Israeli police have raided Jerusalemʼs most prominent Palestinian-owned bookstore and arrested its two owners, with human rights activists calling for the menʼs release, calling the actions part of a campaign to persecute Palestinian intellectuals.
This is reported by The Guardian.
Mahmoud Muna and his nephew Ahmad Muna were arrested on charges of “disturbing public order”. Some of the books from The Educational Bookstore were confiscated.
They were due to appear in court in Jerusalem on the morning of February 10 when a crowd of demonstrators gathered in the street to support the men. One of the posters read “No censorship! No banning of books”.
A relative of the detainees said that Israeli police took away all the books that had the Palestinian flag on them.
All criminal prosecutions related to freedom of speech must be approved by the Israeli Attorney Generalʼs office, but police can make arrests on suspicion of public order violations at their own discretion.
“Mahmoud and Ahmad Muna, prominent figures in the Jerusalem cultural scene, run an educational bookstore – a meeting place for cultural and political discussions. Israel should immediately release them from detention and stop the persecution of Palestinian intellectuals,” the human rights group BʼTselem called.
- Last year, Israeli police arrested Palestinian legal scholar Nader Shalhoub-Kevorkian from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Also last year, there were arrests of Palestinian citizens of Israel who publicly criticized the war in Gaza.
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