Palestinian books matter

“In a place where books are burned, people will eventually be burned as well,” wrote the 19th-century German poet Heinrich Heine. This is not just an antiquated and obsolete saying from the distant past; it is quickly becoming our reality in 2025.

On Sunday, Israeli police raided the two Educational Bookshop stores in East Jerusalem, ripping, vandalizing, and confiscating books and arresting owners Mahmoud Muna and his nephew Ahmad. This was not a random, rogue act. It was carried out by court order under the pretext of “suspicion of disturbing public order.”

The two bookstores on Salah al-Din Street are long-standing, respected cultural institutions, part of the public order in Jerusalem, not its violation. The police officers who broke into the stores are the ones who violated and trampled not only the order but also morality and the basic democratic values of freedom of opinion and thought.

We know what happened in Heinrich Heine’s homeland a hundred years after he made that prophetic statement, but we don’t need comparisons to the Nazi era to understand the significance of the event that took place in Jerusalem on Sunday. 

On the surface, it was a small event: two people were detained overnight, some books were damaged, and others were confiscated. But in reality, it was a crossing of the Rubicon, from a flawed democracy to a budding dictatorship that fights against any hint of critical thinking.

The Educational Bookshop on Salah al-Din Street has been a pilgrimage site for years for anyone, including myself, interested in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The books in the store, in Arabic and English, tell the story of the land, the Palestinian nation, and the conflict. The café on the upper floor serves not only as a place to sip coffee in an international atmosphere but also as a hub for enlightening lectures by writers and academics, Palestinians, Israelis, and foreigners.

It is a place of spirit, thought, and knowledge. And perhaps that is what scares the police and their superiors the most. On the other side, there are those who seek to present arguments, tell a historical story, engage in the expansion of knowledge and thought, and not in its limitation to the narrative they accept.

It is time we acknowledge that Israeli society is shedding all the democratic mechanisms that have protected it over the years. Normalizing the discourse of transfer, which was once taboo, is one expression. Turning a blind eye to the suffering of citizens and children, stripping them of their humanity, is another expression. 

The raid on the bookstore, whose owners’ only “sin” was their desire to offer readers perspectives different from those presented in the Israeli education system, is a continuation of that process, an escalation in the state’s struggle against the very ability to mention a narrative that does not align with the Israeli “consensus.”

On October 7, 2023, the inhuman Hamas militants murdered, raped, and kidnapped. They committed acts that can never be forgiven or pardoned. It is reprehensible that the Minister of National Security and other leaders are capitalizing on the immeasurable pain and suffering of those affected by that tragic day to prosecute an endless war. Ben-Gvir’s criminal and racist spirit casts a sinister shadow over law enforcement, and the prime minister’s desire to cling to power, even without public support, is rapidly turning Israel into a darker and darker place.

We must not continue as if nothing is happening. Without the possibility of critical thinking, without dialogue between narratives, without freedom of thought and opinion, our democracy will be deprived of the oxygen it needs to survive. 

The Educational Bookstore stores are truly a gem of knowledge and tranquility in Jerusalem. Now is the time to visit them and send a message to the police that the public in Israel will not allow them to stifle freedom of thought and opinion, will not allow them to burn books, and will not allow democracy to die.