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Photos:
Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour (right) seen with her attorney, Gaby Lasky, at the Nazareth Magistrate’s Court on May 3, 2018. Tatour was convicted of incitement and support for terrorism after publishing a number of poems on Facebook in 2015. (Oren Ziv/Activestills.org). Published by 972Mag

MK Hanin Zoabi, attorney Gaby Lasky, and Dareen Tatour stand at the start of Tatour’s conviction hearing. May 3, 2018. (Oren Ziv / Activestills.org) Published by 972Mag

Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour, May 3, 2018. Credit: Gil Eliyahu Published by Haaretz

Supporters of Dareen Tatour outside the courthouse in Nazareth, May 8, 2016. Credit: Rami Shllush Published by Haaretz
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Dareen Tatour was arrested in 2015 and held in house arrest for nearly three years for publishing a poem on Facebook. On Thursday morning, an Israeli court convicted her of incitement and support for a terrorist organization.

By +972 Magazine Staff

An Israeli court convicted poet Dareen Tatour, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, of incitement and support for a terrorist organization on Thursday, nearly three years after she was first arrested for publishing her poetry on social media.

Tatour, 36, hails from the village of Reineh near Nazareth. She was arrested on October 15, 2015 after publishing a number of poems on her Facebook page, including “Qawem Ya Sha’abi, Qawemhum” (“Resist my people, resist them”).

That poem was published in 2015 at the height of Palestinian protests across Israel and the West Bank and during a wave of so-called lone-wolf stabbing and vehicular attacks against Israeli security forces and civilians, largely in Jerusalem and Hebron. A few days after Tatour posted “Resist my people, resist them” on Facebook, police stormed her house and arrested her in the middle of the night.

Following her arrest, Tatour was imprisoned for three months, then released and put under house arrest in apartment in Kiryat Ono, just outside Tel Aviv, at the demand of Israeli authorities. She was forced to wear an ankle monitor, was forbidden from use the internet, the phone, or any other means of communication.

In May 2017, an Israeli court decide to ease the conditions of her arrest, allowing her to live under house arrest in her home village, where she may only leave her house accompanied by a custodian.

In November of 2016, Tatour testified and admitted that she had written the statuses. She explained that she was protesting the occupation, denouncing the crimes committed against Palestinians by the Israeli army and the settlers, adding that the police translation distorted her texts. Throughout the trial, the defense called a cast of experts on Hebrew and Arabic literature to testify about the various meanings of specific words and phrases used by Tatour in her art, as well as the nature of political poetry, and how even some of the most oppressive regimes in the world have tolerated dissident poets.

In July 2016, over 150 literary icons, including Alice Walker and Dave Eggers, signed a letter in solidarity with Tatour, calling Tatour’s imprisonment “part of a larger pattern of Israeli repression against all Palestinians.” Over 1,000 Israelis signed a petition in August 2017 calling for Tatour’s release.

“The court convicted me of terrorism. If that’s my terrorism, I give the world a terrorism of love,” Tatour said after the verdict.

Last August, Local Call Editor Orly Noy spoke to Tatour about the difficulty of living under constant surveillance and the poet’s court case.

Asked if she was optimistic, Tatour replied, “So-so. I am trying to remain optimistic. There is a poem in my book about handcuffs, which terrifyingly enough came true. They say that every poet is a prophet, and I feel that. In this country we cannot be too optimistic, but I am trying my best.”
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Israel Convicts Palestinian Poet Dareen Tatour of Incitement to Violence, Supporting Terror

Tatour, 36, was arrested in October 2015 for three social media publications

by Noa Shpigel for Haaretz
03.05.2018 11:41 Updated: 12:57 PM

The Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour was convicted Thursday by the Nazareth District Court of incitement to terrorism and support for terror organizations because of posts on social media.

>> Theater of the absurd: The Jewish state vs. Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour >>

Tatour, 36, a resident of the Galilee village of Reineh near Nazareth, was arrested in October 2015 after publishing, among others, a poem titled “Resist, my people, resist them." The indictment against her includes a translation of the poem, which includes the lines: "I will not succumb to the 'peaceful solution' / Never lower my flags / Until I evict them from my land."

"My trial ripped off the masks," Tatour stated. "The whole world will hear my story. The whole world will hear what Israel's democracy is. A democracy for Jews only. Only Arabs go to jail The court said I am convicted of terrorism. If that's my terrorism, I give the world a terrorism of love."

Tatour was arrested at time when lone-wolf stabbing attacks on Israelis were practically a daily event. She is charged with publishing on "various publications that call for violent acts or terrorism" on Facebook and YouTube, and "for praising and identifying with acts of violence or terrorism."

A video clip that Tatour uploaded shows her reading the poem against the backdrop of masked people throwing rocks and firebombs at Israeli security forces. The indictment contains a translation of the poem into Hebrew and says that as of the charges being filed, it had accrued more than 200,000 views and several adulatory comments.

"The content, its exposure and the circumstances of its publication created a real possibility that acts of violence or terrorism will be committed," the indictment claimed.

After the indictment, the video gained even more exposure when Culture Minister Miri Regev posted it herself within an edited clip on her Facebook page. The edited clip was watched more than 70,000 times and received more than a thousand "likes." Beside it, Regev wrote, "Where do you think this video was screened? At a Hamas event in Gaza? ISIS in Syria? Hezbollah in Beirut? Watch and share."

The indictment included two other poems by Tatour.

One said, "Allah Akbar and Baruch Hashem, Islamic Jihad declared intifada throughout the whole West Bank and expansion to all Palestine. We should begin inside the Green Line," a post that got 35 likes. The second showed the wedding of Asra’a Abed, a Nazareth resident who was shot and wounded after drawing a knife at the central bus station of Afula, with the post, "I'm the next martyr."

After three months in detention, Tatour had been released to house arrest, with an electronic cuff. Four months later she was allowed to leave the house for two hours on weekends, if accompanied. She may not use a mobile phone or internet, restrictions that have no precedent, her lawyer, Gaby Lasky said.

Initially Tatour had denied any connection with the posts. After changing lawyers in November 2016, she admitted to publishing the poem, but claimed it had been mistranslated.

The police officer who translated it knows spoken and literary Arabic, and speaks Arabic as his mother tongue, the state claimed.

The prosecution highlighted her change in story and wrote in its conclusions that a person "confident of the justice of his path and purity of his intentions consistently admits to publishing the things attributed to him, and explains the underlying intentions. This is not how the defendant behaved." Later the prosecution said that once she admitted to the publications, Tatour cast blame on others for not understanding her properly, or causing her to act in a certain way, ostensibly innocuously, which is unacceptable."

Lasky told Haaretz that it is pathetic to put a poet on trial for a poem she wrote, based on an erroneous literal and cultural translation. "In the unfortunate case of Dareen, her poem speaks among other things about the Dawabshe family and others who were hurt by Jews. The police officer who translated the poem unprofessionally took things out of context."

Defense witnesses included Prof. Nissim Calderon, who wrote an opinion on the special status of poets, noting Hebrew poets in tsarist Russia and during the British Mandate in Palestine, such as Nathan Alterman. The prosecution argued that Calderon hadn't seen the full text, or seen it in the context of pictures of the intifada in the background.

"The trial was designed entirely to intimidate and silence Palestinians in Israel, to make them censor themselves for fear of being put on trial and criminalization of poetry," Lasky said. "When the state tries people for poetry, that derogates from the cultural richness of all society."

Tawfik Tatour, Dareen's father, told Haaretz on Wednesday that he was not optimistic about the outcome of the trial, including because it had taken so long, and because he did not trust the legal process. Just trials in Israel between Jews and Arabs will never happen, he said. Looking at the trials taking place, even when the atmosphere is the same and the cases are similar, it's not the same, he said.

All in all, she hadn't done anything, the father said on Wednesday, adding that he was trying to remain optimistic after all. "If they have a conscience, they will factor in the long process and will show leniency in punishment," he said, noting that all she did was talk about things that happened to the Dawabshe and Abu Khdeir families, in poetry.