Anger over Israel’s arrest of East Jerusalem bookshop owners

An Israeli police raid on a well-known chain of Palestinian bookshops in occupied East Jerusalem and the detention of their owners has shocked many people in the city’s cultural, journalistic and diplomatic communities, who have described it as heavy handed and unjustified.

Mahmoud Muna and his nephew, Ahmad, have been detained since Sunday on broad charges of disrupting public order. Their lawyer, Nasser Odeh, said they had been kept overnight in freezing conditions.

An application to further detain them under house arrest and ban them from their Educational Bookshop stores was also made by police, Mr Odeh said.

The men run three bookshops which are popular with tourists, journalists and diplomats.

They specialise in books, newspapers and comics about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Middle Eastern history and culture. Between them, the three shops have hundreds of publications in several languages and are a focal point of the city’s cultural scene.

But, according to the men’s families, on Sunday afternoon, plain clothes police raided two of the shops on Salah ad-Din Street, without warning.

Using online translating applications, they removed any books with the words “Palestine” or “Palestinian” in the title, as well as publications showing the red, green and white Palestinian flag.

Among the publications seized were recently released books on the conflict in Gaza as well as books featuring work by the artist Banksy and a children’s colouring book about the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.

An Israeli police statement said the two men were arrested on suspicion of “selling books containing incitement and support for terrorism”.

The statement said that police would “continue their efforts to thwart incitement and support for terrorism, as well as apprehend those involved in offences that threaten the security of Israel’s citizens”.

That justification for raiding the bookstores and arresting their owners has been roundly condemned by their supporters and customers as another disturbing assault on Palestinian cultural institutions, after previous actions against theatres and educational facilities.

Nathan Thrall, the Pulitzer prize-winning American author, launched his book, A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy, at the Educational Bookshop and is a friend of the owners.

Outside their court hearing he said: “This is part of a long-standing policy of crushing any perceived assertion of Palestinian nationalism in East Jerusalem… so they went into the store and took any book with the name ‘Palestine’ on it.”

He added: “Only an ideology as thin as paper is threatened by the words on a page.”

Other supporters, chanting slogans calling for the men’s release, said the confiscation of books and other literary material raised dark images from history where authoritarian regimes often began their assault on freedoms and minority rights with such actions.

Although the men remain in custody, amid growing calls for them to be released and the presence of several diplomats from European and global consulates at the court, one of the stores later re-opened and several people were soon passing by to express their support.