Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court Judge Chavi Toker approved the warrant for the raid on the bookshop despite the fact that the Police never sought permission from the prosecution, which is required by law to open an investigation into suspected incitement.

Hence at the bail hearing they changed their suspicions to “undermining the public’s safety” The most damning evidence they produced was a colouring book for children “From the River to the Sea,”

Although another Magistrate’s Court judge, Gad Ehrenberg, rejected the police’s request to keep Mahmoud and Ahmed Muna in gaol for 8 days he decided to keep them in jail for another day so police could continue their investigation. This despite the illegality of the whole operation.

Jerusalem District Court Judge Eli Abravanel reprimanded the police for not obtaining permission to open an incitement investigation, but still allowed the decision to keep the two men in gaol for 2 days. After all they are Palestinians, so what is there to complain of?

Protesters outside court in Jerusalem on Monday. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian

Ha’aretz, which the Police also took exception to, commented in an editorial:

Due to the police’s aggressive and undemocratic behavior and the judges’ cowardice or naïveté, Mahmoud and Ahmed Muna spent two nights in jail. This is even more absurd given the fact, which emerged following their release on Tuesday, that the police never even bothered questioning them again, despite keeping them in jail.

The bookshop however isn’t an anonymous back street shop.

There is no diplomat, journalist or scholar of Jerusalem who isn’t familiar with the store and its intellectual treasures. Evidence of this is the fact that the bail hearing at the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court was attended by diplomats from nine countries, plus the European Union.

Mahmoud Muna inside a branch of the Educational Bookshop chain in July 2024. Photograph: Sally Hayden/SOPA Images/Shutterstock

Ha’aretz’s editorial observed that

The raid and the arrests show how deeply the rot has propagated within the police and the legal system. Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara must tell the police that their behavior was illegal, and that if they want to open an incitement investigation, they can find thousands of calls for mass murder, obliterating the Gaza Strip, starvation and many other incitements for war crimes on social media, in interviews with politicians and in rabbis’ sermons.

Which entirely misses the point of course. Incitement to violence and death against Palestinians is not a crime [under apartheid] but any manifestation of Palestinian identity, culture or history is a crime. That is why Israel today is a fully-fledge police state as far as Palestinians are concerned, even for those who are Israeli citizens.