Jonathan Pollak, a long-time anti-Zionist activist from Jaffa, was slapped with an indictment for two counts of incitement to violence on Sunday (14 July, 2024). The indictment revolves around calls to join the Palestinian struggle against Israeli colonialism, made in a January 2020 article published in Israeli newspaper Haaretz, and in a June 2021 speech during the Yeshayahu Leibowitz Award ceremony. In both cases, Pollak called on those within the settler society who oppose Israeli Apartheid and colonialism to join the Palestinian struggle for liberation and integrate in it as a minority, under Palestinian leadership, and “march in the footsteps of the children of the stones and Molotov cocktails.”
Pollak has been the target of persecution by Israeli right-wing groups such as Ad Kan and Im Tirzu for several years, and this indictment is also the direct result of a campaign by these organizations. In 2018 Ad Kan used an esoteric judicial procedure and filed a private criminal complaint against Pollak and two other activists. He refused to attend hearings or cooperate with the proceedings in any way, and was wanted by the authorities for over a year before being arrested. In 2019, after Ad Kan published a post asking the public for help locating Pollak, he was attacked with a knife by two men who called him an anarchist. The article subject to the current indictment was published the day Pollak was apprehended, and the investigation into it for incitement was opened on his release after Ad Kan’s case was kicked out, in order to sweeten the pill.
On receiving the indictment, Pollak said: ” The only exceptional thing about this indictment is that, this time, Israel filed it against one of its Jewish citizens. In practice, it is merely one in hundreds such politically motivated indictments filed against Palestinians, both those who hold Israeli citizenship and those living as subjects under military rule. In contrast, the innumerous Israeli citizens, journalists and politicians regularly and blatantly calling to starve babies, indiscriminately kill innocent civilians, commit war crimes and genocide, go completely unscathed. It would suffice to examine the list of prosecution witnesses to understand who truly stands behind the indictment and what its purpose is. It is unabashed political persecution in service of Israel’s extreme right, meant to silence any support for the Palestinian struggle for liberation, and is part of the attempt to stifle the Palestinian struggle itself.”
The trial is set to open in October.