Israeli Arabs or Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem have been targeted with arrest, sacking and dismissal over social media posts expressing solidarity with the people of Gaza.
Israeli Arabs, many of whom identify as Palestinian citizens of Israel, have expressed solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza amid Israel’s aerial bombing campaign that has so far killed more than 4,000 people in the impoverished territory, the majority civilians, according to the health ministry in the Strip.
The bombardment comes in response to the Hamas attacks on 7 October that killed 1,400 people, mostly civilians.
The Palestinian singer Dalal Abu Amneh was arrested briefly this week when she went to a police station to file a complaint after receiving hundreds of death threats.
Rather than investigating her complaint, police detained her because of a comment she posted on Facebook, said her lawyer, Abir Bakr.
“They put cuffs on her hands and feet, and subjected her to insults and humiliation. They want to frighten people and teach them a lesson through Dalal,” Bakr said.
After the start of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, Abu Amneh had posted “there is no victor but Allah” alongside a Palestinian flag on her Facebook page.
The Israeli police said Abu Amneh had been arrested on suspicion of “publication of incitement” and “behaviour that could harm public order”.
The magistrate court in the city of Nazareth on Wednesday ordered her release on bail set at 2,500 shekels (£506).
But she was placed under house arrest in her mother’s home, and has been forbidden from posting about the war for 45 days.
Bakr pointed out that “translations from Arabic to Hebrew are often faulty, which leads to misunderstanding of the context” in many of the posts.
Every day, Israeli police publish statements detailing the arrests of people who have written or liked content they consider inciting.
Among them are those who circulated video clips of the Israelis who were killed during the Hamas attack, police said.
Israeli police on Wednesday said they arrested 76 people from East Jerusalem “on suspicion of committing crimes of incitement on Facebook and supporting terrorist organisations”.
Lawyers also said a young man in the village of Kabul in northern Israel was arrested for five days simply for posting a photo of children in Gaza with the words “my heart is with you”.
Hassan Jabareen, the director of the Adalah organisation that works to defend the rights of the Arab minority in Israel, said “there are many people on the right wing who are filing complaints against Arab citizens”.
The Israeli police chief, Kobi Shabtai, has meanwhile banned any “demonstrations against the war”.
According to Israeli media, at least 63 Israeli Arabs have been arrested so far for posts that allegedly “support terrorism”, though details of most posts were not made clear.
Students and workers inside Israel have been subject to dismissals and legal prosecution, Haaretz wrote in an editorial Wednesday.
The state of emergency currently imposed in Israel “constitutes fertile ground for violation of individual rights, and especially freedom of expression”, the editorial said.
“Arab citizens expressing opinions diverging from the general trend have been fired,” it added.
Jaafar Farah, the director of the Musawah rights organisation, said “since the beginning of the war, almost 150 (Arab) workers have been fired and about 200 students from various universities and educational institutions have been dismissed” for expressing solidarity with Gaza on social media.
Heads of Israeli universities on Wednesday published a letter to the education minister, Yoav Kisch, in which they said “they play their role in holding accountable the few who express solidarity with terrorist organisations”.
And an Arab teacher in a secondary school in the city of Tiberias was suspended until further notice for liking the page “Eye on Palestine” on Instagram, according to a group of lawyers following the case.
The acting mayor of Tiberias, Boaz Yosef, said: “If she wants to teach, let her go teach in Gaza.”