A famous Arab-Israeli actress was arrested and taken into custody on suspicion of “incitement to terrorism” over a Facebook post about the Palestinian Hamas attack in Israel, police and her lawyers said Tuesday.
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Actress Maisa Abdel Hadi, who lives in the northern city of Nazareth, was arrested on Monday and held in police custody until Thursday because, according to police, she posted on her Facebook page a photo of a bulldozer tearing down the fence between the Gaza Strip and Israel were at the start of the Hamas attack, which authorities said killed more than 1,400 people, mostly civilians.
“Let’s do it Berlin style,” she captioned the photo, referencing the fall of the Berlin Wall that divided the two Germanys in 1989.
“She is accused of supporting terrorism,” said Jaafar Farah, director of the human rights association Mousawat (Equality), whose lawyers represent the 38-year-old actress, who has appeared in several series, films and plays.
Since the start of the war sparked by the attack, members of Israel’s Arab minority and Palestinians in East Jerusalem have been fired and expelled from their universities over social media posts expressing solidarity with the Gaza Strip, according to numerous witness accounts and Israeli police reports or arrest the Palestinian Islamist movement.
Israeli Arabs, who make up a fifth of Israel’s population, are descendants of Palestinians who remained on their land when Israel was founded in 1948.