UMM AL-FAHM, Israel: Israel’s yearlong crackdown against Palestinian citizens who speak out against the war in Gaza is prompting many to self-censor out of fear of being jailed and further marginalized in society, while some still find ways to dissent — carefully.
Ahmed Khalefa’s life turned upside down after he was charged with inciting terrorism for chanting in solidarity with Gaza at an anti-war protest in October 2023.
The lawyer and city counselor from central Israel says he spent three difficult months in jail followed by six months detained in an apartment. It’s unclear when he’ll get a final verdict on his guilt or innocence. Until then, he’s forbidden from leaving his home from dusk to dawn.
Khalefa is one of more than 400 Palestinian citizens of Israel who, since the start of the war in Gaza, have been investigated by police for “incitement to terrorism” or “incitement to violence,” according to Adalah, a legal rights group for minorities. More than half of those investigated were also criminally charged or detained, Adalah said.
“Israel made it clear they see us more as enemies than as citizens,” Khalefa said in an interview at a cafe in his hometown of Umm Al-Fahm, Israel’s second-largest Palestinian city.
Israel has roughly 2 million Palestinian citizens, whose families remained within the borders of what became Israel in 1948. Among them are Muslims and Christians, and they maintain family and cultural ties to Gaza and the West Bank, which Israel captured in 1967.
Israel says its Palestinian citizens enjoy equal rights, including the right to vote, and they are well-represented in many professions. However, Palestinians are widely discriminated against in areas like housing and the job market.
Israeli authorities have opened more incitement cases against Palestinian citizens during the war in Gaza than in the previous five years combined, Adalah’s records show. Israeli authorities have not said how many cases ended in convictions and imprisonment. The Justice Ministry said it did not have statistics on those convictions.
Just being charged with incitement to terrorism or identifying with a terrorist group can land a suspect in detention until they’re sentenced, under the terms of a 2016 law.
In addition to being charged as criminals, Palestinians citizens of Israel — who make up around 20 percent of the country’s population — have lost jobs, been suspended from schools and faced police interrogations posting online or demonstrating, activists and rights watchdogs say.
It’s had a chilling effect.
“Anyone who tries to speak out about the war will be imprisoned and harassed in his work and education,” said Oumaya Jabareen, whose son was jailed for eight months after an anti-war protest. “People here are all afraid, afraid to say no to this war.”
Jabareen was among hundreds of Palestinians who filled the streets of Umm Al-Fahm earlier this month carrying signs and chanting political slogans. It appeared to be the largest anti-war demonstration in Israel since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. But turnout was low, and Palestinian flags and other national symbols were conspicuously absent. In the years before the war, some protests could draw tens of thousands of Palestinians in Israel.
Authorities tolerated the recent protest march, keeping it under heavily armed supervision. Helicopters flew overhead as police with rifles and tear gas jogged alongside the crowd, which dispersed without incident after two hours. Khalefa said he chose not to attend.
Shortly after the Oct. 7 attack, Israel’s far-right government moved quickly to invigorate a task force that has charged Palestinian citizens of Israel with “supporting terrorism” for posts online or protesting against the war. At around the same time, lawmakers amended a security bill to increase surveillance of online activity by Palestinians in Israel, said Nadim Nashif, director of the digital rights group 7amleh. These moves gave authorities more power to restrict freedom of expression and intensify their arrest campaigns, Nashif said.
The task force is led by Itamar Ben-Gvir, a hard-line national security minister who oversees the police. His office said the task force has monitored thousands of posts allegedly expressing support for terror organizations and that police arrested “hundreds of terror supporters,” including public opinion leaders, social media influencers, religious figures, teachers and others.
“Freedom of speech is not the freedom to incite ... which harms public safety and our security,” his office said in a statement.
But activists and rights groups say the government has expanded its definition of incitement much too far, targeting legitimate opinions that are at the core of freedom of expression.
Myssana Morany, a human rights attorney at Adalah, said Palestinian citizens have been charged for seemingly innocuous things like sending a meme of a captured Israeli tank in Gaza in a private WhatsApp group chat. Another person was charged for posting a collage of children’s photos, captioned in Arabic and English: “Where were the people calling for humanity when we were killed?” The feminist activist group Kayan said over 600 women called its hotline because of blowback in the workplace for speaking out against the war or just mentioning it unfavorably.
Over the summer, around two dozen anti-war protesters in the port city of Haifa were only allowed to finish three chants before police forcefully scattered the gathering into the night. Yet Jewish Israelis demanding a hostage release deal protest regularly — and the largest drew hundreds of thousands to the streets of Tel Aviv.
Khalefa, the city counselor, is not convinced the crackdown on speech will end, even if the war eventually does. He said Israeli prosecutors took issue with slogans that broadly praised resistance and urged Gaza to be strong, but which didn’t mention violence or any militant groups. For that, he said, the government is trying to disbar him, and he faces up to eight years in prison.
“They wanted to show us the price of speaking out,” Khalefa said.
Israel cracks down on Palestinian citizens who speak out against the war in Gaza
https://arab.news/gcym3
Israel cracks down on Palestinian citizens who speak out against the war in Gaza
- Israeli authorities have opened more incitement cases against Palestinian citizens during the war in Gaza than in the previous five years combined
Last Christians gather in ruins of Turkiye’s quake-hit Antakya
- Saint Peter’s, one of the world’s oldest rock churches, is a sacred rallying point for the isolated Christians still left in quake-hit Antakya in southeastern Turkiye
ANTAKYA: Saint Peter’s, one of the world’s oldest rock churches, is a sacred rallying point for the isolated Christians still left in quake-hit Antakya in southeastern Turkiye, the city known in ancient times as Antioch.
“Since the earthquake, our community has scattered,” said worshipper Mari Ibri.
“Those who remain are trying to regroup. We each had our own church but, like mine, they have been destroyed.”
The landscape around the cave remains scarred by the disaster nearly three years ago, when two earthquakes devastated Hatay province on February 6, 2023 and its jewel, Antakya, the gateway to Syria.
Sad fields of rubble and the silhouettes of cracked, abandoned buildings still scar the city — all enveloped in the ever-present grey dust.
Since the earthquakes, Antakya city has emptied and the Christian community has shrunk from 350 families to fewer than 90, Father Dimitri Dogum told AFP.
“Before, Christmas at our house was grandiose,” Ibri recalled.
“Our churches were full. People came from everywhere.”
Ibri’s own church in the city center was rendered inaccessible by the earthquakes.
Now she and other worshippers gather at the cave on December 24 — Christmas Eve in some Christian calendars.
It is here, they believe, that Peter, the disciple Jesus assigned to found the Christian church, held his first religious service in the 1st century.
The rock church was later enlarged and 11th-century crusaders added a pale stone facade.
It is now a museum, opened to the faithful only on rare occasions.
Christmas Eve is one.
The morning sun was still glowing red in the sky when Fadi Hurigil, leader of Antakya’s Orthodox Christian community, and his assistants prepared the service.
They draped the stone altar and unpacked candles, holy oil, chalices and plastic chairs.
Out in front they placed figurines of Christ and three saints near a bottle of rough red wine, bread baskets and presents for the children.
The sound system played a recording of the bells of Saint Peter and Paul church, which now stands empty in Antakya city center.
“That was my church,” said Ibri, crossing herself. “They recorded the peals.”
Around one hundred worshippers soon squeezed into the incense-filled cave and at least as many congregated outside.
A large police contingent looked on. Sniffer dogs had already inspected the cave and esplanade.
“It’s normal,” said Iliye, a 72-year-old from Iskenderun, 60 kilometers (40 miles) further north. “We’re a minority. It’s to protect us.”
The slow chanting of Orthodox hymns heralded the start of the two-hour service, conducted entirely in chants sung in Arabic and Turkish by Dogum and another cleric.
“It’s very moving for us to be here in the world’s first cave church, where the first disciples gathered,” the priest said.
“There used to be crowds here,” he added.
“In 2022, there were at least 750 people outside, Christians and non-Christians alike.”
Since the earthquakes, the gathering has been much smaller, although it is now starting to grow again.
At the end of the service, when Christmas carols fill the air, Dogum and Hurigil cut a huge rectangular cake.
The Nativity scene at its center — Mary, baby Jesus, the ox and the ass — was edged with whipped cream.
“There’s the religious dimension but it’s also important that people can gather here again,” a worshipper said.
“After February 6, our fellow citizens scattered. But they’re starting to come back. We’re happy about that.”
