The day Israel came for the booksellers: With a Palestinian coloring book as proof of ‘incitement,’ Israeli police raided East Jerusalem’s world-famous Educational Bookshop and arrested its owners (+972 Magazine, 2025-02-11)

https://www.972mag.com/educational-bookshop-east-jerusalem-raid-arrests/
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“Since an arrest on suspicion of incitement requires prior approval from the State Prosecutor’s Office, the shop’s owner, Mahmoud Muna, and his nephew, Ahmad Muna, … were arrested on suspicion of ‘disturbing public order’ — a common practice in cases related to freedom of expression.”

“While the stores are famous among an international audience, and within a close proximity to the Magistrate’s Court, they are almost unknown in Israel. The court officials, police officers, and guards were surprised by the amount of interest from the media and diplomats …”

#EastJerusalem #EducationalBookshop
@palestine@lemmy.ml @palestine@a.gup.pe @israel

  • supersquirrel
    2·
    17 days ago

    Last time they picked Finnegans Wake, so the joke is thoroughly on them

    The over-painting of a fascia board bearing the name Shakespeare and Company, in Paris in 1941, remains a significant moment in the history of bookshops. Two weeks earlier, a German officer had walked in and tried to buy Finnegans Wake. The shop’s creator and owner Sylvia Beach had refused to sell it to him, claiming she had only one copy and it was her own. Two weeks later he returned to inform her that all her goods were about to be confiscated and within a couple of hours every shelf had been emptied. Books, photographs and furniture had all been carried to an upstairs apartment and a house painter had obliterated the shop’s title. The Anglo-American bookshop in the rue de l’Odéon, which had been the rendezvous for famous writers and where early purchasers of Ulysses, published by Beach, sometimes found themselves being served by its author, was no more.

    https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/12/shakespeare-and-company-paris-review

    https://engelsbergideas.com/portraits/sylvia-beach-the-bookseller-who-defied-the-nazis/

    Fuck Fascists

    I just want to emphasize, this is a badass moment in history, this bookstore was more of a cultural center for artists in Paris than an actual bookstore, the list of vitally important artists and writers of the era who passed through its doors is intimidating, and it barely even sold books as Sylvia Beach (the owner) would basically hand them out to artists because she wanted people to have books. And yet still, Sylvia Beach hated fascists so fucking much that she boxed the entire god damn thing up and put it into storage rather than comply with fascists even a little bit. Be like Sylvia Beach.

    …however please sell the fascist a copy of Finnegans Wake though, hell give it to them for free, that is fucking hilarious actually