Five students at Haifa University were detained this week for social media posts they made regarding October 7. Yoav Haifawi attended their court hearing to see how “state security” would be upheld.
The most tragic cases in the latest wave of Palestinian political prisoners within ’48 Palestine all tell almost an identical story. They woke up early on Saturday morning, October 7, and found in their social media feed some innocent images of Palestinian civilians breaching the dreaded walls around the Gaza Strip or joyful images of celebrations on abandoned Israeli military vehicles. Without having any idea what might come next, they shared such images on Facebook or Instagram. The most common text that accompanied these images was “Good Morning!” in different variations. Later, when they heard the news and became aware of the bloody conflict that was unfolding, they hurried to remove these posts.
The second common characteristic these unfortunate prisoners share is that they had Zionist friends who followed their social media, took screenshots of the posts, and reported them to the authorities.
Falling victims of Israel’s furiously revengeful “justice” system, hundreds of such people were subsequently arrested, and dozens are still being held for more than a month later in harsh conditions in Israel’s “security” prisons. I have seen the indictment documents for some of them. They describe in detail all the atrocities that Israel attributes to Hamas, with some exaggerations that do not appear even in Israel’s official propaganda. Then comes the punchline: by posting this or that image on his/her social media page, the accused supported these terrorist organizations, praised these terrorist acts, and encouraged other people to commit terrorist activities. In view of the current dire times, according to the prosecution, the accused constitutes a tangible danger to state security and should not be released on bail.
Naturally, after the first wave of detentions for social media posts, things started to calm down. The illusion that we live in a democratic country with freedom of speech evaporated fast. Many people stopped posting or closed their social media accounts altogether.
Where are Israel’s apologists for the “Only democracy in the middle east”
What are those “common values” that justify support for genocide?