JERUSALEM — For years, the Palestinian-owned Educational Bookshop in east Jerusalem has been a rare island of dialogue in an increasingly divided city, but an Israeli police raid on the store this week has sparked fears about the suppression of free speech.
While the well-known store and its smaller branch across the street were open Tuesday, the bust saw detectives confiscate books in trash bags and arrest two members of the owner’s family. The incident has raised broader concerns about the status of shared places where Israelis and Palestinians can peacefully come together and debate.
“I, like many diplomats, enjoy browsing for books at Educational Bookshop. I know its owners, the Muna family, to be peace-loving proud Palestinian Jerusalemites, open for discussion and intellectual exchange,” Steffen Seibert, Germany’s ambassador to Israel, said in a post on X.
“I am concerned to hear of the raid and their detention in prison,” he added.
The store, founded on Salah al-Din Street in 1984 by the Muna family, sells books in many languages that largely focus on the Middle East and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and has long been known in the area as an intellectual oasis where readers from across the political divide can share ideas.
Security footage from Sunday afternoon that the Muna family shared with NBC News showed plainclothes officers rifling through books and taking away some of them in garbage bags.
During the raid on the predominantly English-language store, officers also arrested the manager, Mahmoud Muna, and his nephew Ahmad. Both have since been released.
Mahmoud’s brother, Morad, said that the police had taken books with a Palestinian flag or icon printed on them and that they used Google Translate to help understand what the material was saying.
“In our book, anyone from any religion, from any side, can say his opinion without being afraid. He can discuss any kind of thing,” he said.
“In the west side of Jerusalem, there are English bookstores that have the same books that we have, and you will never hear that they arrested the owners,” he added.
A spokesperson from the Israeli police said that the two were arrested on suspicion of “selling books containing incitement and support for terrorism at bookstores in Jerusalem.”
Police added that the detectives had confiscated from the store “numerous books containing inciteful material,” pointing to the children’s coloring book titled “From the River to the Sea,” written by South African author Nathi Ngubane, as one example. The police added that they had also raided a bookshop in Jerusalem’s Old City last week, which had material supporting Hamas, Hezbollah and the Islamic State group.
The title of the coloring book is also a pro-Palestinian slogan often used at protests against Israel and refers to the geographical area between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea that encompasses Israel and the Palestinian territories.
The American Jewish Committee says on its website that the slogan “can be used to call for the elimination of the State of Israel and/or ethnic cleansing of Jews living there,” while the South Africa Jewish Board of Deputies protested the publication of the book when it was initially released.
Wasim Khalis, who owns a clothing store next door to Educational Bookshop, said he had been drinking coffee in the bookstore around 3 p.m. local time when four plainclothes officers entered. After a few minutes, he said, the officers flashed a warrant and asked customers to leave, while a second group of officers went across the street to another store owned by the family.
“It was very strange,” he said. “This isn’t a new store; it has been here for decades. They took items that were very normal and could be found anywhere, including on the internet.”
Some 10 diplomats including those from the European Union and the United Kingdom sat in on a debate Monday on the Munas’ release date at Jerusalem’s District Court. Meanwhile, supporters of the Educational Bookstore wrote about their alarm at the raid online, with a smaller number gathering outside the courthouse.
“We fear that the raid on the store, the confiscation of books from it, and the imprisonment of its owner under the pretext of ‘violating public order’ is a regime provocation designed to erase the Palestinian cultural narrative and harass those involved in it,” Israeli author Ilan Sheinfeld said in a post on X.
One of the in-person protesters was Galit Samuel, an Israeli patron who had traveled from Tel Aviv to be there. She said of the Munas that “they are both men of peace, and they are promoting Palestinian culture in peaceful ways.”
“It’s unimaginable that such people were arrested and books were confiscated,” she added. “It’s a grave attack on free speech and free thinking.”
