Palestinian artists stifled as Israel ‘weaponizes fear and fame’
A still from ‘Villa Touma’, a film by Suha Arraf
Mariam Farah reports in +972 on 23 April 2024:
The persecution commenced almost immediately. Within days of the Hamas-led October 7 attack and the onset of Israel’s Gaza assault, the renowned singer Dalal Abu Amneh, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, was arrested for a post on social media.
“There is no victor but God,” she wrote, after her social media team in Cairo asked her to try to find the words to convey what she was feeling. The intended sentiment was that no good would come from violence by Hamas or by the inevitably brutal Israeli retaliation. Without explicitly notifying her, the social media team added a Palestinian flag to the message, as they usually do for all her posts. But as this one spread in the supercharged post-October 7 social media landscape, threats and harassment against Abu Amneh quickly mounted.
The folk singer, who is also a neuroscientist, approached the police in the hope that they would put a stop to the threats. But at the police station, she learned that she was under investigation for the post. She was arrested on the spot and held in a cell for three days with her hands and legs cuffed, before being released.
For over two months after her arrest, protesters gathered daily outside Abu Amneh’s home in the predominantly Jewish northern city of Afula — often led by the mayor, Avi Elkabetz — demanding she and her family be expelled from the country. “Since the beginning of this case, there have been 85 demonstrations in front of my house,” she told +972. “They are trying to intimidate us — my children, my husband, and myself. We are living through a very difficult period. My husband was also persecuted at his workplace, and some extremists even tried to send people to buy our house in Afula. Through persecuting me, they aim to intimidate all Palestinians.”
On Feb. 12, the state closed the case against Abu Amneh. “The persecution against me and my arrest were arbitrary, as a few of the judges even acknowledged,” she explained. “In the end, the file was closed because not only was there no evidence; there was not even an accusation.”
“The police’s treatment of Dalal Abu Amneh echoes their behavior toward anyone who posted in support of Gaza when the war began,” Abeer Baker, Abu Amneh’s lawyer, told +972. “Like dozens of others, Dalal faced incitement on social media, followed by complaints against her from right-wing groups dedicated to reporting on Palestinians.” But given her public profile, Dalal was a more potent target.
“Dalal’s fame and influence provided a convenient tool for intimidation,” Baker continued. “By arresting an icon with a wide following, authorities send a chilling message that no one is safe. The targeting of Abu Amneh demonstrates how authorities weaponize fear and fame to silence Palestinian voices.”
Indeed, although fighting in the current war is concentrated in Gaza, it has sparked a crisis for Palestinian citizens of Israel — and artists in particular have been caught in the crosshairs. Their freedom of expression stifled, Palestinian artists have faced attacks by the state and its Jewish-Israeli citizens in the form of incitement, discrimination, legal prosecutions, and physical threats. Often, this has come as a result of the mere expression of solidarity with the people of Gaza or of peacefully opposing Israel’s brutal onslaught.