By the Book: Israel's Police Raid on an East Jerusalem Bookstore Is Fascism -
Sunday's police raid on both outlets of an East Jerusalem bookstore and the arrest of Mahmood Muna and Ahmed Muna, members of the family that owns the business (they were freed Tuesday), is a fascist act that tramples human rights and blatantly violates freedom of _expression_. It also evokes frightening historical associations with which every Jew is very familiar.
The double standard cries out to heaven. At a time when public figures in Israel are openly talking about ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip as a legitimate and even welcome option, a children's coloring book called "From the River to the Sea" is a pretext for prolonged detention. Anyone with a brain understands that this was a political arrest that has absolutely no connection to the public's safety.
The store is considered a major cultural institution in East Jerusalem. It mainly serves diplomats and academics – not exactly people likely to engage in terrorism. Books by Amos Oz and other Israeli writers can also be bought or browsed there (Haaretz readers, be warned: One of the things that aroused the police's suspicions was a copy of this newspaper).
The detained booksellers' many friends and acquaintances say they are people who advocate dialogue and believe in peace. So why were they suspect? The obvious answer is because they are Palestinians.
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Aside from the injustices of the raid and the arrests, these actions carry a message and disclose its axiomatic status in Israel: Not only are there no innocents in Gaza, there are no innocent Palestinians, period. They all, without exception, support terrorism. This is the baseline assumption: The burden is on them to prove otherwise.
We, in contrast, are a nation of peace seekers by definition. And it doesn't matter how much horrifying evidence to the contrary mounts up before our very eyes.
An anecdotal example: Last month, the Knesset Special Committee for the Rights of the Child held a surprising meeting, chaired by MK Eli Dallal. Its topic was "education for sustainable peace." But contrary to what that title implies, most of the debate revolved around "indoctrination for war" in the Palestinian school system, which "doesn't grant legitimacy to the Zionist national existence and its narrative."
Booksellers Ahmad, left, and Mahmoud Muna appear in court after their arrest during an Israeli police raid of their long-established Palestinian-owned Educational Bookshop, Jerusalem, February 10, 2025.Credit: Mahmoud Illean, AP
And what about the indoctrination in the Israeli education system? No investigation is required. After all, we are the sons of light; we love life. Everyone knows that we want peace and that all the wars have been forced on us.
Consequently, the meeting didn't discuss the fact that Israeli textbooks also don't recognize the Palestinian narrative or grant it legitimacy. Nor did it mention, for instance, that an elementary school textbook shows a map of Israel from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, or even the fact that the history curriculum doesn't include the Oslo Accords.
Indeed, studies show that both peoples' textbooks are blind to the other's narrative and include a wealth of material depicting the other as an enemy. They also show that claims of antisemitism and incitement to violence in Palestinian textbooks are exaggerated generalizations, whereas the depiction of Palestinians in Israeli textbooks is minimal, one-dimensional and distorted. Moreover, Israeli textbooks contain almost no mention of the occupation or discussion of its legitimacy.
But Israelis don't let the facts disturb them. As noted, there are axioms from which everything else is derived: the good people and the bad people, the peace-lovers and the lovers of terrorism. "There is no Israeli or Jew who doesn't want peace," Dallal said in the meeting when confronted with critical arguments about the Israeli curriculum. Unfortunately, he added, "not only does this not exist on the other side, but we also find murder and annihilation there."
Last week, an Israeli school principal wrote on social media that "there are no innocents in Gaza." It would be interesting to know what would have happened had an Arab principal written that there are no innocents in Israel. But in truth, there's no need to use our imaginations. We know exactly what would have happened.