More than 400 Israelis, mostly Arabs, arrested in Israel’s online crackdown: Report

ISTANBUL

Israeli authorities have arrested more than 400 people, primarily Arab citizens, in a sweeping crackdown on online activity deemed to incite or support Hamas in the months following the Oct. 7 attack by the Palestinian resistance group.

Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Rights in Israel, said around 190 of those detained remain in custody as legal proceedings drag on. Many are held in harsh conditions in Israel’s penal system, as reported by the Drop Site news site.

The arrests followed changes in Israeli law that allow police “to open investigations into 524 social media posts” without needing approval from prosecutors, Drop Site added, citing data by the media watchdog organization, Shomrim.

Among those detained is Yarmuk Zuabi, a restaurant owner from Nazareth.

Zuabi was arrested in October after changing “his profile picture on WhatsApp to a Palestinian flag” and posting a “cartoon” criticizing the international response to conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine.

“This isn’t a democracy. It’s nothing. We’re being muzzled,” Zuabi said in an interview with Shomrim, said the news site.

Despite being released by the court, Zuabi admits the arrest has left him cautious, fearing further repercussions.

“There is just one reason that I am careful now: because at home, my wife and my two children ask me why I need this headache,” he said. “They don’t want me to go through all that again. So, yes, I am cautious.”

Shomrim reported that by May, “the state prosecutor had allowed police to open investigations into 524 social media posts” although this number likely underestimates the true scale of the crackdown. Other prosecutions and police-initiated investigations remain outside official records.

“Other prosecutions that have been reported publicly, but don’t appear on Shormin’s list,” according to the report.

B’Tselem, Israel’s leading human rights group, recently released a report detailing widespread abuses in the country’s detention system.

The report, Welcome to Hell, includes testimonies from Israelis and Palestinians detained for social media activity.

One harrowing account from a university student, identified as I.A., 20, describes her experience being detained, humiliated and strip-searched after posting on Instagram.

“Everything was disturbing, insulting, and degrading. They did everything in the most offensive way possible,” she noted in the report.

Flouting a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire, Israel has faced international condemnation amid its continued brutal offensive on Gaza since the Oct. 7, attack by Hamas.

The Israeli onslaught has since killed more than 40,000 people, mostly women and children, and injured over 92,400, according to local health authorities.

More than 10 months into the Israeli assault, vast tracts of Gaza lie in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which ordered it to immediately halt its military operation in the southern city of Rafah, where more than a million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.