a central Palestinian town in “The Triangle,” forty kilometers southeast of Haifa. After weeks of negotiations, they arrived at an agreement with the police that allowed them to hold an anti-war vigil on Thursday, November 30. One of the conditions was that there would not be more than 50 participants.
Think for yourself — how strange it should be to organize a protest when your main concern is to convince people not to participate.
In the end, a few more people arrived, and the organizers had to request some of the local Umm al-Fahm youth to leave to let the guest who came from far away to demonstrate. You can watch a video of the vigil on Al-Jarmaq net.
One of the factors that allowed Hadash to get permission for the Umm al-Fahm vigil was that it was presented as a common Arab-Jewish activity. The High Follow Up Committee tried to get permission for a limited anti-war vigil in Nazareth, but was met with consistent refusals. On November 25, the Follow Up Committee tried to organize a small vigil in Nazareth, which does not require a license. Still, the police arrived ahead of them with a large force, upon which the Committee cancelled the vigil to avoid violent repression.
Lawyer Suhad Bishara from Adalah, the legal center for Arab minority rights, turned to the State Prosecutor’s office and requested that police be instructed to respect the right to protest, especially not to prevent small vigils that do not require permission. In their reply from November 30, the Prosecutor’s office refused to interfere with the police’s decision, stating that “The Deputy State Attorney for Special Duties, Adv. Alon Altman, looked into the matter and found no reason to interfere with the Israel Police’s decision on the matter.” To justify his decision, he claimed that
“The decision regarding the exercise of police powers regarding the holding of protests is within the authority of the Israel Police, which acts based on independent judgment, in accordance with the concrete assessments of the situation by all the professional bodies on its behalf, which are presented to it in real-time.”
On the same day, November 30, Mr. Muhammad Barakeh, the head of the High Follow Up Committee, together with Adalah, appealed to the Bagatz “against the continuation of the illegal policy of the Israel Police, which prohibits the holding of demonstrations in the Arab communities against the continuation of the war in Gaza and in favor of a ceasefire and exchange of prisoners. The appeal was submitted after several weeks in which the police have been systematically and illegally thwarting the attempts of the Follow Up committee to hold a limited protest that does not require a permit in El’Ain (the spring) square in Nazareth.” (From a press release by Adalah, November 30, 2023.)
A different request by the Follow Up Committee to hold a mass demonstration in Sakhnin, in the center of the Galilee, was also refused by the police. The appeal of this refusal was delayed until the less problematic request for a small vigil in Nazareth would be heard.
Since May 9th, Israeli police and the Shabak (security services) have detained more than 2,000 Palestinians inside the territory Israel has occupied since 1948. But the detention of Sheikh Kamal al-Khatib in Kafr Kanna (north of Nazareth) on Friday, May 14, was the most dramatic and notable. As the police surrounded the Sheikh’s home, local residents spontaneously organized a mass demonstration against his detention, and soon there were clashes with the police. The police used live ammunition to disperse the crowd, and Mako reported (here, in Hebrew) that eleven of the demonstrators were evacuated for medical treatment, at least four of them in severe conditions.
When al-Khatib was indicted two weeks later (on May 27) in the Nazareth Magistrate’s court, his lawyers protested that his violent arrest was illegal to start with. The factual base of the indictment only mentioned three posts on Facebook. By law, the police are entitled to invade people’s homes and arrest suspects without a judicial warrant only in hot pursuit or to prevent imminent crime. Old posts of Facebook don’t justify it. In many previous occasions, when the police or the Shabak wanted to warn al-Khatib about his political activities, he was summoned to the police station where he was interrogated. But the new aggressive approach was exactly the message that the Israeli oppressive state wanted to convey.
Sheikh Kamal al-Khatib is one of the most prominent political figures among the ‘48 Palestinian public. He was the deputy leader of the Islamic Movement (sometimes called “the northern faction of the Islamic Movement”, but it is definitely the real thing) before it was outlawed by Israel in November 2015. Like many other members of the Islamic Movement, he continued his public activity after the movement was banned, and served, between other roles, as head of the “Liberties Committee”, the committee responsible for the defense of political and Human Rights on behalf of the “high follow-up committee”, the unified representative body of 1948 Palestinians.
Al-Khatib is represented in court by a joint team from Adalah, the legal center for Arab minority rights in Israel, led by advocate Hassan Jabareen, and from Al-Mizan Rights Foundation (from Nazareth) led by advocate Omar Khamaisi.
Indictment of the Palestinian narrative
On receiving the eight-page indictment against al-Khatib, Jabareen protested and informed the court that he could not relate to such a lopsided document. Ten out of the 22 articles in the indictment are not connected to anything that is related to the accused, but are simply used to “set the context” – presenting a one-sided narrative of the conflict between the Palestinians and the Zionist movement and Israel from the beginning of the previous century until the latest bombardment of Gaza. In this narrative there is no ethnic cleansing, no occupation, no settlements on confiscated lands, no discrimination, no oppression, no Apartheid, only Arab rioters and terrorists constantly attacking innocent Jews and their revered security forces.
Against this background the court is required to assess the “danger” of the three Facebook posts, the only specific subjects of the indictment, that are taken from the page named “The Sheikh Kamal al-Khatib” (here, in Arabic). The indictment repeats many times the accusation that al-Khatib “called for violence”, “encouraged acts of terror” and “praised Hamas”. But in all the three quoted posts, even after being translated to Hebrew by police translators (his lawyers dispute the accuracy of the translation) – there is not a single call for violence, no praise for violence, and the name of Hamas (or any other organization that Israel considers as “terrorist”) is not even mentioned.
One of the posts that the indictment describes as “supporting terrorism” relates to the “Buraq Revolution” of 1929, which al-Khatib compared to the recent events, as both started with Jewish extremist provocations in and around Al-Aqsa Mosque. He mentions that in both cases the ensuing struggle quickly spread all over Palestine, and he mentions the casualties on both sides. Al-Khatib explained during his interrogation that he warned of the explosive potential from provocations in Al-Aqsa in order to prevent bloodshed. But the very fact that he speaks about these historic events from a Palestinian perspective was enough for the prosecution to declare it “support of terrorism”.
How to identify incitement?
In his 1982 satirical play “The Patriot”, Hanoch Levin wrote:
“Security instructions: A man walking down the street glancing nervously from side to side and over his shoulder – shall be suspected of being an Arab terrorist. A man walking down the street looking calmly ahead of him – shall be suspected of being a level-headed Arab terrorist. A man walking down the street looking up at the sky – shall be suspected of being a religious Arab terrorist. A man walking down the street staring at the ground – shall be suspected of being a shy Arab terrorist. A man walking down the street with his eyes shut – shall be suspected of being a drowsy Arab terrorist. A man not walking down the street – shall be suspected of being a sick Arab terrorist. All the suspects listed above shall be arrested. In the event of an attempted escape, a warning shot will be fired in the air. The body will be taken to the forensic institute.”
The first of the three posts that are cited in the indictment as “incitement to violence” was published on April 19. On the previous day there was a demonstration in Yaffa in solidarity with the people of al-Quds. The demonstrators were attacked by the police and there were clashes. The post includes four images of wounded people and one image of a police concentration, all apparently taken in Yaffa the previous day. This post is relatively short, so I will quote it here in full (my translation from the original Arabic text):
“Jaffa the hard number
Jaffa has always been the lung and flank of Jerusalem.
Just as Jerusalem faces the settlers’ flocks, so did Jaffa last night in the face of their swarms.
It is the same police and its hostile attitude toward every Palestinian, Arab and Muslim, which attacked our people in Jaffa, but Jaffa’s heroes prove every day that they are a difficult number.
All greetings and kisses on the forehead of each of you, O lions of Jaffa.
Jaffa, the definitive evidence of the failure of the Zionist project to distort the identity of our people in the Palestinian inside (a term relating to 1948-Palestine – YH), despite the 73 years of the Nakba of Jaffa, and indeed of every Palestinian.”
Al-Khatibs’ lawyers explained in court that the text should be understood, according to the accompanying images, as encouragement to and solidarity with the people that were wounded by police violence. They claimed that in these words, like in the two other posts, there is nothing that constitutes an offence according to the law.
The prosecutor admitted that al-Khatib did not explicitly call for violence, but claimed that this is because he is “cautious” and “sophisticated”, which makes him even more dangerous.
On Tuesday, June 8, Judge Doron Porat, the president of the Nazareth Magistrates’ court, decided to accept the prosecution’s request and ruled that al-Khatib should be held in prison until the end of his sentencing, with no option for bail. Even though there were no calls for violence from the accused, he built an incriminating “logical reasoning”, extending Levin’s measures:
“So is the case with the “Yaffa publication”, which was accompanied by pictures of wounded people from the Arab sector. These people seemingly took part in riots that evening, and seemingly were wounded in confrontation with security forces… the advocates claimed that those things were said with the purpose to strengthen the wounded. However, even if I assume that he meant them… those wounded rioted before, seemingly, and hence he encouraged and praised the violent acts that they performed, seemingly. Still, it is people that confronted the security forces and were wounded during confrontation. Hence, the Yaffa publication also can be an inciting publication.” (Page 40 of the protocol, decision by Judge Porat on June 8, 2021)
In short, a wounded Arab is an Arab that attacked the police, and solidarity with him is an incitement to violence!
What was not translated?
The third post in the indictment is a video with a nine-minute-long speech that Sheikh Kamal al-Khatib gave on May 11 at a public meeting that was held in his town, Kafr Kanna, in solidarity with al-Quds and al-Aqsa. The long translated text includes many things that are not connected to the accusations in any way, like al-Khatib citing religious texts including the famous saying that “the best jihad is to speak truth in the face of a tyrannical ruler”. In his speech he mentioned the attacks by fascist settlers against the Arab population in different places and stressed the need for unity against these attacks. He praised the new Palestinian generation as conscious and brave and applauded their steadfastness in the face of the oppressors.
The only section of the speech that was not translated is where he described in detail a specific act of steadfastness: when Palestinians were called to come to pray in al-Aqsa, but the Israeli police decided to prevent them and blocked busses and cars on the main road leading to al-Quds. He described how the Israeli police expected the Palestinians to return to their towns, but thousands of them started, instead, walking the twenty kilometres separating them from al-Aqsa. It created such a huge traffic jam that the Israeli police finally preferred to let them continue their way in their vehicles.
No wonder that this vivid example of victory by popular struggle was omitted from the indictment – it contradicts all the narrative that is built by the prosecution according to which Palestinians are always perpetrating violent attacks for no reason.
Based on this text the prosecution also bases the claim that al-Khatib is “supporting Hamas” – but Hamas is not even mentioned, and what he said, even according to the police translation, is “Bless Jerusalem, bless Gaza, bless “the inside”, bless Palestine, bless our people in the “inside”, in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Jerusalem and in the diaspora.”
The logic of this text being considered “support of a terrorist organization” is that, according to their racist thinking, the Palestinian people as a whole are considered a terrorist organization.
Defending the innocents
The defense lawyers presented to the court a video with a sermon that al-Khatib delivered in a mosque in Kafr Kanna on the day of his arrest. In this sermon he talked about events that happened near the town a few days before, when a Jewish driver was attacked by an angry crowd – and other residents of Kafr Kana saved him from the crowd, brought him to receive medical treatment and later escorted him to safety. He said that the protest doesn’t justify attacks on the innocents, praised the actions of the residents that helped the victim and said that, if he was present there, he would have acted like them.
Even this sermon was later distorted by the prosecution and the judge, claiming that by denouncing the attack on innocent victims, al-Khatib actually praised and encouraged other attacks.
Update:
Sheikh Kamal al-Khatib was released under restrictive conditions
On Sunday, June 20, in the Nazareth District Court, Judge Arafat Taha accepted Sheikh Kamal al-Khatib’s appeal the lower court’s decision to detain him until the end of the legal proceedings against him. Judge Taha, after reading al-Khatib’s words in the original Arabic, accepted most of the claims of the defense lawyers against the prosecution and the lower court judge that claimed al-Khatib’s speech was incitement to violence and support of terrorism.
Still, as a condition for his release, al-Khatib had to pay high bail, he is not allowed to be in his town of Kafr Kanna for 45 days, and he is prevented from any public pronouncement for three months.
The remand hearing in the trial of Raja Eghbarieh, former secretary-general of Abnaa al-Balad movement, who is accused of “incitement to terrorism” following publications on Facebook, has become a fascinating legal battle that raises fundamental questions about the policy of the Israeli police and prosecution regarding the freedom of expression of Palestinian citizens of Israel.
(Call for international solidarity with Raja Eghbarieh in English and Spanish)
Raja Eghbarieh entering the court in the remand hearing on October 7, 2018
Eghbarieh was arrested on September 11 from his home in Umm Al-Fahm and charged with incitement and identification with a terrorist organization in the Haifa Magistrates Court. The indictment relates to 10 publications that appeared on his personal Facebook page between July 2017 and July 2018. On October 2, Judge Maria Pikus Bogdanov held a hearing on the prosecution’s request to keep Eghbarieh in detention until the end of the legal proceedings against him. The defense lawyers objected forcefully and the prosecutor could not answer many of their arguments. Finally, the judge ordered the prosecution to respond in writing and set an additional hearing for Sunday, October 7.
The hearing took place in the large hall on the “minus 2” basement floor, next to the detention cells, where remand hearings routinely takes place every day. The hall was crowded. Since the prosecution’s representatives have already submitted their arguments in writing, we first heard the defense team, headed by Attorney Hassan Jabareen, the founder and director of Adalah, and including also Attorneys Omar Khamaisi from “The Al-Mizan Center for Human Rights” and Rabea Eghbariah and Afnan Khalifa from Adalah, responding to the prosecution’s arguments that we did not hear. The judge, who read them, apparently didn’t find answers to the questions she had asked the prosecutor at the previous hearing. After the defense finished, she once again tried to extract answers from the prosecutor, so that we finally understood what he could not answer.
Systematic discrimination in enforcement policy
The most important and fundamental issue raised by the defense was the discrimination in the prosecution’s policy regarding the filing of applications for detention until the end of proceedings in cases of incitement. In the previous session, the defense presented a large number of cases in which Jewish defendants were accused of incitement to violence against Arabs or calls to harm soldiers (against the background of the evacuation of illegal outposts). In all these cases, the prosecution did not even request the detention of the defendants until the end of the proceedings. Finally, the judge asked the prosecutor whether he could point to even one case in which the prosecution requested the detention of a Jewish defendant in incitement until the end of proceedings.
“Free Raja Eghbarieh!” protest vigil before the remand hearing, in front of the Haifa court, October 7, 2018
In the written answers submitted to the court, the prosecution mentioned one case in which a Jew who was charged with incitement was arrested until the end of proceedings. Adalah’s team, however, examined the facts, and Attorney Jabareen explained to the court that in this case, the charge of incitement was only a small part of what was attributed to the defendant, which included actual rioting and damage to property. The decision to detain him until the end of proceedings was explicitly based on his dangerousness as someone who caused actual damage, and not the theoretical danger stemming from the incitement.
The obvious conclusion from the State’s response, Jabareen stressed, from their failure to present even one case in which the detention of a Jewish defendant for incitement was requested, is that the claim of discrimination is now clearly and positively proved.
Never mind what is really written – it is incitement anyway
In the previous session, the defense presented a series of objections to the translation of the publications as they appear in the indictment in Hebrew. Since both the judge and the prosecution representative do not know Arabic, the judge requested the prosecutor to examine the matter. The prosecution’s response to those objections, which covers most of the seven pages of the document they submitted, can be summed up in four words: “It does not matter.” According to them, if the translation is correct or not, in any case it is incitement. In one specific case, regarding a post about the funerals of three young men from Umm Al-Fahm who killed two Israeli policemen in the Al-Aqsa compound and were later killed, the prosecution said it did not matter if the post said that “the martyr must be respected” or “we have to convey condolence to the families” – it is incitement anyway.
Attorney Jabareen stressed that the wording of the posts is the crux of the indictment, and in the absence of a reliable translation, the entire validity of the indictment is undermined. The judge, for her part, said that despite the defense’s reservations about the translation, some of the publications in the indictment appear to her as severe. But she didn’t accept the prosecution’s claim that “it does not matter” and asked the prosecutor whether the prosecution had examined the defense’s claims regarding the misleading translation. The prosecutor didn’t know what to answer and was requested to find out. After some time he came back with an answer. According to him, the translation was not reexamined following the defense’s arguments, since re-translation is an act of investigation and “you don’t carry out investigation operations after the filing of an indictment.”
Only one of the ten posts mentioned in the indictment can be seen, according to the quotes mentioned in the indictment, as direct support for violence. It is a video from the funeral of the three young men from Umm Al-Fahm, which Eghbarieh shared on the anniversary of their death. According to the prosecution, a song is playing in the background that includes the words “Spread bullets in the doors of Al-Aqsa”. Eghbarieh didn’t photograph and didn’t edit the video but only shared it like many others. He said he had never heard those words mentioned in the background. The judge asked the prosecutor whether there is a full transcription of the background song as part of the evidence. He could not answer. Finally the defense pulled a rabbit out of the hat. The volunteer lawyer Afnan Khalifa, who is working on the case in the Adalah team, found a memo from an Arab policeman who watched the video, describing “a background song whose words are hard to understand.”
Dangerous for the purpose of detention
The reasoning behind the prosecution’s request to extend the detention of Eghbarieh until the end of the proceedings is his claimed “dangerousness”. The danger, according to the prosecution, is that he might publish more “inciting” posts. According to them, the only way to prevent this is to hold him in custody and there is no need to even examine alternatives to full detention. The prosecution is used to the common practice where the very mention of the word “terrorism” in the indictment leads us to the fast track to unlimited detention without the need for lengthy arguments. The defense’s great battle in this case is to block the spread of the practice of automatic detention until the end of proceedings, so that it will not take over also the domain of “offenses” which are mainly about freedom of expression.
Raja Eghbarieh’s supporters gather in the entrance to the courtroom. On the front: Lawyer Afnan Khalifa updating family members.
The defense attacked the police’s claim of “dangerousness” by using the behavior of the police during the investigation. They stressed the fact that since the investigation began in February 2018, and for months when the posts were public and known to the police, it took no action to remove the alleged “danger”, and postponed the detention of Eghbarieh until September 9. The judge asked for explanations on this matter, but in its written response the prosecution related to this issue by mere four and a half vague lines out of 7 pages. The judge asked the prosecutor again whether he could provide explanations, and he answered that “Madam knows, this is how the system works.”
Finally, the judge ordered the examination of the “alternative to detention” that the defense offers. The defense insisted that in her opinion there was no justification for detention until the end of proceedings, nor for an alternative to detention, but finally offered four members from Eghbarieh’s family who could “supervise” him under house arrest. From their interrogation in court we learned of a new procedure – to require the custodians to deposit their cell phones with the police before they appear for the job… this in addition to the house being cut off from any connection to the network.
On the way, we heard again about the health problems Eghbarieh, who is 66, suffers from. The Israel Prison Service refused to provide him with a blood pressure medication that he regularly took and gave him an inappropriate replacement drug that caused him to be hospitalized for one day.
Prior to the hearing itself, a protest vigil was held in front of the court building with the participation of about fifty Palestinian activists from all the local Arab parties demanding the release of Eghbarieh. They claimed that his arrest was part of a campaign of political persecutions intended to dangerously farther limit the freedom of expression and organization of Palestinian citizens of Israel as a whole.
Finally, after all the “victories” in proving the discrimination in the enforcement policy, exposing the clumsiness and contempt of the prosecution with regard to the translation and lack of explanations about the delays in the interrogation, it seemed that the greatest relief that could be hoped from this court was the extension of detention until the end of the proceedings, that might be substituted with house arrest under severe limitations. In any event, the judge postponed the decision for next Monday and sent Eghbarieh to another week in detention.
(A somewhat shorter version of this article appeared today in “+972”. A Hebrew version appeared in “Local Call” and “Haifa Ha-Hofshit”)
Raja Eghbarieh, former secretary-general of the Abnaa al-Balad movement, was arrested from his home in Umm Al-Fahm on September 11, the second day of the Jewish New Year holiday. On Thursday, September 20, he was indicted in the Haifa magistrates court of “incitement to terror” and “identification with a terrorist organization”, based on 10 different posts on his personal Facebook page. Together with the indictment the prosecution filed a request for an unlimited remand of his detention – “until the end of the legal proceedings”. On Tuesday, October 2, the first day after Sukkot, the remand request was heard.
Comrade Raja Eghbarieh in the Haifa court, October 2, 2018
In the political “dead” season, when most activists are preoccupied with the local elections, Eghbarieh’s detention and trial was a reminder for the Arab society of the continuing attack on free speech and space for political activity and a series of solidarity actions were organized. On Saturday, September 29, a wide range of political activists from all the Arab parties and movements participated in protest vigils that were called by “The High Follow-Up Committee for Arab citizens of Israel” in Umm al-Fahm, Nazareth and Sakhnin. On Monday, October 1, the Arab Palestinian population commemorated the martyrs of the October 2000 intifada by a general strike and a central demonstration in the town of Jatt in the triangle. But just as that demonstration finished, some of the activists rushed to another protest rally in the center of Shfa’amer for the release of Eghbarieh and against political persecution. More solidarity actions were held in the West Bank, Gaza and several European cities. (Call for international solidarity is here.)
On Tuesday, October 2, Judge Maria Pikus Bogdanov heard the request to extend the detention of Eghbarieh until the end of legal proceedings. The outcome of this hearing can be decisive for the entire case, as legal proceedings can take years. When the defendant is in detention during the trial, he is under pressure to agree to a “plea bargain” rather than to conduct a protracted legal battle over his innocence, which might result in detention for longer time than the sentence itself. (Actually the natural response of the court is to sentence the accused at least for the period that he has already spent in prison.) House arrest can also paralyze the life of the defendant and take a high price from those who are certified to be his custodians, who must be confined to him for a long time, and, if the defendant is convicted, the time spent under house arrest is not considered part of the punishment.
Vigil in front of the Haifa court before the remand hearing – October 2, 2018
The Follow-Up Committee called for a protest vigil in front of the Haifa court before the remand hearing – and about 100 Palestinian activists responded to the call, including prominent leaders from Balad (three Knesset members) and the Islamic Movement. At the appointed time the slogans were folded and the activists entered the court building – but it turned out that the hearing took place in a rather small room and most of the supporters remained waiting for hours in the corridor. The court’s guards, aided by the dark uniformed policemen of the “anti-riot” unit, were not satisfied with just “maintaining order,” but forbade other supporters to enter the courtroom instead of those who left, and at one point even cleared the corridor of the audience and prevented anyone from approaching the area.
In the courtroom itself, a reinforced team of lawyers stood up to try to prevent the detention from being extended indefinitely. The team was led by Attorney Hassan Jabareen, founder and head of the Adalah Center, accompanied by Attorney Rabea Eghbariah of Adalah, Attorney Omar Khamaisi of Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, and lawyers Hussein Abu Hussein, Afnan Khalifa and Ahmad Khalefa. Due to the importance of the discussion, they decided to “go the full length,” while taking the risk of exposing the line of defense even before the beginning of the trial, and discussed in detail each of the ten publications that are mentioned in the indictment. They objected to the translation that was supplied by the prosecution and stressed the explanations given by Eghbarieh in his interrogation. Their main claim was that all the publications do not call for violence, but constitute a legitimate expression of political analysis and opinions, and therefore the indictment itself is baseless.
Free Raja Eghbarieh vigil in Ramallah on October 2, 2018
In some cases, the defense attorneys pointed out specific words that were added, under the guise of translation, into the Hebrew version, but did not exist in the Arab source – in order to add “aggressive” tone. In other cases they presented an alternative translation of the same texts – which gives them different meaning. The defense attorneys also noted that the prosecution is bringing the texts in the indictment in Hebrew without specifying who translated them. They complained that the evidence doesn’t include the testimony of an expert on the translation. The prosecutor and the judge do not know Arabic, and finally the judge requested the prosecutor to bring written comments to the claims regarding the misleading translation.
In the context of the explanations of the legitimacy of the publications, it is worth noting the discussion about one publication, commemorating the tenth anniversary of the death of George Habash, the founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and one of the most prominent and influential figures in the history of the Arab left in general. Attorney Jabareen mentioned that the publication focuses on Habash’s activity to establish a research center, rather than any violent activity, and wondered how such a publication could be interpreted as identification with a terrorist organization. He noted that Eghbarieh himself, along with other leaders of the Palestinian citizens of Israel, has appealed in the past to the Israeli “High Court of Justice”, demanding the right to hold a memorial conference for Habash in Nazareth. The request was denied on the grounds of “fear of violence,” but it was not claimed that holding of a memorial service for Habash is by itself illegal.
The first posts that are mentioned in the indictment relate to the attack from July 2017 by three armed Palestinians from Umm Al-Fahm who killed two Israeli policemen near the Al-Aqsa mosques in occupied East Jerusalem, before being killed themselves. The indictment brings long translations of the posts in Hebrew but doesn’t specify what specifically is, in their view, “illegal” in each post. While the posts don’t express support for the armed attack, it seems that the very use of the word martyrs (“shuhada” in Arabic), the analysis of their motives and their expression of grief at their death is regarded as unlawful.
Another post in the indictment is a picture from the commemoration at the first anniversary to the killing of Bassel Al-A’araj, who was shot by Israeli soldiers in Ramallah. Al-A’araj was well known as an independent activist and an ideologue of the youth protest movements in the West Bank. The indictment claims he was a member of the PFLP and performed terrorist attacks at the order of Hezbollah.
Another issue that was emphasized by the defense was the fact that the investigation against Eghbarieh was conducted for many months (apparently from February 2018) and that this meant that his publications were available on the Internet and accessible to all for months (some even more than a year), and that the police were aware of them long before they arrested the defendant. Moreover, the police issued an arrest warrant against Eghbarieh on August 7, 2018, but arrested him only more than a month later, on September 11. The police did nothing to warn Eghbarieh or remove the publications, neither following their appearance nor even after his arrest. The prosecution now claims that his release, even under restrictive conditions, constitutes a “danger to the public” because he might publish other publications.
At the end of its arguments, the defense brought a long list of cases in which Jewish defendants were accused of incitement to violence against Arabs and even of incitement to harm IDF soldiers against the background of the evacuation of settlements that the state recognized as illegal. In those cases there were direct and explicit calls for violent action, which did not exist in the publications attributed to Eghbarieh. In some cases the prosecution even showed a direct connection between the incitement and violent acts that followed. Nevertheless, in all the cases brought by the defense, the state did not request detention until the end of legal proceedings.
Solidarity with Raja Eghbarieh – Gaza – October 2, 2018
At the end of the hearing, the judge seemed to take the defense arguments seriously, and asked the prosecutor harsh questions. The prosecutor did not know Arabic and couldn’t relate to questions about the translation. He also did not know how to explain why the police waited so long between the time they became aware of the publications and until they decided to act against them. With regard to the claim of discrimination in enforcement and the avoidance of the arrest of Jews who are accused of incitement, he tried to argue that this is a completely different clause in the law and that there is no place for comparison – but the judge didn’t seem to be convinced by his argument. Finally the judge sent him to consult and reply in writing by Thursday. Another hearing on the remand request was scheduled for Sunday, October 7, at 14:00.
Before the meeting ended, Attorney Jabareen managed to complain that since the arrest of Eghbarieh three weeks ago, the Israel Prison Service has prevented his family from entering clothes for him to change. The judge wrote down a decision instructing the Israel Prison Service to allow it. There is a stinking smell in the Israeli “justice” system, and apparently it is not just the prisoners’ clothes.
For more information on solidarity activities, see the Facebook page “Free Raja Eghbarieh“.
Below is a report about the Sunday, March 19th, hearing in the trial of Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour. An edited version of this report was published in the +972 site. This article was also translated to Spanish by Rebellion.
Arresting a poet for publishing a poem is extraordinary enough. Putting her on trial while a translation of the poem by a policeman is fully cited at the center of the indictment made thing surreal. Last week the defence case laid the lyric response by bringing a literature expert and a translator to testify in court. Update about the unprecedented trial of Poet Dareen Tatour.
The poet’s ordeal
It is almost a year and a half since Poet Dareen Tatour was arrested from her home in Reineh (near Nazareth) on the 11th of October 2015. She spent 3 months in different prisons and half a year in house detention in exile in Kiryat Ono. Now she is still under strict house detention in her home as the trial against her on charges of incitement is grinding to its end in the Nazareth Magistrate’s court.
Waiting for the hearing to begin
The prosecution finished to rest its case in September 2016. Most of it was designed to prove that Tatour’s Facebook account belonged to her and that she really published the poem and the two Facebook statuses that are the subject of the indictment.
On November Tatour testified in the court and admitted that she published those publications in their Arabic original. She explained that she expressed a legitimate protest against the occupation denouncing the crimes that are committed against the Palestinians by the army and the settlers. She said that the police translation distorted her texts. Over three long days of counter interrogation, in November and January, she was grilled by prosecution attorney Alina Hardak that tried to make her “confess” her “support of terrorism”, but she solidly defended her principles.
Should poets be arrested?
On Sunday, March 19, defence lawyers Gaby Lasky and Nery Ramati brought two expert witnesses to testify before Judge Adi Bambiliya-Einstein.
The first witness was Prof. Nissim Calderon, an expert on Hebrew literature. In his written expert opinion he stated that there are special rules concerning the free expression of poets. He described a long tradition of poets that used harsh words in response to oppression or injustice, sometimes clearly calling for violent actions. He concluded that such calls in the context of poetry were not legally persecuted even by very oppressive regimes like the Tsarist regime in Russia or the British Mandate in Palestine.
Dareen Tatour and Prof. Calderon
Prof. Calderon chose three of the most prominent Hebrew poets and brought specific examples of their subversive texts. He cited Bialik writing that “With furious cruelty / We will drink your blood mercilessly”. In other lyrics, also cited, Tchernichovsky says “Give me my sword, I won’t return it to its scabbard / What did my lips elicit? I want battles”. Despite these clear calls for violence by leading Jewish poets, the anti-Semitic Tsar’s secret police didn’t arrest or prosecute them.
The third example cited in length by Prof. Calderon was the case of right-wing Zionist poet Uri-Tsvi Greenberg. He openly incited for violence and was actually a member and ideologue of the explicitly named “Brit Ha-Biryonim” (The Thugs Alliance) that organized violent resistance to the British occupation but was not punished for his poems.
In cross examination the prosecutor tried to imply that Greenberg was not arrested for his poetry because the British Mandate didn’t prosecute inciters. No, said Calderon, my uncle was exiled from Palestine because he supported illegal Jewish immigration. When the prosecutor suggested that the immunity of poetry should be limited at tense times, he mentioned that the British didn’t prosecute Greenberg even as he called for resistance to their rule at the time that they were fighting the Nazis in the Second World War.
What did the poet mean?
Both the prosecutor and the judge already understood that they have a problem with the police translation of Tatour’s poem. The policeman that translated it had no specific expertise in translation. When he testified in court he was asked why he was chosen to translate the poem and answered that he learned literature in high-school and loves the Arabic language.
Dr. Yoni Mendel – opening a window to understand Palestinian way of thinking
When Tatour testified, the prosecutor wanted her to give her own translation to Hebrew, but she refused, saying that she doesn’t know Hebrew well enough to translate poetry. The prosecutor wanted her to read the poem in Arabic so that the court’s translator will translate it and the words will be written in the protocol as her own words. She refused.
Maybe they felt some relief as the defence brought its own translation of the poem, made by Dr. Yoni Mendel, an experienced literary translator and a researcher of the Arabic language in its social context and its role in Arab-Jewish relations in Palestine. His translation was significantly different from the one in the indictment. He testified as an expert that the police’s translation is deliberately and systematically distorting the text to make it appear extremist and violent.
The most blatant contradiction between the two translations was in the following lines: “Do not fear the tongues of the Merkava tank \ The truth in your heart is stronger \ As long as you rebel in a land \ That has lived through raids but wasn’t exhausted.” The last two verses were translated by the policeman to “As long as you resist in a land \ Long live the Gazawat and will not tire”. Typically the policemen left the word “Gazawat” in Arabic, probably because he didn’t find the proper word. In his testimony he explained that the word was used by Arab tribes at the time of the Jaheliya (before Islam) to describe attacks on other tribes for robbery or enslaving women. Where the text clearly speaks about the raids that the Palestinians are subjected to as victims, the police translation transformed the victim into the aggressor.
Who are the martyrs?
On a more profound level, much of the emphasis about the translation, and much of the counter interrogation, surrounded around the sentence “Follow the convoy of martyrs”. The Arabic word for “martyrs”, Shuhadaa, was not translated to Hebrew by the police translator but grammatically adjusted to Hebrew to become “Shahidim”. In his expert opinion and enlightening explanation in the court Dr Mendel showed how basic Arabic terms are kept in Arabic in a way that neutralizes their original meaning and the basic human empathy that this meaning implies. Instead Arabic words like Shahid or Intifada acquire new threatening meanings in Hebrew far from their original context.
Lawyer Gaby Lasky – All the objections were refused
He explained that for the Palestinian Arab public the word martyrs refers to all the victims of the occupation, the majority of them didn’t even try to resist. It is an Israeli invention to interpret the word “Shahid” as referring to those Palestinians that died while attacking Israelis. In the specific context of Tatour’s poem, Mendel supported his interpretation by the fact that the poem relates to three specific martyrs: 16-years old Muhammad Abu-Khdeir from Jerusalem who was kidnapped and burned alive, Baby Ali Dawabsheh who was burned with his parents in his home at Duma and Hadeel Al-Hashlamoun who was shot at an army checkpoint in Al-Khalil.
The prosecutor tried to prove that the interpretation of “Shuhadaa” as victims was wrong as, after all, the poet couldn’t advise her readers to be murdered like them. Dr. Mendel explained that the call to follow the martyrs didn’t mean a wish to die but a more general concept of following their heritage: Embrace bereaved families, don’t give up the struggle and refuse to accept solutions that deny Palestinian national and human rights.
Solidarity
The case of poet Dareen Tatour became a symbol for the hundreds of cases where Israel is persecuting Palestinians over political expression, mostly in social media. Many poets, writers, intellectuals and activists, both in the country and abroad, expressed their solidarity with her and called for her immediate release and for the charges against her to be dropped. Pen International and related writers organizations all over the world adopted the case.
The fact that leading intellectuals like Prof. Calderon and Dr. Mendel volunteered to give evidence and endure torturing counter-interrogation (Dr. Mendel was grilled for 5 hours) is the last example how this trial resonated in much of the liberal public opinion. Now defenders of the right of expression and free arts also collect money to help with the legal expenses, which till now fell solely on the poet’s family.
On Tuesday, March 28, the last defence witnesses should give evidence. As the sides will summarize in writing, it will be probably the last hearing before the verdict will be given, maybe two or three months from now. The maximum penalty might be up to 8 years in prison. An appeal from one or both sides is very likely in this high profile case. In the meantime poet Dareen Tatour is under house arrest and might easily stay so for full two years before the judicial decision about the meaning of her poem.