Jerusalem
CNN
—
Mahmoud Muna looked on in disbelief as plain-clothes Israeli police officers rifled the shelves in his decades-old bookstore in occupied East Jerusalem.
The officers were looking for books they deemed “inciteful,” and in the process detained him and his nephew, Ahmad, for 48 hours.
The February raid on two branches of the Educational Bookshop – a well-known bookstore popular among Palestinians, Israelis and foreigners – was a widening of what critics describe as a crackdown on free speech in Israel that has intensified since Hamas’ October 7 attack.
Witnesses to the raid said police were looking for any book containing the word “Palestine,” a Palestinian flag, its colors, or any symbol of Palestinian national or political identity.
Israel’s police said at the time that they conducted the raid because the stores were “suspected of selling books containing incitement and support for terrorism.”
“You could be… running one of the most international bookshops of the city, and within the 30 minutes, you are in a dungeon underground in a detention center, and everyone is shoving and kicking you, and you have very little rights whatsoever,” Muna, a Palestinian from Jerusalem, told CNN from his home, where he was under house arrest at the time.
Muna spent two days in custody and was under house arrest for five days, after which he was not allowed to be in his bookshop for another two weeks. The charges against him were downgraded from incitement to “disrupting public order,” he says.
The raid has alarmed not only Israeli activists but also Israelis in general. Critics warn it sets a dangerous precedent in a country whose prime minister calls it the “only democracy in the Middle East.” They argue that voices critical of Israel’s war in Gaza – and the staggering death toll it has caused – are increasingly being silenced through intimidation and legal action.
“What happened in the bookstore… should be a red light, a very strong red light for all of us,” said Gideon Levy, a veteran Israeli journalist who was once a prominent voice in Israel’s left but has become increasingly marginalized in the national discourse. He is often seen on international news channels but now says he is no longer invited to give interviews on Israeli television.
“In Israel, there is a government which is using anti-democratic means, not to say fascist means, against freedom of thought, freedom of speech, any kind of freedom. And they do it with pride,” he told CNN.
David Mencer, a spokesman at the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, has said that “any measures which are taken are always taken within the framework of Israeli law, with all the appropriate checks and balances from our democracy.”
“We will maintain freedom of speech under the rule of law,” Mencer said in a press briefing in response to CNN’s question.
‘Systematic political persecution’
Critics however say Israeli authorities’ attempt to police speech have expanded in scope since October 7.
Leftist politician Ofer Cassif is the only Jewish lawmaker in the Arab-majority Hadash-Ta’al party in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. Lawmakers tried but failed to expel him from parliament last year after he signed a petition of support for South Africa’s genocide case against Israel for its war in Gaza, which has killed more than 48,000 people, according to the health ministry there. Israel vehemently denies charges of genocide. In November, the parliamentary ethics committee suspended Cassif from the Knesset for six months, allowing him to enter the chamber only to cast votes.
“There is an ongoing, profound, systematic political persecution of anyone who raises an alternative voice to the government, of anyone who raises a voice,” he said. “And the stronger it is, the stronger is the persecution.”
Still, Cassif maintains that there are “thousands and thousands” of “democratic Jews like myself” in the country, but says they are being increasingly marginalized.
Levy’s newspaper, Haaretz, has also been targeted. In November, the Israeli cabinet unanimously voted to ban the government from interacting with the paper, citing its critical coverage of the war in Gaza and comments by its publisher calling for sanctions on senior government officials.
The paper described the government’s move as an attempt to “silence a critical, independent newspaper.”
Levy says the events of October 7 were so devastating for the nation that they pushed more Jewish Israelis toward the right – with suspicion of Palestinians and Arab Israelis growing ever deeper.
Some among Israel’s Jewish intellectuals, he says, had “lost some of their humanity” since the attacks, referring to a lack of sympathy for Gazans’ suffering in the war.
“Some will tell you that after the 7th of October, we have the right to do whatever we want,” Levy said. “That’s the mindset of Israel today.”
The perceived crackdown on freedom of speech has sent shockwaves through the Arab-Israeli community and the shrinking group of Jewish Israeli intellectuals who are still speaking out for Palestinian rights.
In October, Israeli police barred a theater in Jaffa from screening a film about Israel’s takeover of the Palestinian town of Lyd during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, citing a lack of permit, according to Israeli media. The literary and free expression advocacy group PEN America urged a reversal of the ban, describing it as “the latest in an ongoing effort by the Israeli government to suppress Palestinian voices.”
In August, police barred another film, “Jenin, Jenin 2,” from being shown in Jaffa, saying it amounted to incitement, according to Channel 12 The movie is a sequel to the 2002 film, “Jenin Jenin,” which is banned. In 2022, the Israeli Supreme Court upheld the ban and ordered the director to pay a fine to a military officer for defamation.
CNN has reached out to the Israeli Ministry of Culture and Sport for comment on restrictions on film screenings.
Mencer says that while Israel upholds the freedom to criticize the government, it won’t tolerate incitement. “In Israel, there is a distinction between criticism and incitement. Criticism of the government will never be silenced.”
“There will always be national security concerns, of course, as there are in all countries, especially at a time of war… Israel will always ensure that speech does not incite violence or support terrorist organizations,” he said.
Levy says he no longer takes for granted that he will be able to continue to write with freedom to criticize the country’s policies “because this government has an agenda, and this agenda is to try as much as they can to shut mouths and to close any criticism.”
David Issacharoff, also a Haaretz journalist, says his newspaper being targeted by “the most far-right government in Israel’s history” is a “badge of honor,” as it shows “we might be probably doing the right thing.” If writers remain silent or leave the country, “they win,” he says, referring to radicals on the Israeli right.
He is even more determined to continue writing in the face of the sanctions, saying it is important to show the world that “there is a different side to Israel than people would think. People who are against war crimes, people who are for human rights, people who want peace.”
But he warns that the crackdown on free speech may be reaching a point of no return.
“A Rubicon is being crossed at the moment,” he said, “with the raid on the bookstore and more broadly, the pressures that are being put on you, the pressures that are being put on other broadcasters, the pressures that are being put on cultural events, on movies, on theaters and things like that.”
“We are way past a place where we could say that Israel is a democratic state,” he said.
For Cassif, the lawmaker, it’s already too late for freedom of speech in Israel. “It’s not even at stake anymore. It doesn’t exist,” he said.
Muna, the bookshop owner, worries what the restrictions will mean for coming generations.
“You are creating a whole generation that their ability to think will not be beyond that framework that has been set by the government,” he said. “This is very dangerous, very, very dangerous.”