“It’s a witch hunt,” said one Palestinian lawyer in Jerusalem.
was arrested by Israeli police from her home in the Palestinian city of Nazareth, in northern occupied Palestine.
According to rights groups and firsthand accounts, Palestinians with Israeli citizenship and Jerusalem residents are being increasingly targeted in both professional and public environments over their Palestinian identity and any expressions of support or sympathy for Gaza and for Palestine in general, in the wake of the Hamas attack on October 7 and the ongoing Israeli bombardment of Gaza.
Since October 7, dozens of Palestinian workers across various sectors have been arbitrarily dismissed from their workplaces, and have even been threatened or targeted with criminal action on the pretext of “supporting terrorism.”they’ve received upwards of 80 complaints from Palestinian university students, and 48 complaints from workers across the private and public sectors in Israel.
“Since the beginning of the War, the academic institutions targeted Palestinian students for publishing posts on their social media accounts in what their schools defined as ‘support of terrorism’ and ‘sympathizing with terror organizations,’” Adalah said in aSome of the social media posts in question simply quoted verses from the Holy Qur’an, while others published lists of journalists to follow from the Gaza Strip, Adalah added.
According to the report, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem has established a “special committee” to investigate complaints against students who allegedly express “supporting Hamas,” and that the university has a “zero tolerance” policy. Irsheid emphasized that in many cases, people are being suspended or even prosecuted on a criminal level for simply liking a post on social media or for following pages that are posting about the situation in Gaza. She added that many of the cases that have come across Adalah’s desk are instances in which students or professionals expressed grief over the humanitarian situation in Gaza or simply wrote verses of the Quran that are being misinterpreted or wrongfully connected to support for Hamas.
Rosh Haayin is a predominantly Jewish city, but many of its laborers are Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, also commonly referred to as “Israeli Arabs.” Despite the mayor’s statements condemning the video posted by the city worker, many say the damage had been done, and was indicative of the general attitude right now towards Palestinians and Arabs in Israel, and the consequences such racist attitudes are having on people’s jobs and livelihoods.
On October 10, a Palestinian lawyer, whose identity is being withheld for their personal and professional safety, filed a motion in a Tel Aviv magistrate court to adjourn a court session due to his inability to be present in court, citing the war and ongoing situation in Israel. According to her lawyer, she surrendered herself to the police after police came to her house in the Shu’fat neighborhood of East Jerusalem, where they “vandalized” and ransacked her home. She was then interrogated by police, who photographed her and published photos of a handcuffed Abu Khdeir online.that she was reported to the police by the Israeli Bar Association.
The targeting of Abu Khdeir has sent shockwaves through the Palestinian legal community, with many lawyers not only fearful of posting or liking anything on social media regarding Palestine but also of even holding conversations amongst colleagues that could be misconstrued and used against them.
, as well as cases documented by rights groups, a significant amount of the harassment and persecution being faced by Palestinians is taking place online and on social media. According to 7amleh, which monitors and reports digital rights violations against Palestinians on social media, the group has documented 103,000 instances of hate speech and incitement against Palestinians on social media between October 7 – October 18. Of the violations, 63% of the documented instances of hate speech and incitement were based on political affiliations and/or nationalist sentiments, and 34% were rooted in racist bias.
According to Nashif, Meta only began developing its technology around Hebrew-language content in 2023, after immense pressure on the social media giant following the events of May 2021, when groups like 7amleh documented similar jumps in anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab harassment online. Although it hasn’t passed yet, Shahadeh-Zoabi described it as “illegal,” saying it is akin to “policing people’s thoughts.”
A large element of the targeted harassment campaign of Palestinians that’s taking place offline is being carried out by the Israeli police and officials. According to an October 16 statement on the official Israel Police account on X, the police said they had arrested 63 suspects since the beginning of the war “on suspicion of offenses of incitement and support for terrorism.”
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