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ASHDOD, Israel — One student is facing suspension for posting a picture on social media celebrating her sister’s engagement. Others have been targeted for expressing solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. All are suffering from what some schools and a legal advocacy group is calling an Israeli crackdown on free speech.
Along with police, schools and employers are targeting people for seemingly innocuous social media posts including quotes from the Quran, Adi Mansour, a lawyer with Adalah — The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, told NBC News on Wednesday.
In the days since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, Mansour said Adalah has received at least 80 reports from students at colleges and universities across Israel of being suspended, expelled or even arrested for their online musings.
Some social media users threatened “to kill them, to rape them, threats to go to their house,” Mansour said. He added that others had been doxxed, meaning their personal information was posted online.
In a strongly worded letter to Israeli Education Minister Yoav Kisch on Wednesday, nine schools complained that they were coming under pressure to investigate their students and report their handling of the cases to The Council for Higher Education in Israel, which they said risked “creating an atmosphere of McCarthyism and mutual informing on every campus.”
“Honestly, it’s terrifying what’s happening,” Mansour said.
