The Only Thing Israel’s Police Forgot to Bring When They Raided a Palestinian Bookshop in Jerusalem was a Can of Petrol

 In Israel Selling Palestinian Books is ‘Act of Terrorism’ – But If You Sell Books that Explain How to Legally Kill Non-Jews then that’s Fine

Sky News Report - Why have two bookstore owners in Jerusalem been detained?

I was shocked when I heard that Mahmoud Muna had been arrested. Mahmoud was a student at Sussex University and was well known to members of Brighton & Hove Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Mahmoud and supporters of the Palestinians worked together for some years to enlighten people about what the Palestinians endure. After graduating from Sussex Mahmoud went back to Jerusalem to his bookstore. However none of us realised that selling books or certain books would become a crime in occupied Jerusalem.

For a long time Israeli propagandists got away with the lie that Israel was the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’ and to be honest Israel was very good at hiding the fact, as Ahmed Tibi MK put it, Israel was Democratic towards Jews and Jewish towards Arabs.

Mahmoud and Ahmed Muna in court in Jerusalem on Monday. Photograph: Mahmoud Illean/AP

Israeli raid on Palestinian bookshop sparks outrage

Since 2018, Apartheid has been entrenched in statute in the Jewish Nation State Law which states in clause 1(c) that:

The realization of the right to national self-determination in the State of Israel is exclusive to the Jewish People.

The existence of a Jewish state in a land whose indigenous people were Palestinians could not mean anything other than an apartheid state. It is this that explains the extreme racism of the Israeli police which resulted in them raiding a Palestinian bookshop, which has been established in Jerusalem for 40 years, in order to seize a children’s colouring book amongst others with the slogan ‘from the river to the sea’ on its front cover.

I am reminded of what took place in Nazi Germany where the authorities organised book burning ceremonies. I am also reminded of Heinrich Heine’s prediction that “Wherever they burn books, in the end will also burn human beings.” Except that in Israel they first burn people alive in Gaza and then they turn their attention to books.

Jerusalem Magistrate's Court Judge Chavi Toker approved the warrant for the raid on the bookshop despite the fact that the Police never sought permission from the prosecution, which is required by law to open an investigation into suspected incitement.

Hence at the bail hearing they changed their suspicions to "undermining the public's safety" The most damning evidence they produced was a colouring book for children "From the River to the Sea,"

Although another Magistrate's Court judge, Gad Ehrenberg, rejected the police's request to keep Mahmoud and Ahmed Muna in gaol for 8 days he decided to keep them in jail for another day so police could continue their investigation. This despite the illegality of the whole operation.

Jerusalem District Court Judge Eli Abravanel reprimanded the police for not obtaining permission to open an incitement investigation, but still allowed the decision to keep the two men in gaol for 2 days. After all they are Palestinians, so what is there to complain of?

Protesters outside court in Jerusalem on Monday. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian

Ha’aretz, which the Police also took exception to, commented in an editorial:

Due to the police's aggressive and undemocratic behavior and the judges' cowardice or naïveté, Mahmoud and Ahmed Muna spent two nights in jail. This is even more absurd given the fact, which emerged following their release on Tuesday, that the police never even bothered questioning them again, despite keeping them in jail.

The bookshop however isn’t an anonymous back street shop.

There is no diplomat, journalist or scholar of Jerusalem who isn't familiar with the store and its intellectual treasures. Evidence of this is the fact that the bail hearing at the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court was attended by diplomats from nine countries, plus the European Union.

Mahmoud Muna inside a branch of the Educational Bookshop chain in July 2024. Photograph: Sally Hayden/SOPA Images/Shutterstock

Ha’aretz’s editorial observed that

The raid and the arrests show how deeply the rot has propagated within the police and the legal system. Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara must tell the police that their behavior was illegal, and that if they want to open an incitement investigation, they can find thousands of calls for mass murder, obliterating the Gaza Strip, starvation and many other incitements for war crimes on social media, in interviews with politicians and in rabbis' sermons.

Which entirely misses the point of course. Incitement to violence and death against Palestinians is not a crime in Israel but any manifestation of Palestinian identity, culture or history is a crime. That is why Israel today is a fully-fledge police state as far as Palestinians are concerned, even for those who are Israeli citizens.

However Mahmoud and Ahmed aren’t entirely blameless. If they had stocked a wider range of books perhaps they wouldn’t have offended Israel’s racist police.

For example they could have stocked that well-known book Torat HeMelech authored by Rabbis Yitzhak Shapira and Yosef Elizur. Shapira was head of the Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva in the settlement of Yitzhar. The Jerusalem Post explained that the students at Od Yosef Chai saw Israeli army ethics as ‘problematic’ because they were ‘based on "western" or "Christian" morality that equates Jewish lives with those of non-Jews’. The whole basis of Torat HaMelech is that Jewish lives and non-Jewish lives are not the same.

Nathan Thrall at the protest on Monday. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian

Indeed Torat Hamelech was a mine of useful information if you want to wipe out non-Jews without incurring the displeasure of the legal authorities. Replete with quotations from the holy books and Talmud it explained how

The prohibition 'Thou Shalt Not Murder' applies only “to a Jew who kills a Jew,”... Non-Jews are “uncompassionate by nature” and attacks on them “curb their evil inclination,” while babies and children of Israel's enemies may be killed since “it is clear that they will grow to harm us.”

You may scoff but books like this are invaluable if you want to commit a genocide in Gaza. Unfortunately the International Criminal Court, run as it is by non-Jews didn’t see it that way although, to be fair Keir Starmer, Joe Biden and now Donald Trump have given it their seal of approval.

CCTV shows Israeli police raiding Jerusalem bookshop – video report

No doubt if Mahmoud and Ahmed had stocked books like Torat HaMelech they would not have suffered the ignominy of having their bookshop raided and spending two days in custody.

Israeli police raid Jerusalem bookshops and arrest Palestinian owners

Anger over Israel's arrest of East Jerusalem bookshop owners

Despite many calls for the prosecution of the authors of Torat HaMelech

Attorney-General Yehuda Weinstein said that the investigation was being closed because there is not enough evidence that the book was published with the intention to incite racism.

Weinstein was of the opinion that

works pertaining to rulings on religious law or publications of religious sources should not be dealt with in criminal proceedings in order to preserve freedom of religion.

One wonders how a Muslim cleric would have fared if he had written a book detailing how Muslim religious law permitted the killing of Jews. Well actually we know because Raed Saleh, the leader of the Northern Islamic League received a sentence of 11 months in 2015 for a sermon 8 years previously. Saleh was convicted of incitement to violence and racism.

Saleh had, in response to an attack on Al Aqsa by the police said:

“May the streets of Jerusalem be purified with the blood of the innocent, who shed it in order to separate from their souls the soldiers of the Israel occupation, also in the blessed al-Aqsa Mosque,”.

 Clearly that was far worse than calling for non-Jewish children and infants to be killed in order that they might ‘curb their evil inclinations’

In Israel the only people who get convicted and gaoled for incitement to racism are Palestinians. When thousands of Jewish settlers march to the chant of ‘Death to the Arabs’ the Police do all they can to protect them. And if you call Israel an Apartheid state?  Why you must be anti-Semitic!

Tony Greenstein