Palestinian demonstrators are back in Haifa – and facing police oppression
Israeli police detain Palestinian protesters demonstrating in solidarity with Gaza at an area protesters call the ‘Bassel al-Araj junction’ in Haifa’s German Colony on 30 May 2024
Yoav Haifawi reports in Mondoweiss on 4 August 2024:
Since Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza began in October 2023, an all-out attack against Palestinians under Israel’s control elsewhere has been underway as well. In the West Bank, which, together with Gaza and the Syrian Golan Heights, Israel occupied in 1967, there are daily and nightly raids by the occupation army and the settlers. Hundreds have been killed, and almost 10,000 new political prisoners have been taken with many being tortured. In the process, whole communities have been driven from their lands.
In the 78% of Palestine that has been occupied since 1948-49, and where those Palestinians that survived the ethnic cleansing are formally citizens of Israel, all democratic rights were suspended as of October 2023 and a terror campaign started against Palestinians. Hundreds were arrested and tortured for showing the slightest expressions of sympathy with the plight of their sisters and brothers in Gaza. Much of the Israeli Jewish public suddenly became an enthusiastic lynch mob, as Jewish student organizations spied on their Arab counterparts, reporting them to the universities’ leadership, who began expelling them from their studies and turning them over to the police for detention and torture. The same scenes repeated themselves in many workplaces, including hospitals where Arabs constitute a large proportion of the medical teams.
As we reported in Mondoweiss, early attempts to publicly demonstrate against the war were forcefully repressed, including a demonstration that was called for by Herak Haifa on October 18, but was dispersed before it even started. The next day there was an anti-war demonstration in Umm al-Fahm, the only one by 1948 Palestinians in the first months of the war. Two activists who were accused by the police of leading this demonstration were indicted with “supporting terrorist organization” and “inciting terror activities,” spent a long time in prison, and are still awaiting trial under house arrest with electronic leg cuffs, in rented apartments that they had to pay for outside their city. What followed was many months of political paralysis, as people witnessed helplessly the unfolding genocide.