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February 4th, 2021 
Awake Goy Issa Amro is an anti-apartheid activist in the occupied city of Hebron in Palestine who is dedicated to nonviolence, though he has been arrested by the Israeli military more times than he can remember. “I was arrested, detained, attacked many times… I used to be detained and arrested around 25 times a year,” he says.
Last month Amro was convicted in an Israeli military court on six trumped-up charges relating to his work over several years, among them the charge of disrespecting an Israeli soldier by using the word “stupid.” Amro faces sentencing by a military judge next week, and there’s been a campaign of solidarity for Amro from around the world.
Amnesty International has called on Israel to drop the case, saying it is “politically motivated” and the charges against Amro are “baseless.” Representatives of the British, European, EU and Canadian consulates attended his last hearing, Yumna Patel reported, and the Canadian mission to Ramallah expressed support for Amro.
Freedom of expression is a vital part of any healthy society, and such cases against members of [Palestinian] civil society are very troubling.
The UN’s high commissioner for human rights issued an angry statement on Jan. 26 following Amro’s conviction.
“This is part of a clear and systematic pattern of detention, judicial harassment and intimidation by Israel of human rights defenders, a pattern that has increased in intensity recently,” the [human rights] experts said…
“Rather than prosecuting human rights defenders, Israel should be listening to them and correcting its own human rights conduct. Israel must obey its international obligations to provide protection to human rights defenders,” the UN Special Rapporteurs said.
Novelist Raja Shehadeh published an impassioned plea for support for Amro in the Guardian:
Lt Col Menachem Lieberman, who happens to live in a settlement… will decide on the sentencing on 8 February. If Amro is put behind bars, as expected, his nonviolent struggle will have to be suspended. And Israel would have succeeded in criminalising nonviolent resistance by one of its main proponents among Palestinians.
In the face of such odds against him, his only hope now is to get the support of those who believe in the cause of justice and the path of nonviolence as the only hope to combat the injustice taking place in the heart of this ancient city.
Shehadeh describes the absurdity of the charges.
One of the charges against Amro was insulting a soldier who took his identity card. Amro says he asked the soldier for his card back and said: “I’m not on any wanted list, and if you had called to check you would know this. But you have not called, I know, I’m not stupid.” The soldier insists that Amro called him stupid.
As in this and other charges against the Palestinian accused in an Israeli military court, it’s his word against that of the Israeli soldier.
Jewish Voice for Peace issued a statement denouncing the charges against Amro. “Amro says, it is not about me going to jail or not, it is about the Palestinians right to peaceful protest against the occupation. We will never give up our rights.”
The Jewish activist group IfNotNow has expressed solidarity. While Amro’s own organization Youth Against Settlements has called on Biden to speak out, and tweeted a photo of Amro when he was blindfolded and handcuffed– a 2013 arrest — and urged Bernie Sanders to speak out.
On an earlier occasion when Amro was hauled up on bogus charges, 2017, he got the support of four Senators (Bernie Sanders, Dick Durbin, Patrick Leahy, and Dianne Feinstein) and 34 congresspeople. JVP, US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, and CodePink all lobbied for Amro.
Good news, J Street, which has clout on the Democratic side, has joined the chorus of support for Amro. J Street tweeted this morning:
J Street leaders have met with @Issaamro many times and we were proud to host him at one of our national conferences. The right of Issa and all Palestinians to non-violently protest against the injustices of occupation must be fully respected.
The liberal Zionist organization hosted Amro at its October 2019 conference, and featured him in a panel on Palestinian non-violent resistance. Amro was praised by moderator Oriel Eisner for his “years of experience practicing nonviolent resistance and leading campaigns in occupied Hebron, in a highly militarized highly surveilled environment; and through that has had enormous successes.”
On that occasion, Amro saluted his “many brothers and sisters working hard on the ground and they are not allowed to leave Palestine.” He included the great march of return protesters in Gaza, who were being cut down by Israeli snipers for demanding the right of return.
Amro was criticized by some on the left for appearing at a liberal Zionist organization’s conference. While J Street was criticized from the right for hosting Amro. (The Israeli political figure Einat Wilf baited the organization.)
Debra Shushan, the government affairs director at J Street, tweeted out Raja Shehadeh’s appeal for solidarity for Amro, writing two days ago that MLK would be on Amro’s side:
On MLK Day, some Jewish orgs used the occasion to share a quote from Dr. King supporting Israel. If he were alive today, I think he’d also stand with Palestinian activists like @Issaamro who face jail time for opposing occupation thru nonviolent protest.
Support for Amro is also critical because it advances the judgment last month by the Israeli human rights org B’Tselem that there is an “apartheid regime” of “Jewish supremacy” between the river and the sea. Amro’s case and the division of Hebron city are embodiments of apartheid rule. As Amro said at the time:
My life in Hebron is exactly how @btselem described it, it is #apartheid, I live under the military law, on the other hand, Israeli settlers live under civilian law in the same area, I was convicted of assault after being attacked by a settler during my work in @btselem in 2010.
Amro seeks all the American help he can get. He was very grateful to Ayelet Waldman for her words of support. “A friend in need is a friend indeed.” And to Ben Ehrenreich for this statement:
For as long as I’ve known @Issaamro— 8 years now—he has been fighting settler takeover of Palestinian homes in Hebron’s Tel Rumeida, facing constant arrests, beatings, threats. They finally managed to convict him of four nonsensical charges.
h/t Adam Horowitz, Scott Roth and James North.
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