An Israeli court jailed an Israeli Arab poet for five months on Tuesday after convicting her of incitement to terrorism for a poem and remarks she posted on social media during a wave of Palestinian street attacks.

Dareen Tatour, 36, posted on Facebook and YouTube a video of herself reading out her poem “Resist, My People, Resist”, as a soundtrack to footage of masked Palestinian youths throwing stones and firebombs at Israeli soldiers.

Tatour published her poem in October 2015 during a spate of deadly Palestinian stabbing, shooting and ramming attacks on Israelis. She was arrested a few days later, and prosecutors said her post was a call for violence. She denied this.

Her case became a cause celebre for freedom of speech advocates in Israel and abroad. It drew attention to the advanced technology used by Israeli security agencies to trawl through social media to identify and arrest users suspected of incitement to violence, or of planning attacks.

Tatour said her poem was misunderstood by the Israeli authorities as it was not a call for violence, rather for non-violent struggle.

U.S.-backed negotiations on a Palestinian state in territory Israel captured in a 1967 war have been stalled since 2014.

Tatour was also charged with supporting a terrorist group. Prosecutors said she had expressed support for the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad’s call for an uprising.

“I wasn’t expecting justice to be done. The case was political from the start, because I am Palestinian and support freedom of speech,” she told reporters at the Nazareth Magistrate’s Court in northern Israel.

ARAB MINORITY

Tatour belongs to Israel’s Arab minority, which comprises mainly descendants of the Palestinians who remained on their land after the 1948 Arab-Jewish war that surrounded the creation of the state of Israel. Hundreds of thousands fled or were driven from their homes.

The court added a six-month suspended sentence to Tatour’s jail time, according to the official minutes distributed by the Justice Ministry. Her lawyer, Gaby Lasky, said Tatour would appeal both the verdict and the sentence.

Israel says the string of Palestinian attacks that began in 2015 was fuelled by online incitement and it has launched a legal crackdown to curb it.

Indictments for online incitement have tripled in Israel since 2014. Prosecutions by the Israeli military have also increased in the occupied West Bank – most of those charged are young Palestinians.

The campaign against alleged incitement has raised questions about the balance between security and free speech.

On July 18 the Israeli parliament was set to pass legislation that would have empowered the justice system to order Internet providers, such as Facebook and Google, to take down social media posts in Israel deemed as incitement.

But hours before the scheduled vote Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shelved the bill. An adviser to Netanyahu, Jonatan Urich, said the law was open to a too-wide interpretation that could allow cyber-censorship and harm freedom of speech.

After the national debate on Antisemitism, the Labour Party has set up a working group to stamp down on Antisemitism, which is to be warmly welcomed. Antisemitism, like other forms of hatred and prejudice, must be tackled and tackled with vigour.

Yet,there is also a unique nature to Antisemitism that we should acknowledge. We also need to be aware of the deep scar of the Holocaust and the over-riding spiritual, religious and cultural trauma that it has caused and will continue to shape feelings and fears within Jewish communities for well over another hundred years. This must be taken into account and reactions also need to be seen through this lens.

European Jewry was, in a mechanised fashion, virtually wiped off the face of the continent and through that lens, we must always understand and empathise with the gut like reaction to Antisemitic discourse that takes place within Jewish communities. However, this does not mean that the policies of the State of Israel cannot be scrutinised and objected to. The latter is legitimate political discourse and there is no getting away from that fact.

Yet, over the last few days, the wider public may have got the impression that Muslims and Jews are completely at odds with each other over Israel and Palestine. As though it is the only thing that shapes relationships between both communities. This has been the impression that many beyond these two communities have got and the furore over the last two days may have further consolidated these positions. However, this is not the full picture.

Work between Muslim and Jewish communities has yielded much that is positive to both communities and to our country. Let  us be clear. Interfaith, conflict resolution, cohesion and integration work between both communities has meant that investment has been injected into local communities in our country. It has ensured the safety and security of both communities and of wider communities. It has ensured that the United Kingdom is seen as a beacon of hope globally of how communities can and do work together. And it has given strength to both communities to reach out and to take on extremist and bigoted groups, for the safety of these communities and our nation.

Much of this is not talked about or mentioned in the headlines. Much of this is not even recognised, but the reality is that it happens every day and goes without notice, yet we all feel the benefits.

Let us therefore remember that even in the darkest of moments, Jewish and Muslim communities hold a candle of hope for a better future. There are others within and beyond these communities who will try and snuff out that light, but they will not be successful. Nor should we let their voices be the enduring ones in the public space. We simply cannot allow them to shape our collective futures.

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A Palestinian toddler died in an arson attack, suspected to have been carried out by far-right settlers. The deceased, an 18-month-old child, Ali Saad Dawabsha slept alongside his family, oblivious to an impending peril.

In the early hours of Friday morning, two masked men entered the village of Duma, in the northern area of the West Bank, outside the city of Nablus. They smashed the windows of two properties (one of which was empty) and threw Molotov cocktails inside. The perpetrators also daubed the buildings with graffiti. The Hebrew text read “revenge” and “long live the Messiah”.

As the flames burned, his father, Sa’ad, escorted his wife, Reham, and four-year-old son Ahmed to safety. But according to witnesses, a lack of electricity prevented him from finding Ali.

The family visited a hospital in Nablus in the West Bank and then the burn unit at Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer. Reports suggest that Ali’s mother sustained between 70 and 90 per cent burns. His father and brother remain in critical conditions.

Politicians across the Israeli political spectrum condemned the murder. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described it as “a clear-cut terrorist attack. Israel takes a strong hand against terror, no matter who its perpetrators are“.

IDF Spokesman Brig.-Gen. Moti Almoz said he does “not remember an incident this severe in recent years,” as Zacharia Sadeh, of Rabbis for Human Rights, stated: “This is a terror attack against innocent people who were asleep in their home”.

The office of Mahmoud Abbas said it holds Israel responsible. Nabil Abu Rudeineh, Abbas’ spokesman, said in a statement: “We will no longer accept verbal condemnations of such horrible crimes by the international community; we demand operative steps to bring about an end to the occupation and see its criminals brought to justice”.

Previous examples of “price tag” violence targeted religious institutions. Arsons that infuse the language of anti-Arab racism with a religious nationalism not too dissimilar from the ‘Kahanist’ ideology of the Jewish Defence League.

On Wednesday, Israeli prosecutors indicted Yinon Reuveni and Yehuda Asraf for allegedly setting fire to part of the Church of Loaves and Fish and writing “Idols will be cast out” on an adjacent wall. A third man, Moshe Orbach, faces accusations of writing and distributing a document detailing the “necessity” of attacking non-Jewish people and property.

Netanyahu ordered the defence forces to use ‘all means at their disposal’ to find the perpetrators and bring them to justice. But some remain sceptical; in 2014, the Israeli Human Rights organisation Yesh Din, found that of the 1,045 Israeli police files opened in the Occupied West Bank between 2005 and 2014, just 7.4 per cent of investigations ‘led to indictments of Israeli civilians suspected of attacking Palestinians and their property’.

Restrictions have been put in place by the Israeli authorities for Friday prayers at Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.

Ali Saad Dawabsha’s death, in an act of terror, has been condemned nationally and internationally.

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