Rami Awni Hwayel, a third-year acting student at the Jenin Freedom Theatre, aged 20, was seized at the Shavei Shomron checkpoint (“roadblock”) between Nablus and Jenin, on August 6. He was on his way back from Ramallah — where he has been in rehearsals for the leading role in the Freedom Theatre’s production of “Waiting for Godot” — and heading for a Ramadan visit with his family.
He is the third person connected to the Freedom Theater, located in the Jenin refugee camp, to be taken into Israeli custody. During a traumatic pre-dawn raid on 27 July, two officials were taken into custody after some 50 or so IDF soldiers, who arrived in jeeps, reportedly hurled rocks and pieces of concrete at the theater building.
The Freedom Theatre’s Juliano Mer-Khamis — an Israeli citizen born to a Jewish mother and an Israeli-Arab-Palestinian father from Nazareth, both members of the Israeli Communist Party — was assassinated by an expert marksman outside the Theatre some three months ago. Juliano lived part of the time in Haifa, and the rest of the time in a house near the Jenin Refugee Camp that was being leased to him by Palestinian ex-militant Zakaria Zubeideh.
The Palestinian Authority has been put in charge of the investigation into Juliano’s murder [with some assistance from Israeli investigations], but no progress has yet been reported. [See our most recent earlier post on this here].
In an email received from the Freedom Theatre this morning, and via Israeli journalists on Twitter, it was mentioned that the IDF had put a “gag order” on Hwayal’s arrest.
The email from Jenin Freedom Theatre’s Jacob Gough read: “Israeli military censorship has of now also placed a gag order on reporting on this arrest”.
Now, I ask, how the hell is anyone around here supposed to know that an IDF arrest in the West Bank is under a gag order?
There seems to be no real answer to this question.
However, from an extended exchange on Twitter with several persons, it emerges that (1) “gag orders” have to be issued by an Israeli court inside Israel [and not from an Israeli military court in the West Bank]; and that a journalist or a media organization has to receive notification of a “gag order” in order to be bound by it — and I have received nothing.
It is not clear, at least to me, whether the jurisdiction of an Israeli court could or would apply, for example, to a blog which is written and edited in the Twilight Zone between Israel and the West Bank, but whose servers are based in the U.S.
Israeli journalists have told me, in the Twitter exchange, that “gag orders” are intended to deprive Israelis of information — not, they said on Twitter, the “enemy” [however that is defined… does it mean the whole outside world???]…
UPDATE: Richard Silverstein wrote on his Tikun Olam Blog that the IDF said it has not issued any “gag order” on this story, but Haaretz has had their reports blocked twice by the IDF military censor.
When I asked, once, in the IDF military censor office in Beit Agron in West Jerusalem, what exactly they would want to see, the people in military uniform there exchanged glances, then replied: “real-time military operations”, which this certainly is not.
For complete clarity and transparency: this post is being written post-dated, primarily because of some distressing personal distractions and a loss in the family.
According to the email received from the Jenin Freedom Theatre, actor Rami Awni Hwayel, age 20, “was travelling from Ramallah to Jenin together with his fellow students”. At the Shavei Shomrom “checkpoint” between Nablus + Jenin, armed Israelis [soldiers? settlement volunteer militiamen?] checked the IDs of all passengers in the car travelling with Rami Hwayel. When the armed Israelis saw Rami Hwayel’s ID, they “told him to get out of the car… handcuffed + blindfolded him, put him in jeep”.
There has been no further word on what’s happening…
UPDATE: On August 16, the International Middle East Media Center [IMEMC] published a report about a letter written by staff and friends of the Jenin Freedom Theater, saying that “Special forces of the Israeli army raided the Freedom Theatre in Jenin refugee camp at approximately 03:30 a.m. on the 27th July. Some 50 masked soldiers threw stone blocks at windows, kidnapped several staff, and arrested two employees Adnan Naghnaghiye, location manager, and Bilal Saadi, member of the board, who are still being held at an unknown location. Soldiers also strip-searched night guard Ahmad Nasser Matahen, and handcuffed his brother … The Israeli civil administration and army refused to clarify to members of the Freedom Theater, to the lawyer or media outlets, the reasons for the night raid and the whereabouts of the arrestees, eyewitnesses claimed. An army spokeswoman confirmed only that the two men were taken to an unknown location near the theatre but gave no other details. In the week after the attack took place, the army reportedly stated that Naghnaghiye and Saadi were being detained for ‘acting against the security of the region’. Two weeks following the arrests during the Israeli attack on the Freedom Theater, Saadi was apparently allowed access to a lawyer, he stated that the treatment used by his interrogators was inhumane, Naghnaghiye still hasn’t had access to a lawyer. Since after the army statement on the reason for the arrests was made, staff at the theatre learnt in court, though not publicly, the attack was supposedly part of an investigation into Juliano’s murder … [But] Theatre officials were shocked by the manner in which the arrests were made, arguing that the Israeli forces could have sent summons to the arrestees and called them in for questioning, based on the routine security coordination with the Palestinian Authority “…
In addition, the IMEMC article said that other officials in the Freedom Theatre insist that although the main focus of the PA-led investigation seems to be exclusively on possible involvement in Juliano’s assassination by other members of the theater, they are convinced that no one working in the Theatre is involved in the murder.
The IMEMC story is posted here.