Police raid leading Palestinian bookstore in East Jerusalem for 2nd time in a month
Cops take the keys to the Educational Bookshop, seize several books and briefly detain 61-year-old owner without a warrant
Police raided a leading Palestinian bookstore in East Jerusalem for the second time within a month on Monday, briefly detaining one of the owners and seizing several books.
Officers detained 61-year-old Imad Muna, who manages the family-run Educational Bookshop, at around noon. He told reporters shortly after his release that police took the keys to the shop, scoured its shelves, then proceeded to arrest him without a warrant.
Law enforcement sparked international outcry for a similar raid in February on two of the store’s locations, in which officers arrested Imad’s son and his younger brother, Ahmad and Mahmoud Muna, and held both in detention for two days.
Though they were granted a search warrant in February, police had not received approval from the State Attorney’s Office to investigate the booksellers for incitement, Haaretz reported at the time.
Police said they conducted Monday’s raid after receiving a complaint from a caller who alleged he saw “books containing inciting content” while browsing the shelves of the store’s branch on Salah a-Din Street, which caters to English-speaking readers.
“They all came as if it was the biggest emergency ever,” recounted Imad’s son Ahmad Muna. “There were students coming out of the school across the street, buses waiting for the students to pick them up, and they just closed the whole road.”
A total of 10 police officers — four in uniform, six in plainclothes — partook in the raid, he added.
Imad said that police confiscated some 40 books to bring to the station where he was detained for questioning. Most of the books police examined displayed the words “Palestine,” “Palestinians” or “Gaza” on their covers.
Among them were works by left-wing linguist Noam Chomsky, historian Rashid Khalidi and late communist Knesset member Emil Habibi. Police released the bookseller later that afternoon along with most of the confiscated books, save for three titles that police did not name.
Imad recalled the title of only one of the seized books, “Israel and the Clash of Civilizations” by British journalist Jonathan Cook.
Police said that they are reviewing the books and weighing whether to “refer the matter to the State Attorney’s Office for further investigation into the suspected sale of inciting materials.”
“We take very good care in selecting our titles,” said Ahmad. “We go through book reviews… see who the authors are, see who the publishers are, before we put them on our shelves.”
He expressed doubt that the police searching knew English or Arabic, as was the case in February. “Last month they used Google Translate, today they [also] used Google Translate,” he said.
Specializing in books related to Palestinian identity and the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Educational Bookshop has been a fixture in East Jerusalem for around 40 years, but has only recently came under fire from law enforcement.
Police’s first raid on the bookshop prompted widespread condemnation from diplomats and figures in Jerusalem’s cultural scene.
In February, diplomats representing eight countries showed up to a hearing to extend Mahmoud and Ahmad Muna’s detention at the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court.
Steffen Seibert, Germany’s ambassador to Israel, criticized Monday’s search in a post on X. “What purpose does it serve to keep detaining Palestinian booksellers who are the embodiment of peaceful dialogue?” he wrote.
Asked why he thought the raids only began this year, Mahmoud speculated that police feel they have a “free hand… particularly because of its leadership,” alluding to ex-national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir, a far-right firebrand who has sought to remake the force in his image.
The bookseller had plans to be en route to the UK that afternoon, he told reporters, before the arrest of his brother. “I was on my way to the London Book Fair,” he said. “My flight is in five minutes.”
