Mahmoud Muna Launched His New Book At My House. Seven Days Later Israeli Police Arrested Him

In early February, I hosted a book launch in my home in Jerusalem for Mahmoud Muna, author (with Matthew Teller) of Daybreak in Gaza: Stories of Palestinian Lives and Culture, a collection of interviews and stories from Gazans—some from before the war, some since—about Gazan culture, loss and the lives of those whom Mahmoud refers to as “ordinary people.”

The interaction between Mahmoud, the only Palestinian, and the 22 guests, most of them Israeli Jews, was passionate and even mutually hurtful at times. For many of the participants, this was their first meeting with a Palestinian since October 7, 2023. Mahmoud was never defensive or dismissive but never relinquished his own positions, either. At the end of the evening, we shared coffee and cookies and talked about meeting again.

A week later, the police raided two of the three bookstores Mahmoud and his nephew run in East Jerusalem. Known as the Educational Bookshops, they are well-known meeting places for Israelis, Palestinians and foreigners. He and his nephew were arrested for incitement, although it was never clear if this referred to the books they carry or to something else; the charge was later downgraded to disturbing the public order. They were detained for two nights in holding cells only about a mile from my home. Shackled by their hands and feet, they were brought  from the cells to the Jerusalem District Court, which refused the police request to extend their remand for another eight days and instead put them under house arrest for five days. The stores, briefly closed, have been reopened, but Mahmoud and his nephew have been banned from them for three weeks. 

“They used Google Translate on the books, and anything they didn’t like, they took. They took everything that had a Palestinian flag [on the cover],” Mahmoud’s brother Mourad Muna told me when I came to the shop a few hours after the raid. Reportedly, the police seized about eight books, an English edition of the liberal daily Haaretz (which is sold in stores and kiosks throughout Israel), and a children’s coloring book entitled From the River to the Sea.

***

Sitting in my living room a week earlier, Mahmoud, fluent and articulate in English, first thanked the people for coming, noting that Israelis and Palestinians once used to have “great conversations together. We don’t do that much anymore.”

Born in Jerusalem in 1982, he introduced himself by saying, “I am a Palestinian by cultural identity, a Jerusalemite by local identity, a Muslim by religious identity and an Arab by linguistic identity. So what am I? Most of all, I’m a human being.”

Not resisting the opportunity to jab at a journalist, and with a small smile at me, he said that most journalists who come to the region have very few media sources—taxi drivers, flower shop owners, and the Educational Bookshops. “They tell us what we all should be doing here, but they don’t know very much about us at all, especially not about Gaza.”

And yet, before writing his book, he hadn’t known much about Gaza, either. “I’ve never been to Gaza. I never met a Gazan until I went abroad to study. I had the same stereotype as most people—that it’s a big, crowded, poor, unsophisticated society.”

“I started to reach out to friends I knew from my studies. I wanted to know if they were alive and I asked them to talk. Some wanted to talk about the war, but most wanted to talk about life and culture and experiences and love.

“I learned that Gazans, with all the limitations they have faced for so many years, have managed to build and create health systems, sports, music, theatre and literature. They wanted to talk about that, and they wanted to talk about Gaza.

“That place,” he adds, “that U.S. President Donald Trump calls hell.”

Most of the stories in Daybreak in Gaza are from the past year and a half. They weren’t easy to get. One man, he recalls, could only speak to him in the street in the middle of the night, because that was the only time he had cell connection. 

He told us their stories and read a few excerpts. About a physician who had received a grant from Germany to build a cancer research and treatment unit. It was supposed to open on October 23, 2023, but it was bombed. The unit is partially destroyed now, but the doctor hopes to rebuild. About the Armenian community that introduced the art of photography to Gaza generations ago and still have a cache of priceless photographs and the woman of Armenian descent who insisted on digitizing the photographs and sending them out, despite the bombings. About a woman of African descent, who, even though her family has lived in Gaza for generations, experiences racism because of her dark skin.

He then read a passage about a Palestinian writer, 27, who told Mahmoud, “I have many dreams. I’m not a number and I do not consent to my death being passing news. Say, too, that I love life, happiness, children’s love for the sea, coffee, writing and Fairuz (a Lebanese singer). Everything that is joyful…One of my dreams is for my pen to have wings that no passport or visa rejection can hold back…Another is to have a little son who looks like me and to tell him a bedtime story as I rock him in my arms.”

That author, Mahmoud told the group in my living room, was one of the hundreds killed on December 2, 2023, during an Israeli bomb attack.

I swallowed hard, and I could hear and feel the gasps around me, as if something had caught in our collective throats. I wanted Mahmoud to say something to make us feel better, but he was silent. It wasn’t on him to make us feel better. No one should feel better about any of this.

A woman broke the silence. Earlier, she had admitted that she wasn’t sure about coming. “I need to talk about the elephant in the room,” she stated. “What do the people you interviewed, the people in Gaza, think about October 7, about Hamas?”

Mahmoud said that he could not answer for them, because he didn’t ask them. But these are the answers the Israelis in the room wanted. We wanted him to tell us that the Gazans hate Hamas, that they are all sorry for October 7.

He refused to be nice. “I know that Israelis feel like this is all Hamas’s fault,” he responded, “and that Gazans are dying because of Hamas. But for Gazans, the drones and the bombs are killing them, and so they blame Israel.

“But I didn’t ask them about politics. It wasn’t the right question to ask. Not now, and not by me.  They are trying to survive. They don’t have an articulated political view. I only asked them about their lives.”

“But what is the Palestinians’ goal?” another man asked. “What do they want? Will they ever give up their victimization and take responsibility for their own mistakes and for their own futures?”

“Of course the Palestinians should take responsibility,” Mahmoud said. “But shouldn’t the distribution of the responsibility be based on the distribution of the power? That doesn’t mean that the Palestinians have no responsibility, but it does mean that Israel has more.”

The conversation continued—the missiles, the redeployment, the broken promises and October 7 again and again. Eventually, we moved on to talking about the lack of leadership, and the meeting ended in sad agreement. 

By the time the last guest left, it was already quite late, but Mahmoud insisted on staying to help wash the dishes. I insisted in turn he take some of the leftover cookies for his children. 

***

The first Educational Bookshop was founded in 1984 by Mahmoud’s father, Ahmed. Over the years, he added the two more stores on Salah a-Din Street in the central business district of East Jerusalem. The larger of the two has grown into an authentic Jerusalem cultural center, specializing in Arabic- and English-language books about Palestine and the conflict, including books by prominent Israeli authors such as Amos Oz and David Grossman. Here, Mahmoud has regularly hosted foreign diplomats, writers, Israeli, Palestinian and foreign journalists and book lovers from both sides of the conflict looking for conversation and great coffee in the upstairs cafe. This store was ranked by both the Lonely Planet travel guide and the BBC in London as Third Best Bookstore in the Middle East.

After the raid, the police issued a statement, labeling the booksellers inciters and supporters of terror, without providing any evidence. And even though the police had asked to remand them for eight days following the arrest, and even though the court agreed to extend Mahmoud’s and his nephew’s detention by an extra day, the police did not even use that extra day to interrogate them further—indicating, it would seem, that the police themselves had little interest in pursuing the case. 

The raid and arrests led to demonstrations and widespread protests. Dozens of activists and Jerusalem residents gathered at the store to show support. And they bought books in solidarity—Daybreak in Gaza sold out quickly.

Foreign diplomats from the Netherlands, the U.K., Belgium, Brazil, France, Switzerland, Ireland, Sweden and the EU attended the hearing, sitting on benches inside the courthouse. Steffen Seibert, German ambassador to Israel, wrote on social media, “I, like many diplomats, enjoy browsing for books at Educational Bookshop. I know its owners, the Muna family, to be peace-loving, proud Palestinian Jerusalemites, open for discussion and intellectual exchange.” 

An open letter, written in English, Hebrew and Arabic, garnered signatures from some of Israel’s most famous authors, including David Grossman, Etgar Keret, Lea Aini and Gili Bar-Hillel, the Hebrew translator of the Harry Potter series. “We fear that the raid on the store, the confiscation of books from it, and the imprisonment of its owner under the pretext of ‘violating public order’ is a regime provocation, designed to erase the Palestinian cultural narrative and harass those involved in it,” the letter read in part.

***

Since meeting Mahmoud five years ago, I have often visited him at the Educational Bookshop, sipping his mint tea or excellent cappuccino. He’s knowledgeable and opinionated, and it’s not always easy to argue with him. But he’s always willing to engage. Unlike the security forces, I don’t think he is a threat.

Yes, the coloring book From the River to the Sea uses an expression that makes me uncomfortable, because it often refers to a complete erasure of Israel. But attempts to deradicalize Palestinian society through education and efforts to reach peace agreements are likely to bring better results than the silencing.

And as the Jewish people we refer to ourselves as “The People of the Book,” and therefore we should never be raiding bookstores or confiscating books. Our history tells us where that leads. 

Israelis often repeat, almost by rote, that there “is no partner for peace on the other side.”  But Mahmoud is a partner. He’s committed and thoughtful, willing to listen, to sympathize, to criticize and stand up for both Palestinians and Israelis, to look for a peaceful solution to the conflict that will not demand either of us to give up on our identities or rights. So why are the authorities arresting a potential partner like Mahmoud?

In a brief telephone call, while under house arrest, Mahmoud told me he is “thankful to all the wonderful Jews and Israelis who supported him and his family, and that together, we could still make peace.” Maybe it is because people like Mahmoud are, indeed, potential partners that this extremist government targets them. They are the kind of people whom former Minister of Internal Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, who only recently resigned and whose views still hold sway over the police, sees as a sign of the worst threat of all: the threat of compromise between Israelis and Palestinians.

Top image: Mahmoud Muna in the Educational Bookshop (Photo credit: Sally Hayden).