Shabak (General Security Service) agents had tried to arrest Matar two days before the expulsion from Gush Katif began at her home in Kfar Yam, on the Gush Katif seashore. She got wind of their intentions and ran to the beach to hide. “It was a horrible feeling,” she told Israel National Radio’s Eli Stutz and Yishai Fleisher Show. “They said they needed me for an investigation.”
The police returned for Matar a week ago, coming to her home in the Gush Etzion community of Efrat. “They said they needed to bring me to jail and arrested me for ‘incitement to rebellion,’” Matar said.
“They took out the article I had written on ‘how we will stop the decree’ and underlined passages from it, claiming ‘you are calling upon people to cause chaos – this is incitement to rebellion.”
The investigators were particularly concerned about Matar’s calls to block roads and puncture the tires of army vehicles. “The investigator asked me what my reaction was,” Matar said. “I told him ‘you and your superiors know I have done nothing wrong. This is a political investigation by a dictatorship that not only expels Jews but is trying to take from the national camp its freedom of speech and I will therefore exercise my right to remain silent.’ ”
Matar added that she registered her outrage during her investigation that her every word was being examined and expounded upon in order to incriminate her while a complaint she had filed against Hebrew University Professor Ze’ev Sternhal, who had suggested in an article that Arab terrorists target only “settlers” and not Israelis within the Green Line, was dismissed by the police.
“Professor Sternhell’s essay, which called for the murder of Yesha’s Jews, was dismissed by the police due to ‘lack of public interest,’ ” Matar said. “Obviously, freedom of speech is unlimited for the left, but on the right we are persecuted for saying things not even in violation of the law.”
Click here to listen to the full interview with Nadia Matar
The police returned for Matar a week ago, coming to her home in the Gush Etzion community of Efrat. “They said they needed to bring me to jail and arrested me for ‘incitement to rebellion,’” Matar said.
“They took out the article I had written on ‘how we will stop the decree’ and underlined passages from it, claiming ‘you are calling upon people to cause chaos – this is incitement to rebellion.”
The investigators were particularly concerned about Matar’s calls to block roads and puncture the tires of army vehicles. “The investigator asked me what my reaction was,” Matar said. “I told him ‘you and your superiors know I have done nothing wrong. This is a political investigation by a dictatorship that not only expels Jews but is trying to take from the national camp its freedom of speech and I will therefore exercise my right to remain silent.’ ”
Matar added that she registered her outrage during her investigation that her every word was being examined and expounded upon in order to incriminate her while a complaint she had filed against Hebrew University Professor Ze’ev Sternhal, who had suggested in an article that Arab terrorists target only “settlers” and not Israelis within the Green Line, was dismissed by the police.
“Professor Sternhell’s essay, which called for the murder of Yesha’s Jews, was dismissed by the police due to ‘lack of public interest,’ ” Matar said. “Obviously, freedom of speech is unlimited for the left, but on the right we are persecuted for saying things not even in violation of the law.”
Click here to listen to the full interview with Nadia Matar