Israel restricts wartime freedom of expression. At what cost?

On a Sunday in early October, Bayan Khateeb, a Palestinian living near Nazareth, Israel, was preparing a shakshuka – soft-boiled eggs in a spicy tomato sauce – for a group of friends.

Known to be a deplorable cook, the fourth-year engineering student triumphantly posted a photo of the simmering dish on Instagram with the caption “We will soon be eating the victory shakshuka” and a Palestinian flag emoji.

The problem for Ms. Khateeb is that she posted what she says was a kind of “Yes, I can!” to her friends on Oct. 8 – a day after the devastating Hamas attack in southern Israel, which was met with spontaneous celebrations in Gaza and the West Bank.

What followed would illustrate an extensive crackdown across Israel on freedom of expression in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks and indeed punishment – jail time, lost jobs, expulsions from universities – for publicly expressed views deemed either treasonous or insufficiently supportive of Israel in its war with Hamas.

Moreover, some experts warn, a kind of national loyalty campaign that focuses largely on Palestinians and Arab Israelis is almost certain to set back yearslong efforts to diversify the workforce in key economic sectors and foster intercommunal peace through private sector initiatives.

“We are very concerned about the future of shared workplaces in Israel,” says Maisam Jaljuli, CEO of Tsofen, an organization that works to expand professional opportunities for Arab Israelis.

The war is already having a chilling effect on Arab Israelis’ educational and employment aspirations, Ms. Jaljuli says. She adds, “We realize we’re going to have to make a big effort after this war just to hold onto the successes we’ve had.”

Denounced by fellow students

In the days following Ms. Khateeb’s social media post, a group of Jewish students at Ms. Khateeb’s school, the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa – denounced her to the administration for her shakshuka post, which it considered to be pro-Hamas incitement. Ms. Khateeb was arrested and held overnight.

Later she offered Technion administrators and a court her shakshuka story and averred that she is not political, but focused on her studies and on building a career in tech. Nevertheless, she was ordered to serve five days of house arrest in her town of Kafr Kanna and was prohibited from using social media. She was suspended by the Technion and currently awaits the university’s final decision on her enrollment.

Alarmed civil rights defenders say cases like Ms. Khateeb’s have exploded since Oct. 7.

“What we have been able to document is a growing crackdown on the freedom of speech and expression of Palestinian citizens of Israel since the war began,” says Ari Remez, communications coordinator for Adalah, a legal defense organization promoting Arab Israelis’ rights.

“What we’re seeing is an unprecedented zero-tolerance policy for expressing any sympathy for the Palestinian people of Gaza,” he adds. “The government is trying to send a message that the citizenship of Palestinians of Israel is conditioned on adhering to the Israeli perspective on the war.”

Israel is not alone in this battle over the speech and fundamental rights repercussions of the Israel-Hamas war. The confrontation has renewed the world’s long-dormant attention to the Palestinian cause and stoked heated emotional debates and global spikes in antisemitism and Islamophobia.

And it’s not just in Israel that expressions of opinion normally considered protected speech have led to firings and student suspensions. In one case in the United States, the doctor who directed New York University’s Langone Health’s cancer center, Benjamin Neel, was fired for reposting on social media anti-Hamas cartoons that in some cases included offensive caricatures of Arabs.

Dr. Neel also questioned the death toll in Gaza from Israel’s bombing campaign – a skepticism expressed last month by President Joe Biden, for which he has subsequently apologized.

Quantifying the crackdown

Yet in part because Israel has long been hailed as the Middle East’s sole democracy, with all the rights democratic rule is supposed to guarantee, infringement on those rights is garnering special attention.

In a tally of arrests, interrogations, and detainments of Palestinian citizens of Israel from Oct. 7 to Nov. 7, Adalah recorded 214 cases related to alleged speech offenses or political activity related to the war.

Of those cases, almost half involved social media posts – often brought to authorities’ attention by fellow students of the post’s author.

Adalah also found that through Nov. 11, 52 students enrolled at 32 different institutions of higher education were suspended without a hearing, while eight were expelled before a hearing. Complaints were canceled or the accused people were exonerated in 11 cases.

“What’s really unprecedented is the number of cases where students have been suspended and even expelled over social media posts,” Mr. Remez says.

At Tsofen, where expanding Arab Israeli employment and diversifying workplaces are the focus, Ms. Jaljuli says growing public attention to cases of Arab Israelis losing jobs over posts and other means of speech is causing a sense of foreboding among job seekers focused on the tech industry.

“There’s a real fear even among job candidates who don’t post on social media that the cases of people being fired for expressing any view related to the war will affect their chances,” she says. “They are afraid that when the companies see their name they will throw out their CVs.”

Some economic analysts have speculated that the war could actually benefit Arab Israeli job seekers in Israel’s dynamic tech sector. With so many Jewish Israeli reservists mobilized to fight the war, qualified non-Jews could become more attractive, they say.

Ms. Jaljuli has her doubts. Arab Israelis make up only 3% of the tech industry workforce, and even that meager number is concentrated in international tech companies in Israel, she says, not in Israeli companies.

Backers of diversity

The long-term employment impact of the war and the related cases of discrimination against Arab Israelis won’t be known for months or even years, Ms. Jaljuli says. But she adds that Tsofen is already planning for the postwar period. It is envisioning seminars for employment seekers on the do’s and don’ts of social media posting and a public service campaign with slogans like “We need to work together – especially now” and “Working together – this is the answer.”

And some big names in Israeli investment and job creation are touting the role that diversity in workplaces can play in healing Israeli society’s wounds and promoting intercommunal peace.

Many Israelis were surprised when Eyal Waldman – founder of the computer chip-maker Mellanox Technologies who is known for opening offices in the West Bank and employing dozens of Palestinians – expressed continuing support last month for peace through economic development, even after his daughter and her boyfriend were killed by Hamas at the Nova music festival Oct. 7.

Similar thinking has come from Jonathan Medved, founder and CEO of OurCrowd, an equity crowdfunding platform, who is widely known as Israel’s “startup guru.”

At a recent Zoom briefing on the war’s impact on the Israeli economy, Mr. Medved was upbeat on prospects for building Israeli-Palestinian peace through sharing in the prosperity of a dynamic economy.

The way to make the next war less likely, he said, “is by investing in joint projects and making sure we create economic horizons for our neighbors as well as for Palestinians here.”

Neither side in the long conflict is “going anywhere; we have to live together,” he said, adding that a peaceful coexistence will require participation by every segment of society to “build economic ties and ... create better lives for everybody.”