Israeli police raided two Palestinian bookstores in occupied east Jerusalem on Sunday, confiscating books and arresting one of the owners and his nephew, according to their family members. CCTV footage shared by the owners, four brothers from the Muna family, shows police officers putting books in trash bags at one of the branches of the Educational Bookshop, a decades-old respected institution with Arabic- and English-language branches.“They did throw some books on the ground but the Arabic (language) store is where the material damage was,” store owner Iyad Muna told CNN.
The Jerusalem police on Monday raided two well-known bookstores in east Jerusalem, confiscated three trash bags’ worth of books, and arrested two of the owners: Ahmad Muna and his uncle, Mahmoud. Overnight, this became the latest cause célèbre of the Left. And Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur for Palestinian Territories, declared she was “shocked by the raid” against “an intellectual lighthouse and family-run gem resisting Palestinian erasure under apartheid.” We don’t know what the police were looking for, nor what they found. We do know, however, that the Jerusalem Magistrates Court ordered the two suspects remanded in custody for two nights, followed by five days of house arrest – a sign that the raids and arrests were not without probable cause, even though no charges have yet been filed.
Israeli police raided two branches of a landmark bookstore in east Jerusalem on Sunday night, confiscating several dozen books and detaining two of the owners overnight. According to Imad Muna, one of the Educational Bookshop’s proprietors, officers claimed the raid targeted material that incites violence, though he dismissed the allegations as baseless. According to Haaretz, police later revised the allegations, downgrading the charge from incitement to suspicion of disturbing public order and arresting Muna’s brother and son, Mahmoud and Ahmad. The two attended a hearing at Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court on Monday morning and police have requested an eight-day extension of their custody. “It’s a disgrace,” Muna said. “Look where we’ve got to.”
