Hunting Arabs Season
“Every Arab who expresses an opinion is labelled a terrorism supporter”. The shock and rage overwhelming Israel after the October 7 attacks have lowered tolerance of Arabs’ expressions on social media, bringing it down to a new low and launching a McCarthyist silencing campaign that has ravaged freedom of expression in the public service, the private sector and academia. How can one live in a situation in which an empathic post may become grounds for being reported, suspended, or fired?
By Ari Libsker • Calcalist • Translated by Keren Rubinstein
Three days after the October 7 massacre, Nur Abu Nar (27), then a nurse at the cardiology department of Holon’s Wolfson Hospital, shared a post on Instagram to her 180 followers. The post, which went viral before she’d shared it, showed five tiny bodies, the children of the Abu Dakka family from Gaza, killed days earlier in an Israeli bombing attack, with a caption: the Israeli target bank.
Four days later Abu Nar was summonsed for a hearing preceding an urgent suspension.
“My supervisor said I was suspended because of a Facebook post”, she says. “I didn’t really understand because I couldn’t remember what I’d shared that day, but when I did, I was shocked because the story I shared appeared in my private Instagram account and not on Facebook, and I never intended for it to somehow reach people at work”.
So how were they exposed to it?
“I suspect a Jewish colleague passed it on because that day she unfollowed me”.
Signed by Yitzhak Or, head of the disciplinary department of the Health Ministry, the summons stated that the director of the ministry is considering suspending Abu Nar because the story she posted includes expressions that stray from the legitimate boundaries of expression of a state employee to such an extent as to be regarded as ”incitement’” Considering Abu Nar’s role, it further added that this will “in itself deter certain communities from attending the facility or feeling concerned by its quality of care”.
About two weeks later — a day before Abu Nar was meant to be made permanent, and a day after her final hearing, in which she condemned the Hamas attack, said she identified with the suffering of the families of the fallen and the hostages, but also mentioned the suffering of her people — she was sacked.
In her recently submitted claim to the Tel Aviv labour court through her lawyer, Auni Bana, Abu Nar claims that the dismissal did not occur lawfully and carried out arbitrarily. Furthermore, she claims she was marked at the hospital as someone who identifies with Hamas and who supports the atrocities committed on October 7.
To support her claim, she quotes a post sent by one of the supervising nurses at the hospital department’s WhatsApp group, which has around 50 staff including nurses and assistants: “To all those whispering about it, Nur was sacked because she’s a Hamas supporter”, that nurse had written. “Her photos and entire conduct were seen by someone from cardiology who passed it onto (reported by — author’s note) the commissioner. They got into her phone and extracted inciteful content. That’s why she was suspended and later dismissed. If she worked in my department and expressed appreciation or identification with massacres, rapes, and burning of babies, I’d hand her over myself”.
It seems that the allegations caught Abu Nar, a secular person who speaks unaccented fluent Hebrew, entirely by surprise. She tells us about growing up in Jaffa surrounded by Jewish neighbours, with whom she’d always maintained warm relations, and that immediately after the massacre she assisted her Jewish colleagues as much as she could, working overtime. “I have Jewish friends. I don’t hate them. And I most definitely don’t support terrorism”, she says. According to her, labelling her at the hospital as a Hamas supporter caused her great anxiety. “Since those things were circulated, I’ve been afraid to go to Wolfson and was even scared to take my personal items from the locker, because I’m seen there as a terror supporter. Even if something happens to me, I’ll go to Ichilov hospital, even though it’s further away. I’m scared to go back to Wolfson”.
Six months later, Abu Nar failed to secure a job, having been turned away from every hospital. “I had one very successful interview, they truly loved me”, she says, “but then they called me to say they couldn’t employ me because of information they’d received according to which I’m a terror supporter. Eventually I got a job, but not in a government hospital and for a much lower salary. I had never been afraid to express my position and say what I think, but today I’m even scared to tell people I’m Arab”.
The Health Ministry said that “the State’s position on the matter will be forwarded to the court as per usual”.
“Identifying with suffering is not forbidden”
Abu Nar’s story is no exception. The feelings of rage, fear, and humiliation flooding Israelis in the weeks and months following the massacre have meant the threshold of tolerance towards Arab Israelis’ expressions, already quite low, fell to an unprecedented rock bottom. One can understand the difficulty in accommodating some such expressions. In the aftermath of the Hamas attack, Israeli society was stricken by shock, mourning, and anxiety, and was virtually unable to contemplate any other perspective. In that situation, any expression by Arab citizens not prefaced by a reference to Israeli trauma, or that dared to raise their own people’s suffering beyond the fence, or criticise the IDF, was seen by many as siding with the enemy, or just trying to inflict further pain onto battered citizens coping with a national trauma.
But these personal feelings, albeit somewhat relatable, were not only voiced online. Within days a new Israeli McCarthyism emerged, trickling deep down the State’s institutions and public bodies, bolstered by Right-wing organisations, MKs, and government ministers. In that public atmosphere, whoever expressed sadness over loss of life in Gaza, or criticised the war’s targets, its repercussions or protraction, was immediately denounced as a “supporter of terror”. And in many cases, the denouncers found that the most efficient way to act is to dob people in or file a complaint. The practical outcome was a wave of deleterious reports on employees and students, virtually only Arabs, resulting in dozens of investigations, and many unjustified suspensions and dismissals. Freedom of expression and the right to express one’s opinion, the cornerstones of a democratic regime, were shut down in the face of efficient and oftentimes cruel censorship.
“The contentions that expressing such opinions is an attack on the Israeli public or its feelings are false and dangerous”, asserts her lawyer, Auni Bana. “These contentions cover up a warped moral outlook, by which the blood of one does not equal that of another, and by which there can be no other pain and suffering aside from that of the victims of October 7. As such, a Jewish worker in a public position can always express their human empathy with Jewish-Israeli suffering, while an Arab worker in a public position is prevented from equally showing any identification with Palestinian-Arab suffering. And when they do, it’s immediately interpreted as a failure to identify with pain on the Israeli side. This approach implies that there’s no place for Arabs in public service”.
It’s clear that after October 7 the Jewish public could not tolerate identification with anyone perceived to be the enemy.
“Even if most or even the entire Jewish-Israeli public presumes that a public worker’s identification with the pain of innocent Palestinian children hurts its feelings, it still doesn’t make such an identification a disciplinary offence and a forbidden act, and still doesn’t justify terminating a public servant on the grounds of an impact on public service. What will the state do if, for example, there’s a general lack of identification with women who are victims of violence amid Israeli public? Will they sack every public servant expressing such an opinion?”
850 complaints since October
How prevalent is this phenomenon? Nasrin Tabari, head of Kayan, an advocacy organisation for Arab women in Israel, says that their emergency line, which was used to report violence against women up until the war, has received over 850 complaints of incitement, political persecution, and violence against Arabs in the workplace or in academic institutions since October 2023.
Tabari claims that the most persecuted are young women who often post on social media. “Most posts called to stop the war and expressed solidarity with the victims in Gaza, some prior to October 7. In one case we know a young woman was persecuted because of a selfie she uploaded three years ago at Al Aqsa mosque where she prays, and other women have been persecuted because they posted pictures on social media with a Palestinian flag in the background. When they find nothing against them posted after October 7, they go back in time and comb through people’s histories, and if they find such a picture, others incite against them and spread the information”.
How is this incitement expressed?
“The woman’s address is published, as well as pictures of her children, her phone number, her place of work is reported, complaints are filed with her employer. In most cases the employer doesn’t want to get in trouble, so he fires her to keep industrial relations peaceful and revenue coming in”.
It’s hard to quantify these incidents. Since the start of the war, police have arrested 616 incitement suspects, although this number includes people from the West Bank, and Jewish Israelis. According to government sources, between January and November 2024, 232 Arab citizens have been approved to be investigated for incitement to terror on social media, 42 of whom have been charged.
But many more incidents go under the radar, in institutions and workplaces that chose to take care of the problem without involving law enforcement. According to Tabari, this general sentiment rapidly led bosses and coworkers no longer bothering to locate contentious posts that hurt sensitive and traumatised Jewish ears to simply demand that Arabs condemn Hamas and express sorrow for the victims as a kind of improvised loyalty test.
“Two options remain. Either you’re for the State, or you’re against it”, says Tabari. There’s no such thing as having the right to say, ‘I have my position, I have feelings, and although I’m an Israeli citizen, I’m also Palestinian and I’m hurting’. They believed you only if you said you’re hurting over murdered Jewish women and Jewish children, but if you dared say that you’re also hurting over Palestinian women, that would be enough to slander you and incite against you, summon you for a hearing at work and for police questioning”.
She tells me about an incident in a WhatsApp group of employees in a well-known hi-tech company, “where a conversation started about October 7 and an Arab worker chose not to take part in the discussion. A member who was a very good friend of hers asked why she wasn’t condemning the attack, and did it in front of everyone, not privately. When she told him, ‘you know me well, since when do I talk politics?’, he replied that not taking a stand is in fact supporting Hamas, and gave her two options: either she condemn the attack, or he tells her parents she’s lesbian, and ‘they’ll do the job for us’. You see, telling a Muslim family like hers that their daughter is a lesbian would have extreme repercussions that could endanger her life”.
What does one do in this situation?
“The solution was to let her parents know. Basically to say that someone is trying to hurt her because of the war”.
In other words, to continue to lie.
“Yes, sometimes you have to lie to avoid being murdered. That’s how severe the situation is”.
The colleagues of another young Arab woman living with her partner in Tel Aviv unbeknownst to her parents used this delicate private information to coerce her to adopt the Israeli narrative, though she refused their demand to condemn the massacre and not speak of Palestinian suffering in the war. “Here too, the solution was to inform her parents in advance, and to frame it as someone having taken revenge against their daughter because of the war”, Tabari says.
“You are unsuitable to be working for the city council”
East Jerusalem mother of three Nasrin Natasha (34), having worked for 12 years as a social worker in the Jerusalem City Council’s welfare department, discovered the hard way that expressing empathy for the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza had become dangerous since the war began.
After October 7, Natasha changed her profile picture on Facebook to a black circle surrounded by the Palestinian flag’s colours. The gesture, which according to her was intended to show solidarity with innocent victims, is also prevalent among Jewish Leftists. Natasha also shared a clip referring to Palestinian victims of the war with a condemnation of the massacre, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour’s monologue condemning attacks on innocent civilians wherever they may be, and a series of illustrations of real-life moments when people discovered their relative had died.
Once someone at the council drew the attention of authorities to this content, Natasha was called in for enquiries and later for a hearing. By the end of 2023, a few days after the hearing, she was dismissed on the grounds that she expressed empathy only for the Palestinian side and completely ignored the Israeli tragedy. “Her conduct and posts and their timing and character, identifying only with one side while ignoring the other, demonstrate that she is unsuitable to be working for the city council in a management role in the field of social work”, stated her dismissal letter, terminating her career in the council.
Natasha told us that she felt great pain for the victims of the October 7 massacre, but living in East Jerusalem naturally exposes her mainly to the Palestinian narrative of the war. “I work with children, and they matter to me, so I published these posts because I wanted this damned war to end,” she says. “I didn’t think that what I did was wrong. I didn’t understand that it’s problematic content. I just wanted to express my difficult feelings, and I was sure this was a humane post expressing pain. It’s not a call to a confrontation or a support for terror”.
So why didn’t you post something about the victims on the Israeli side?
“The fact I didn’t post about it doesn’t mean I don’t feel the other side’s pain. I said at the hearing as clearly as I could that I identify with the victims on the Israeli side. They told me that a public servant mustn’t publish such things, but still. Don’t I have the right to express sadness and sorrow over dead children?”
Similarly to Abu Nar, Natasha quickly discovered that her dismissal had unexpected and far-reaching implications. Council-funded bodies or its professional or organisational affiliates rejected her applications once the grounds for her dismissal were investigated. And even applications to unrelated employers were rejected for the same reason. She has recently filed a lawsuit with the Jerusalem labour court for arbitrary and unjustified dismissal.
The Jerusalem City Council states that “the matter is under discussion as part of the litigation she has initiated. The council will present its arguments to the court and await its determination”.
Academia at frontlines
The McCarthyist climate hasn’t skipped academia, usually committed to freedom of expression. It was in fact the National Union of Israeli Students that took the initiative days after October 7, publishing a notice about establishing a war room to fight incitement on social media. “We call upon anyone witnessing incitement and support for terrorism on social media to anonymously report the posts, which will be examined immediately by all the relevant security and academic representatives”, the notice stated.
The legislation enabling academic institutions to “manage” information received in these reports is Section 17 of the Students’ Rights Act, prohibiting an attack on the dignity of students, teachers and employees at an academic institution, as well as their public standing. One wonders whether posting political opinions online violates the law intended to guarantee proper interactions on campus, but it was a useful loophole, nonetheless.
Having provided legal advice to some of the students accused of posting “problematic” content, Adalah reports that since October 2023 at least 124 Arab students from 36 Israeli academic institutions have been summoned for hearings. So far, 35 of them have been acquitted, 11 have received “educational penalties”, 23 have been suspended for at least one year, and 11 suspended for over a year or indefinitely. The first to summon students for hearings, even before the academic year started having been delayed by the war, was Haifa University, where 43 per cent of students are Arab. All academic institutions in Israel followed suit immediately afterwards, seemingly encouraged by the Minister of Education’s memo demanding the “immediate suspension of any student or employee supporting the barbaric acts of terror, and to have a hearing for those inciters within 72 hours”.
Prof Ayelet Ben-Yishai of the Department for English Language and Literature at Haifa University says it’s easy to see the consequences of this policy in one of her classes, in which most students are Arabs. “The main reason my students are afraid is an intimidation process that had already begun by October 8. We received warning letters, and at least six students were immediately suspended. When we heard about this, 20 other lecturers and I wrote to the administration that such behaviour is inappropriate and unprofessional, and that decisions should be taken in an organised manner through disciplinary committees, but that this situation left the students feeling scared and helpless. They were alienated and humiliated, aware that in order to complete their degree, they must study at an Israeli university”.
Ben-Yishai describes one of her recent interrupted lessons, in which they read a science fiction story portraying Haifa as a Palestinian city. The conflict that ensued escalated quickly, so much so that security was called in. But it was especially the reaction of her Arab students that showed her how undermined they had become. “When security arrived, the students were certain they were coming to arrest me,” Ben-Yishai says. “They literally started crying and told me I’m really brave, and they don’t understand why I hadn’t been arrested yet. This happens because the university’s conduct frames all Arab students as potential disruptors, a security threat, sleeper agents merely for being Arab. It’s a terrible way to feel as a student. On the other hand, they are under immense pressure from their families not to speak up and not to ‘get in trouble’.
“In other words, as far as they’re concerned, the university is a Jewish space, even if not explicitly hostile, while for others it is entirely hostile because it has very clear codes about what can be said, where, and how. As a lecturer at the university, this is problematic for me, because I am interested in hearing their opinions and thoughts. Just as I continue teaching those who argued against them in my class. I didn’t remove them from the class, but I talked to them afterwards, and so I expect them not to be afraid or reluctant either. But the university isn’t like that. It prefers oppressed Arabs”.
“An invasion into intimate spaces”
The suspicion reserved by academic institutions for Arab students receives support from the coalition’s extremes’ legislative initiatives. Right now, MK Limor Son Har-Melech of Otzma Yehudit [Jewish Power] is promoting an amendment by which a student cell defined as a pro terror or as armed resistance against Israel will be restricted from any activity. The amendment also sanctions removal orders and the right to rescind degrees of students convicted of supporting or inciting to terrorism, and call to condition acceptance into academic institutions upon having no convictions of such. These matters are already covered in existing legislation, but the fact of suggesting an amendment that specifies a particular social group is suspect. A similar legislative drive directed at academic teaching staff was promoted by Yoav Kisch, the Minister of Education himself, also containing the vague term “support for terrorism”, meant mainly as an intimidation tactic and a nod to his voters.
Adalah lawyer Mai Diab believes the adoption of such policies by many academic institutions is borne of the fact that they are largely considered Israeli institutions first, and academic institutions second. “Academics have been part of the surveillance and dobbing-in mechanisms of the students’ organisations and of Right-wing organisations. They invaded the most intimate of spaces with no authority, and despite the fact those students had committed no ethical or disciplinary offence, initiating procedures against them came with disproportionate punishments, including permanent suspension and revoking academic achievements”, she says. “We found no expressions in any of the complaints that had strayed from what’s constitutionally protected under freedom of expression. The space where academic freedom is guaranteed had become far more severe than that of law enforcement and legislative bodies”.
According to Adalah’s report, the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, which has around 2500 students, had summoned the highest number of students for a hearing — 12 in total (six of which were cancelled — author’s note). In contrast, with over 18,000 students, Haifa University had summoned only six students for a hearing.
In this atmosphere of intimidation, the students in question are afraid to be named. “Once the war started, I felt persecuted on campus at Bezalel,” says ‘Sami’ (a pseudonym). “One student who had attacked Arabs on campus started a Telegram channel where he posted our private details — names, addresses, phone numbers, as well as pictures. He called us ‘terrorists’ and demanded we’re ‘taken care of’. Then we started receiving direct threats on our lives on WhatsApp. We turned to Bezalel’s management but instead of protecting us, they passed the matter onto police, where nothing was done either. We were left alone to face all the threats and were scared to turn up to campus for weeks. When we came back, we found signs saying ‘no entry to terror supporters’ in Hebrew and Arabic. It was as though we’d been marked, for all to see. It was difficult in class as well. We were verbally attacked and treated as though we didn’t belong. If someone posted a Palestine flag, he was immediately marked as a ‘terror supporter’. My girlfriend was even asked to take off a sweatshirt with a watermelon print”.
And where was management in all of this?
“Bezalel management did nothing to protect us. They presented the situation as though there’s ‘violence on both sides’, but we know that’s not true. Management could have done a lot more but just ignored it. Today I feel like if I am attacked on campus, no one will protect me”.
All the lecturers at Bezalel that we approached refused to grant us an interview, except for Tamar Berger, a senior lecturer in the architecture department. “Bezalel was quick to suspend Palestinian students at an unprecedented rate”, she says. “When we understood that, we asked to gather the Dean of Students (a student and staff body that assists students). As a group of lecturers, we were outraged and sought an explanation, and eventually I think things really improved and there’s a lot of effort to temper the situation”.
Bezalel responds that “just like in other academic institutions, at the start of the war we encountered unacceptable extreme statements by students on social media. As we dealt with these incidents, we carried out a learning process and alteration of our disciplinary proceedings to properly, ethically, equitably and educationally address this. We continue to be guided by values of respect, equality and freedom of expression and artistic creation. Factually, students in Bezalel were not summoned for hearings. Some were called for clarifying conversations and a small number were summoned by disciplinary committees. Ultimately only one student was suspended for a semester, while many other academic institutions permanently suspended many students”.
The academic year is gone
The WIZO Academic Centre for Education and Design in Haifa, home for some 700 students, was also active in this regard, with eight students summoned for hearings since October ’23, one of whom is “Hanin’” a photography student summoned for a disciplinary hearing because she shared the trailer of the documentary Tantura, screened as part of the Docaviv Festival, which includes testimonies from 1948 of an alleged massacre committed by IDF soldiers in the eponymous Arab village. She also shared footage of ruins in Gaza, and being Armenian herself, compared the condition in Gaza to those experienced by her own people in Nagorno-Karabakh.
“My teachers are artists that love criticism and encouraged me to depict political subjects. I was amazed they summoned me for a hearing. They know I’m not a terrorism supporter”, Hanin says. Its determination stated that “the committee believes the critical posts you have posted and identified with on social media at the present time, comparing a country fighting a terrorist organisation with other violent regimes that perpetrated ethnic cleansing on innocent people, undermine our sense of faith and trust as a society, where everyone bears a responsibility both in their private space, and as a student in an academic institution”. In this instance, the committee sufficed with a warning.
WIZO states: “The committee considered the student’s expressions severe and decided this amounted to a violation of our charter, as well as a disciplinary offence. WIZO will continue to protect and safeguard freedom of expression but will continue to treat unlawful expressions with the requisite severity”.
The penalty given to “Amal’”, a law student at a central college, was far worse. After she posted a story that said, “God protect Gaza and the innocent people there”, she was summoned to four disciplinary hearings. Even though she explained her post just expressed empathy for others’ suffering, she was suspended from several courses and subsequently missed out on an entire year of study. Because the matter is listed in her personal record, she also struggles to find employment. “I worked at a legal firm helping people from Gaza, workers and patients submitting applications in Israel. After the information reached my workplace, the boss asked that I stop speaking Arabic in the office, and people started treating me differently. When I understood I wasn’t welcome, I resigned,” she says.
