2023-10-24 16:37:47
by Francesco Battistini
Maisa Abd Elhadi was stopped by the police for expressing support for Hamas on social media. Another influencer ended up in prison with her. And the Israeli government is thinking of suspending Al Jazeera
FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
JERUSALEM – Gaza mon amour. When his film on the Strip was presented in Venice, the first to enthusiastically review it was Felestine News, a Hamas newspaper printed and sold in Gaza. On the front page, the photo of the leader Ismail Haniyeh, just below a headline on “Gaza mon amour” and the applause for Maisa Abd Elhadi, star of Israeli Arab cinema.
Three years after the love for Gaza, and much less for Israel, betrayed Maisa: the actress-singer-influencer was arrested on Monday for a series of posts published on social media. Messages suitable for creating a climate of hatred and inciting violence, the police established. Maisa was handcuffed in her home in Nazareth and brought before a judge: she managed to post one last photo, her indignant gaze behind her a pair of eyeglasses, her wrists tied and an Israeli flag on her head .
Another influencer, Dalal Abu Amneh, also ended up in the barracks with her: according to investigators, Maisa was inspired by her thoughts. All it takes is one emoji to get into trouble. She too because she is the actress known for her political positions: in 2021, in Haifa, she was injured in some clashes with the police while she demonstrated against the expulsion of the Palestinians from the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. Maisa had long been under the scrutiny of the NCRI (National Contageon Research Institute) and the Cam (Combat Antisemitism Movement) who have been monitoring suspicious messages for years.
The climate that was created in Israel after the October 7 massacre has rekindled attention on everything that glorifies Arab violence. And so, now the actress is accused of having thrown several stones in her personal web intifada: the photo of an Israeli woman taken hostage and, below her, the emoji of a laughing face; “heroic” sequences of Hamas terrorists climbing over the Gaza barrier; a fence in the Strip was broken down during the attack and under the incitement “carry on like this, Berlin style!”, with reference to the Wall torn down in 1989… I’m ashamed of you!, another Israeli actor, Ofer Schechter, messaged her, his co-star in “Temporarily Dead”, a very popular TV series: Live in Nazareth. Be an actress in our shows. And then you stab us in the back.
Maisa is 37 years old and considered a rising star: her part in “The Angel” had some success on Netflix; “Personal Affairs”, another film by her, received great praise at Cannes; the same for “Tel Aviv in flames”, a war humor award-winning at the Mostra del Lido. No more joking. The post-September-October period is post-September 11th, as hard and inflexible as it was in America.
In Israel there are already 246 cases of “hate speech” reported, similar to that of Maisa, with 118 investigations already finished before a judge and one hundred confirmed arrests. Only three months ago, the Knesset established a task force to study online anti-Semitism, which grew during Covid, and since 2020 an interparliamentary commission linked to the American, English, Canadian and Australian parliaments has been operating. The most quoted phrase is that of Elie Wiesel: The Holocaust did not begin in the gas chambers, but in words. And the debate (in some cases, the furor) over the “anti-Israeli” voices is only just beginning, infecting all strata of society.
A traditionally liberal and left-wing newspaper, like Time, asks itself on a full page: “Should it be appropriate to close the Israeli bureau of Al Jazeera?”. A question already heard, regarding the reports of the Qatari broadcaster, at the time of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Arab Spring and the Palestinian intifadas. “More than in the past – writes Time -, it seems that in this war Hamas is using Al Jazeera as an information channel for viewers. And the network transmits the organization’s messages without asking any doubts or asking the questions expected of its journalists.”
The newspaper only anticipates what will happen: last weekend, the Netanyahu government approved some measures that will probably lead to the suspension of Israeli Al Jazeera. A bit like what happened in 2002, when the Emirati networks were expelled from the country for their “inflammatory services”. Or in 2014, with Qatar TV accused of propaganda and representing only the Palestinian point of view. Israel’s signal is clear: laughing faces and prime time faces, that’s enough.
October 24, 2023 (modified October 24, 2023 | 4:34 pm)
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