+972 publishes a call by 200 Israeli academics to release Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour from house arrest:
On October 11, 2015, Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour was arrested by Israeli police during a night raid on her home in the village Al-Reineh, near Nazareth. On November 2, 2015, an Israeli court indicted her for incitement to violence. At the center of the indictment was a poem Tatour wrote in protest of the killing of Muhammad Abu Khdeir, Hadeel al-Shalamon, and members of the Dawabshe family in Duma. The indictment cites the full translation of the song, which was edited by an officer who has no prior experience in translation or poetry. Even according to the translation — which is fully of inaccuracies, most of them giving the poem an extremist tone — there is a call to resist the occupation, but there is no incitement to violence.
Previously, +972 reported about the story:
The main clause of her indictment was based on a poem that she had allegedly posted on YouTube under the title: “Qawem ya sha’abi, qawemhum” (Resist my people, resist them). Another main clause in the indictment relates to a news item, cited in a post on Tatour’s Facebook page, according to which “The Islamic Jihad movement calls for continuing the Intifada all over the [West] Bank…” The same post calls for a “comprehensive intifada.”
Their initial post about the arrest likewise didn’t actually quote the poem, nor linked to her Facebook page, allowing people to verify the facts for themselves. Instead, +972 claimed that the translation of the poem was incorrect – without saying what the actual translation was.
However, an accurate translation of her poem is available, translated by an Arab poet. I published excerpts in August, but the +972 editors could have found it months beforehand.
And her poem called for ethnically cleansing Jews from the Jewish homeland:
I cast them aside for a coming time.Resist, my people, resist them.Resist the settler’s robberyAnd follow the caravan of martyrs.
Resist, my people, resist them.Resist, my people, resist them.
Whether she explicitly advocated violence in the words of the poem are debatable. But the the video that she created to publicize the poem includes numerous romantic scenes of Palestinians throwing rocks and setting fires – you know, violence:
It is reasonable to question whether Tatour should be arrested for her poetry advocating ethnic cleansing and her video making it clear that she supports violence. But her supporters who claim that she did neither are doing everything they can to stop people from finding out the truth on their own about what she wrote.
If they are so supportive of Tatour, they should not fear publicizing her words.
Clearly, the +972 editors and Tatour’s other defenders at Mondoweiss, Salon, Jewish Voice for Peace and elsewhere want to ensure that their readers only see their own pre-digested version of the truth, and not reality.
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