Two branches of the Educational Bookshop, renowned in Palestine for being a safe cultural and literary haven, are raided by Israeli plain-clothed officers.
For forty years, the Educational Bookshop, owned by the Muna family, has been a safe haven amid the intimidation and ethnic cleansing elsewhere in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Every Palestinian in the city knows its shops. They use the cafe above the shop in Salahuddin street, close to Jerusalem’s Old City, as a meeting place.
The shops are a Palestinian national institution and an enduring symbol of Palestine’s literary and political establishment. Police officers ransacked two branches of the Educational Bookshop on Sunday afternoon, using Google Translate to examine the stock, then detaining Mahmoud Muna, 41, and his nephew Ahmed Muna, 33, on suspicion of “violating public order”.
Police cited a single children’s colouring book as evidence of incitement to terrorism, although CCTV footage showed them filling several black bin bags with books to carry away during the raid. On Monday a magistrate ordered another night’s detention and five days of house arrest for the two men. Police said they had seized eight books and needed time to investigate further, including reading the books. The assault on the Educational Bookshop is part of a longstanding pattern of Israeli attempts to erase Palestinian national identity by closing organisations central to the intellectual and cultural life of East Jerusalem, which Israel has occupied since 1967.
Five years ago, Israeli forces raided the Yabous Cultural Centre and The Edward Said National Conservatory of Music, confiscating documents and equipment and accusing them of “funding terror”.
Israel is also attempting to close down Al Hakawati, otherwise known as the Palestinian National Theatre. Three years ago, Palestinian schools in East Jerusalem went on strike in reaction to an attempt by the Israeli-run Jerusalem municipality to censor Palestinian textbooks and introduce an Israeli curriculum in classrooms.
Meanwhile, right-wing Israeli activists are at work attempting to erase Arabic from street signs in Jerusalem.
The shop supplies books by Israelis as well as Palestinian authors. Many of the books on display come from the traditional English literary canon.
One of the bookshop’s branches is located in the courtyard of the American Colony Hotel, a favoured watering hole for diplomats, journalists and spies.
On Monday morning, Husam Zomlot, the Palestinian ambassador to the UK, condemned the arrests of Mahmoud and Ahmad Muna, defining the raids as a “stark reminder of the ongoing campaign to censor knowledge, stifle free speech and information that challenges Israel’s occupation of Palestine”.
Steffen Seibert, former German ambassador to Israel, posted on X that the Muna family are “peace-loving proud Palestinian Jerusalemites open for discussion and intellectual exchange”.
Mahmoud Muna had recently published Daybreak in Gaza, co-edited with Matthew Teller.
