The eclectic crowd that frequents the three Educational Bookshop stores in east Jerusalem, and prides itself on open-mindedness and understanding through discourse, was shocked when the store’s co-owners were arrested earlier this week.
Far from remaining a local security issue, the event has become the subject of international attention.
The Wall Street Journal, for example, headlined a February 10 report: “Israeli Police cite ‘River to the Sea’ coloring book after raiding Palestinian book stores.”
“Israeli police raided two popular bookstores in east Jerusalem, carted away dozens of books, and detained two employees in a move they said was aimed at stopping incitement but which raised concerns about threats to Palestinian freedom of expression and Israel’s values.”
The BBC, which loves a good Israel-bashing story, ran with the more inflammatory “Anger over Israel’s arrest of east Jerusalem bookshop owners.” The report went on to say that the arrest and subsequent detention of Mahmoud Muna and his nephew Ahmad had shocked many in the city’s “cultural, journalistic, and diplomatic communities,” who considered it “heavy-handed and unjustified.”
It may well have been heavy-handed.
And it may well have been a blow to “Palestinian freedom of expression” – if that freedom is the permission to call for Israel’s destruction.
Stopping the spread of enemy propaganda
The police’s modus operandi left much to be desired, especially at a time when strengthening the national ethos is crucial – as much with our permanent resident fellow city dwellers in east Jerusalem as with Israeli nationals – with both groups benefiting from the Jewish state’s health services and government-funded educational institutions.
Nevertheless, since the Oct. 7, 2023, mega-atrocity by Hamas, and the betrayal by Gaza residents of its Israeli border community friendships, Israel’s tolerance for incitement has decreased, despite all its humanitarian and free speech values.
It is finally beginning to crack down on incitement, notably in the shuttering of Al Jazeera, which even the Palestinian Authority has suspended in the West Bank over incitement.
UNDERSTANDING THE legal processes of the sudden arrests of the owners of two well-known branches of the Educational Bookshop – an event that has sent shock waves across the world – would require having more information on the charges brought by Israel Police against Mahmoud and Ahmad Muna.
Doubtless, the Educational Bookshop is all the fine things that its devotees admire and enjoy about it.
However, in times of war, enemy propaganda cannot be allowed to circulate freely. It should therefore be of great concern that in Israel’s capital, material encouraging incitement is readily available.
The coloring book, published in South Africa, is aimed at teaching the meaning of Palestinian nationhood to young children. It illustrates the Nakba (“Catastrophe Day,” the term Palestinians use to describe the 1948 War of Independence), as well as the First and Second Intifadas against Israel, and introduces the symbolic Dome of the Rock. The book depicts children throwing rocks at the IDF, and Palestinian activist-symbol Ahed Tamimi as examples for children to emulate.
Tamimi served eight months in an Israeli jail. In November 2024, she was rearrested for her connection to an Instagram post calling for the massacre of Israeli settlers in the West Bank. She was released on November 29 as part of an exchange deal between Israel and Hamas.
Such starter material as From the River to the Sea: A Coloring Book has inculcated in the children of Gaza the values of terrorism via UNRWA textbooks and others. This system of the miseducation of many generations of Palestinians in the service of violence has been allowed to flourish in Israel’s system of tolerance of terrorism.
The name of the coloring book familiarizes children with the now international genocidal chant “From the river to the sea” as early as coloring-book age. Soon, they will come to understand that for “Palestine” to exist, Israel must be eliminated.
As it turns out, the Educational Bookshop doesn’t only sell books with the Palestinian flag on the cover, the word “Palestine” in the name, or those authored by Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappe, or Ari Shavit.
Or even From the River to the Sea: A Coloring Book.
For sale on the Educational Bookshop’s website is the inciteful book Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within. Its online blurb accuses the Jewish state of the Palestinian tropes: “mass deportation,” “population transfers,” and “ethnic cleansing,” as well as of perpetrating “apartheid cruelty.”
One wonders whether this book was among those confiscated by Israel Police on the day of the arrests. If not, does it make it any less dangerous in wartime to traffic in enemy propaganda online only?
One also hopes that the issues surrounding the Educational Bookshop are soon resolved and that it continues to be the hub of multiculturalism for which it is famous.