Palestine and press freedom advocates on Thursday demanded the immediate release of journalist and activist Abed Abu Shehadeh, a Palestinian citizen of Israel who was arrested during a Tuesday raid on his home, with critics calling his detention part of a “campaign to silence” critical reporting and dissent.
Abu Shehadeh, 38, was arrested by a group of 15 Israeli police officers and agents from the internal intelligence agency Shin Bet, some of them masked, who stormed his family’s home in Jaffa and seized him in front of his wife and two children, according to The New Arab.
The arrest of the prominent Arabic-language journalist, podcast host, and political activist was reportedly connected to an interview he conducted with Palestinian intellectual and former Knesset member Azmi Bishara, the exiled leader of the Balad party, which advocates for Israel to become a nation of all its citizens rather than what critics, including the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, describe as a Jewish supremacist apartheid state.
Bishara fled Israel in 2007 and is accused of helping Hezbollah during Israel’s 2006 war on Lebanon. Israeli authorities suspect him of being a foreign agent.
On Wednesday, the Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court prolonged Abu Shehadeh’s detention after police sought an eight-day extension on suspicion of “contact with a foreign agent.”
According to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ):
During the court hearing, a police representative initially acknowledged that Abu Shehadeh was a journalist, but after a recess she retracted this statement and instead said he is a political adviser. The defense objected to this new description and asked whether there was evidence that the meeting went beyond recording a podcast interview or contained information not available to the public.
Adalah, also called the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, noted Thursday:
The legal team representing Abu Shehadeh claimed that there was no justification for holding him in detention. The interview, which dealt with the Israeli election campaign, was widely published and available to all… The mere criminal investigation for a media interview is a serious violation of freedom of expression and freedom of the press, and his detention is completely arbitrary.
Abu Shehadeh’s arrest sparked accusations that Israeli authorities are using national security allegations to intimidate Palestinian journalists and suppress political expression.
“Arrest for an interview is not a legitimate criminal procedure, but a tool for political silencing,” Adalah civil and political rights attorney Hadeel Abu Salih said Thursday in a statement. "The police are asking to send a message to the entire Arab public: Even a public conversation with a political figure can lead you to the detention cell. Abu Shehadeh must be released immediately.”
Abu Salih told The New Arab that police illegally arrested Abu Shehadeh, lacking a court order for the apprehension and prosecutorial permission to interrogate.
“We cannot disconnect this arrest from the attack on the free speech of Palestinians of Israel since 7 October,” she said, citing over 1,000 arrests for speech-related “offenses” in the years since the Hamas-led attack on Israel.
“This is not a criminal investigation, it is a campaign to silence Palestinian journalists and political activists,” Abu Salih added.
CPJ regional director Sara Qudah said Thursday: "Journalists should not be punished for platforming views critical of the state. We demand the immediate unconditional release of Abu Shehadeh, the dropping of all charges against him, and an explanation of why he was targeted in what some have described as a political campaign.”
Adalah further called Abu Shehadeh’s arrest “part of a broad pattern of arrests and investigations [of] Palestinian citizens in Israel due to political statements” that’s “worsened” following last week’s Israeli elections.
The editors of the progressive US magazine Jewish Currents (JC) wrote Wednesday that “Abu Shehadeh’s imprisonment comes amid a targeted campaign of repression against Palestinian citizens of Israel in the wake of the electoral gains made by Palestinian parties in last week’s elections.”
“Spearheaded by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Shin Bet chief David Zini, this campaign follows years of systematic targeting, silencing, and killing of Palestinian journalists,” JC continued, referring to Gaza, where at least 200 media professionals are among the more than 74,000 Palestinians, including upward of 21,500 children, killed during Israel’s three-year genocide.
“These attacks reflect the Israeli state’s effort to ensure Jewish supremacy and silence the work of those reporting on its human rights abuses,” the JC editors added.
Balad leader Sami Abu Shehadeh, who is the journalist’s cousin, told The New Arab “Netanyahu and Zini are escalating their efforts to steal the election,” calling his relative’s detention “part of a broader campaign of arrests, interrogations, and threats against political activists designed to undermine the election results through the weaponization of the police and the Shin Bet.”
The JC editors wrote that, as a media outlet, it “generally refrains from encouraging our readers and allies to take specific action.”
“But as journalists in community with Abed Abu Shehadeh,” they added, “we call on elected officials and others in the US government to demand his immediate release.”
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