Stifled voices: Israel's Arab citizens battle repression to speak out against war on Gaza

Pro-Palestinian protesters prepare to march in London, United Kingdom, to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and an end to Israel’s occupation on 3rd February 2024 [Mark Kerrison/In Pictures via Getty Images]

Shehadeh reiterated that Israeli society has been “dealing with us as enemies, not as citizens.”

He said the Netanyahu government had declared war on four fronts – Gaza, the West Bank, the northern front with Lebanon, and the “interior front.”

“Which means that the Prime Minister declared war on us. In his mind, in his mentality, he deals with us as enemies. He declared war on us.”

Sami Abu Shehadeh, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, finds his inability to openly condemn and speak out against the Israeli atrocities on his friends and family in the Gaza Strip extremely frustrating.

“Imagine this horrible situation. There is a genocide going on against your people and, at the same time, we are not allowed to raise our voices against the killing of our people,” says Shehadeh, a Jaffa-based politician.

Arab citizens make up 21 percent, or 2.1 million, of Israel’s population, and identify themselves as Palestinians or Arab by nationality, but Israeli by citizenship.

Since last October, when Israel launched its deadly war on Gaza, it has simultaneously conducted a violent crackdown on its Arab citizens, targeting them for any sort of protest against the war or for advocating for Palestinians.

A simple post on social media or protests against the war have led to harsh and severe consequences, with students being expelled from universities and professionals losing their jobs.

Many have been detained, arrested and even slapped with terrorism charges by the Israeli state, while instances of verbal and physical abuse have been frequent, along with boycotts of Palestinian-run businesses.

Crackdown on free speech

Adi Mansour, a human rights lawyer associated with Adalah, a Palestinian-run legal centre in Israel, says Palestinian citizens of Israel are facing “an extreme and radical repression and crackdown on their rights”.

“We are talking about, in many instances, the complete denial of the right to protest and the right to free speech,” he told Anadolu in a video interview.

“We saw a statement by a police commander who said very specifically that anyone who wants to protest against the war … can move in a bus to Gaza.”

Shehadeh, a former member of the Israeli Knesset and leader of the Balad party, which is dedicated to advocating for the rights of Palestinians in Israel, says Israeli society is “sick” for giving space to politicians calling for more blood and killings of Palestinians.

“All these voices are considered legitimate, while the rational voices calling to stop the war, end all this violence and go for a political solution … are considered illegitimate,” he says.

Repression of students

Shehadeh points out that university students and faculty are being expelled from Israeli universities, some for their online support for protests against the war and others because of their ethnicity.

Students have been expelled because they “wrote a sentence against the war or against the killing of children or women, or had a quotation from the Quran or a hadith,” he said.

Lawyer Mansour says his organization has received cases of around 120 Israeli Arab students expelled from Israeli universities for speaking against the Gaza war.

Several Israeli Arab scholars have also been targeted, including the prominent case of Palestinian professor and academic, Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, who was arrested on charges of incitement.

Limited activism

Despite the intense Israeli crackdown, Shehadeh and others continue to raise their voice for Palestinians.

He said their political umbrella group, the High Committee for the Arabs in Israel, has been active in organising demonstrations, marches, and other protests.

Authorities rejected their requests for marches and demonstrations, he said, and they were “threatened by Israeli police who clearly said they had orders to use live bullets against us.”

This forced Shehadeh and his peers to start from “something very small and then move step by step”.

“We decided to do an evening in a closed hall with Arab and Jewish activists … They prevented this, too, and threatened the owner of the hall in Haifa,” he said, adding that similar tactics were used to stop a similar meeting in another city.

His efforts to organise another small protest also met the same fate.

He said that such protests with less than 50 people and without any loudspeakers do not require permission from the police, according to the law.

An attempt to stage another protest in the city of Nazareth was also “prevented illegally”, he said, with Shehadeh and a few of his colleagues being detained.

Commenting on the current situation, Mansour said no one is allowed to criticise the war on Gaza.

“We have seen a total prohibition on protests against the war,” he said.

There were one or two demonstrations at the beginning but nothing after that, and it “took a lot of months for activism to revive and to come back,” he said.

Police are declaring protests illegal even before they start and “people are getting arrested for specific slogans or for raising the Palestinian flag,” he said.

Shehadeh points out that the situation is the same within the Knesset, where they are “attacked all the time by the vast majority of the members any time they talk about stopping the war or the war crimes.”

“Imagine those who call to stop the war, those who call for ceasefire, those who struggle for peace are considered supporters of terror, and those who support genocide are considered legitimate,” he said.

‘It’s not safe to walk in the street’

Shehadeh says he has been attacked a few times physically and verbally in the streets of Jaffa.

“In my own city, I feel it is not safe to walk in the streets. I usually need someone to accompany me,” said the politician.

Since last October, Muslim women have been afraid to even go to hospitals, he said.

“Religious Muslim women, because they wear the headscarf, were attacked a few times verbally and physically in buses and public places,” he said.

Lawyer Mansour says the hostility is even palpable in courtrooms, including from judges themselves.

“Sometimes in the hearing where we were representing students, we were feeling that we are the ones facing charges,” he said.

There were even instances when we were asked whether Adalah would condemn the 7 October Hamas attacks, he added.

“I can’t even explain how shocked we were because … we are not being interrogated, we are not facing any charges, we are the organisation representing people,” he said.

‘The situation in this fascist society is going to be much worse’

Mansour feels that things will only get worse and become much more violent “because the Israeli army and Israeli politicians have failed in all their strategic goals in this genocidal war on Gaza.”

“We are really concerned that the minute there is a ceasefire, they are going to exact revenge on the Palestinians who live within the state,” he said.

“We are really concerned that the situation in this fascist society is going to be much worse. They are going to be much more racist.”

Shehadeh reiterated that Israeli society has been “dealing with us as enemies, not as citizens”.

He said the Netanyahu government has declared war on four fronts – Gaza, the West Bank, the northern front with Lebanon and the “interior front”.

“Which means that the Prime Minister declared war on us. In his mind, in his mentality, he deals with us as enemies. He declared war on us.”