“Jews and Arabs, we will get through this together.”

acemuzzy wrote:

“Jews and Arabs, we will get through this together.”

That's enough to get you started in Israel, it seems

Two activists from a Jewish-Arab peace movement were recently detained in Israel for putting up posters with a message that the police deemed to be offensive. The message was: “Jews and Arabs, we will get through this together.”

The activists, members of Standing Together, had their posters confiscated, as well as T-shirts printed with peace slogans in Hebrew and Arabic.

It was not an isolated incident. Across Israel, people are being detained, fired from their jobs, and even attacked for expressing sentiments interpreted by some as showing sympathy for Hamas after the group’s murderous attack on 7 October. The definition of pro-Hamas is often widened to include expressions of sympathy for the plight of Palestinian children trapped in Gaza, or calls for peace, especially if expressed in both Arabic and Hebrew.

Last week, after 15 years of service at a Petah Tikva hospital, its director of the cardiac intensive care unit was suspended from his position.

Abed Samara’s apparent offence was his profile picture on social media – a dove carrying an olive twig and a green flag emblazoned with the shahada, the Muslim declaration of faith: “There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet.” He had adopted the picture last year, long before the Hamas attack, but it was nevertheless seen as somehow voicing support for the outrage.