I spent a day in the Haifa court trying to see a friend who has been detained for two weeks on charges of publishing lines from a poem on Facebook. I can report the State of Israel is functioning as intended.
“Therefore, the prudent keep quiet in such times, for the times are evil.”
Book of Amos, chapter 5, verse 13
Some of my friends who have posted verses from the Koran on their Facebook pages during these difficult days have found themselves behind bars, so I thought that maybe, in the Jewish state, posting a verse from the Bible would be safer.
Of course, I cannot publish what I really think. The last time I carried a sign that called for a “Ceasefire Now,” or, in fact, I did not even carry the sign but just held it folded between my legs, I was attacked by several policemen and spent the night in the dungeons of the Haifa police. In the days before that, at a “Women in Black” demonstration and a vigil for a prisoner exchange in Carmel Center, even more moderate signs were torn from my hands by police. Finally, even my peace-loving friends begged me to stop the “provocations.”
So I stopped, at least for now.
In the meantime, for those who are concerned about the situation, I can report from here that the internal front is stronger than ever. I am not a military or political commentator, but I live the beat of the Haifa street, and from this vantage point, the State of Israel is functioning as intended.
I was at the court in Haifa today to check on the well-being of a friend who has been held in detention for two weeks on the charge of publishing a few lines from a poem on Facebook. The prosecution filed an indictment on the charge of “supporting terrorism” and requested the extension of his detention until the end of the proceedings. The hearing was adjourned until the defense could study the case. My friend, as is customary these days, was not brought to court. In the minutes of the hearing, the judge took the trouble to note:
“Noting the law on holding hearings in a visual conference with the participation of prisoners and detainees in the state of emergency, the hearing progresses in the absence of the suspect on video when he is in the detention center, the suspect identifies himself on video before the judge in a loud voice and says his name and ID, and the judge explains to the suspect that the hearing is held on video in light of the announcement of a partial restriction on participation of detainees in discussions.”
(The errors in gender, punctuation, and language are in the original protocol, much of it lost in translation. And, not to judge our poor judge too harshly, she probably just cut and paste it.)
Indeed, the discussion took place “in the absence of the suspect on video.” This means the video application was activated, but we did not see our detained friend.
Before the hearing on our case, we had time to see Israeli justice in action in three other remand hearings. First, a shooting suspect was brought in. He was released to house arrest for a few days, ordered to stay at a distance of at least 150 meters from the victim’s house, and banned from talking to the victim. A stabbing suspect was brought after him. He was also released after a short hearing under similar conditions. Both were personally brought to court. In both cases, the victims (as well as the suspects in the attacks) were Arab.
After that, the court turned to a more important matter, which was concerned with ensuring public peace and security in these difficult days. The suspect, a 43-year-old father with no criminal record, was seen in a video broadcast from the detention center. During the discussion, we learned that the suspect, a resident of the West Bank, had permits from the occupation authorities to enter and work inside “the green line” for the last four years. To get these permits from the “Matfash”1 office, he must have passed all the most brutal Shin Bet tests there are, and no blemish must have been found. However, as we learned, due to the situation, all the permits have been cancelled. Thus, by a swing of a keyboard, the suspect became, like tens of thousands of other poor, hard-working people, a criminal whose very existence endangers the security of the State of Israel and the Jewish public living in it quietly and peacefully.
The suspect’s lawyer tried to cut short the hearing by saying, “then deport him.” The judge, for her part, tried to shorten the hearing according to her own method and stated at the very beginning of the hearing, before hearing any argument: “To be clear, I am not releasing him.”
The policeman who requested the remand emphasized that the suspect’s crime does not only amount to an illegal stay but also to violating the conditions of his original work permit. Since the suspect was not charged with any additional offense, it is clear that the violation of the permit conditions does not involve any criminal activity itself. The policeman was not willing to elaborate on how the conditions were violated, but when the defense attorney hypothesized that the suspect was permitted to work in agriculture but instead engaged in assembling plaster walls, oh my god, he did not deny it. He only repeated that it was a violation of the permit’s conditions and that the suspect had been interrogated about it.
The defense attorney reiterated that no one informed the suspect that his permit had been revoked, therefore, even if he was technically “illegally present”2, he was caught in this situation without his knowledge. He emphasized that the “Matfash” offices are open and functioning (“thank god!” he added). As they issued the permits, he claimed, they were able to call the holders of the permits and inform them of their cancellation. He even described how he bothered to check the Matfash public website, and nowhere did he find any notice about the cancellation of the work permits.
The judge, who was presented with the investigation materials (at this stage, the defense attorney still has no access to them), took the trouble to answer the defense attorney and claim that the suspect admitted during his interrogation that there were people – although “not any official source” – who advised him to leave the area. The police prosecutor, like “righteous people whose work is done by others,” did not bother to answer, while the judge did his work.
The police, despite the seriousness of the case, only asked for two days to complete the interrogation. The judge stated that the suspect, due to the security situation, posed a danger to public peace by his very existence and presence among us. Finally, the judge extended his detention by one day.
When we left the court, we met a lawyer rushing to his day’s work. He proudly told us that he also defended a guy who was accused of posting on Facebook but managed to convince the court to release him. According to him, his client was held with security detainees in Megiddo prison. After the release order came, the guards took him to a separate room and took turns beating him badly. “He who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.” (Psalms, chapter 121, verse 4)
I looked up in Wikipedia (in Hebrew) the background of the verse from the Book of Amos at the top of this story. It explained:
“In the book of Amos, chapter 5, the prophet laments Israel, who do not walk in the ways of God, pervert the justice in their courts, support the strong, but trample and plunder the weak, despise the words of the prophet and the reprover, and forget the greatness and power of God. Therefore, God will punish them personally, so that they will not be able to enjoy the wealth and prosperity that they have accumulated in corrupt ways. The prophet summarizes this section of the prophecy with the phrase in question: ‘Therefore, the prudent keep quiet in such times, for the times are evil’.”
Haifa, October 23, 2023
(This post was originally published in Hebrew in my Haifa Ha-Hofshit blog. At Mondoweiss’s request, I translated it to English.)
Notes
1. “Matfash” is the Hebrew acronym for “The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT).” I use the term Matfash because it is the way it is called in Israeli-Speak, where military acronyms are a natural part of daily language. I also find this acronym ugly, so I think it is well expressing the designed content.
2. I used the term “illegally present” for the very common Hebrew term “Shabah” (שב”ח), a very special acronym for people from the 1967 occupied territory that are present in ’48 Palestine without special permit from the Matfash. Google translates it to “Illegal resident,” but I think it misses the point. Being Shabah is a special kind of Human Existence, which allows you to be arrested or even shot at from the moment that you cross one of those Apartheid walls, usually while looking for some work to feed your family, so it has nothing to do with residency. In Hebrew Wikipedia, there is a long page about it, explaining from the occupation’s point of view. Unfortunately, this important term has not yet been investigated by world public opinion.
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