Freedom of Speech Denied to Palestinian Citizens of Israel

Palestinian Israeli students at the Technion University in Haifa demonstrating this week against the Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip.

Written by
Fadi Shbeita, Sadaka Reut

More than ten public figures from Jaffa, both men and women, were taken on Tuesday for interrogation by the Israeli police and General Security Services (GSS). The interrogators were told they are suspected of inciting terrorism and throwing stones, one day after a legal demonstration that was held in Jaffa and ended peacefully. The national leadership of the Hadash political party and the Abna’ al-Balad association were also interrogated. Arab journalists who covered the various demonstrations were detained. A 65-year-old woman from Jaffa wearing an Islamic head-covering was attacked by fellow passengers on a bus and the driver forced her off the bus. Legal, non-violent demonstrations in which Arab citizens participated were met with inexplicable police violence and mob attacks. The police, who are supposed to protect the civil rights of the war protesters to demonstrate, join the angry mob, attack and detain Arab protesters participating in joint Palestinian-Israeli demonstrations. Such is an atmosphere of intolerable terror.

This is in addition to the incitement committed by senior Israeli politicians who speak of the “danger from within,” of “the Hamas from within,” the fifth column. This discourse does not, of course, refer to the Jewish opposition to the war, and creates a situation in which the protest of Arabs is a dangerous betrayal of Israel, while the voice of Jewish protesters is silenced or presented as belonging to a radical few who must, in the best case scenario, wake up. The Hebrew press contributes, whether intentionally or not, to the ongoing incitement and creation of a public atmosphere of silencing and intimidation. The politics of fear is a fundamental tool in the hands of cynical politicians who create a picture of good versus bad, to silence all criticism liable to expose the war’s twisted and belligerent logic and the electoral considerations which led to this war, and cost the lives of hundreds.

The public atmosphere within Israel is quickly deteriorating to a tendency toward radical fascism against Arabs, and apparently the lessons of October 2000 were not learned.

If Palestinian citizens of Israel have no right to protest the slaughter of their people, then what is the meaning of the fake Israeli citizenship in the “Jewish and democratic” state? What message is this sending?