PALESTINE | FREE SPEECH

“Did I say Bookstores Blown Up”

Israeli Raid on the iconic Educational Bookshop in Jerusalem

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Last night, the Israeli occupation forces raided the family-owned Educational Bookshop in Jerusalem, arresting the brothers Ahmad and Mahmoud Muna. I stand in total solidarity with the owners of the bookshop and demand their immediate release. This raid on a bookstore is an unacceptable attack on free speech.

The Educational Bookshop on Salah al-Din Street in Jerusalem (Screen capture from bookstore promotional video, with permission)

Founded in 1984, the Bookshop has become an icon in East Jerusalem, offering a superb selection of English and Arabic language books that are difficult to find elsewhere in occupied Palestine. I have been frequenting it since I was a teenager, way back in 1988, during the First Intifada. As “collective punishment”, Israel had closed all the schools in the West Bank and Gaza for months at a time. Many of us therefore resorted to independent study. It was to the Educational Bookshop on Salah al-Din St. that my brother took me to buy the books to prepare for the GCE exam.

The Arabic-language part of the Educational Bookshop is right across Salah al-Din Street in Jerusalem (Photo by the author, Sep. 2023)

The Bookshop houses the Jerusalem Literary Salon, where many book talks are held (Photo by the author, Sep. 2023)

Last night’s raid follows a long tradition of Israeli repression of education and speech for Palestinians under occupation: shutting down schools for extended periods, censoring books and newspapers, and more. I write in Fugitive Dreams about my shock at returning from the US in 1990 to find another favorite bookstore — al-Quds Bookstore in Ramallah — demolished.

Occupied WEST BANK: My 10th-grade Arabic Literature textbook from 1987, issued by Jordan, and stamped (in Hebrew and Arabic) by the inspector of the “civil administration of Judea and Samaria [sic]”. Pages are missing, corresponding to poems and stories by Palestinian authors like Mahmoud Darwish and Ghassan Kanafani (Photo by the author)

“Seeking the latest mysteries of The Five Adventurers before the summer was over, I was happily on my way down Main Street to al-Quds bookstore, when a vacant absence confronted me in its place. Demolished! Found only rubble in the corner on Main Street where it stood, the wall of the neighboring store shorn bare…