Free as in freedom

In 29/4/2026 in #Haifa, the magistrate court gave a verdict in a trial of two #Palestinian activists. The two, Ahmad Khalifah and Muhammad Taher Jabarin, are activists from Umm al-Fahm, a Palestinian town in the occupied 48 territory.

The court has convicted them for “identification with a terrorist organization” and “incitement to terrorism”. The charges and conviction are all related to one demonstration, which took place in Umm al-Fahm on October 19, 2023. The verdict is another milestone in the long road of their political persecution, false arrest and tortures. While the struggle for justice to Ahmad and Muhammad is not yet ended, it's important to emphasize the gravity of this verdict, both to the convicted activists and the Palestinian activism in occupied 48 territories.

The blog Free Haifa describes the arrest of the two on October 19, 2023. two days after the bombing of Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza.

“As the demonstrators started to disperse peacefully, they were violently attacked without warning by the police and border guard. Eleven of the demonstrators and one journalist were detained and badly beaten during this attack. The journalist was released the next day, and nine of the demonstrators were released the day after. But two activists, Muhammad Taher Jabarin and lawyer Ahmad Khalifa, whom the police accused of leading the demonstration, are still being held in harsh conditions in the Megiddo security prison.”

The struggle against criminal gangs (backed by Israel “security services”)

“Free Haifa” also provides additional background for the arrest, beside of direct political harassment, The same two activists where also leading members of anti-criminal movement:

“Umm al-Fahm was also one of the towns that has suffered most from the rise of criminal gangs, and the prevalence of murder and other social ills that have spread as the Israeli police and security services have looked the other way. No wonder that, in recent years, Umm al-Fahm witnessed the rise of the strongest popular “Herak” — a new type of protest movement that stresses grassroots activity and unity of all sections of society. They have mobilized large parts of the local population in Umm al-Fahm to demonstrations, which have accused the police of responsibility for the surge of crime and bloodshed in the streets. For some time, it seemed that social pressure even significantly reduced crime.”

In case the cooperation between the state and criminals is not clear, after the arrest, drive-by-shootting attacks where carried against the houses of their families, one for each family. a common criminal act to terrorize the activists.

Ahamad Khalifah was “released” to home detain after 4 months in prison, Muhammad Taher Jabarin after 8, both suffered abuse, starvation and tortures during their long arrest.

“On December 6, both were indicted in the Haifa Magistrate Court for “identification with a terrorist organization” and “incitement to terrorism.” The indictment is based on a completely out-of-context interpretation of the very cautious slogans that were chanted in the demonstration. These slogans did not mention (by name or even by hint) any Palestinian organization and did not call for any violent act. But, by the prosecution’s racist interpretation, any call to Palestinians to struggle in defense of their rights, or for resistance to the occupation, could only mean support for terrorism.”

Here are some of the slogans that the indictment cites (in Arabic, they have a rhythm and rhyme):

Resist, resist, resist, on your rights do not compromise! There is no solution, other than the uprooting of the occupier! The unity of your people, oh Palestine, a thorn in the throat of the occupiers! Join us, masses, the people of Gaza are dear to us! Oh Gaza, stay strong, your land gave birth to lions! Hashem’s Gaza (*) will not bow to the tank and the cannon! Shout and raise your voice, death is better than humiliation! In Gaza, al-Aqsa, and Sheikh Jarrah, my people call for struggle!
(*) Hashem’s Gaza is an old traditional nickname for the city.
All these slogans are old slogans repeated millions of times in hundreds of demonstrations before, and nobody was ever charged for them.

The court decision

On April 29, 2026, the court decided to convict the two for “identification with a terrorist organization” and “incitement to terrorism”, all based on slogans they chanted in one demonstration. That unacceptable injustice is more then “just” a personal revenge, it's door opening for a new stage of oppression and silencing of Palestinian activism. chants that are considered trivial, even historical, in Palestinian protests, have been criminalized by this verdict and banned without any consideration of their Palestinian context and without real discussion on the actual content beside of how it's seen by Israelis. Basic expressions of solidarity of Palestinians with their people in #Gaza are thus viewed by the court as supporting “terrorism”.

“Context” for Israelis only

Unsurprisingly, the political interpretation of slogans has became significant part of the legal dispute, with lots of attention to the word “Context” as indicator for how should they be interpreted. For the court, apparently, the consideration of “context” has become a racial profiling tool. On one hand, the court sees the October 7 attack as “context” for interpretation of trivial chants of solidarity as “supporting act of terror”. At the same time, the court rejects the expert testimony of professor Yoni Mendel. Professor Mendel claimed that the context for the slogans in question was Israeli shelling of Gaza, including the bombing of Al-Ahli Hospital. The court refused to accept that, essentially deciding that only the killing of Israelis should be considered context, not the killing of Palestinians.

Political persecution of Palestinians in the 48 occupied territories has escalated dramatically in the last years. it takes the form of longer arrests, tortures and trials for serious offenses made on the basis of bogus charges, or blown out of proportion, or taken out of context. In many cases, such as in the trial of the Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour, the court expects Palestinian defendant to consider in advance the Israeli interpretation of their words. Yet, this case stands out. In other cases, the words in question were posted online, sent to (sometimes family) WhatsApp groups or chats, or said in public speech. This is the only case where the “incitement” is one demonstration, with words of trivial slogans that were chanted many times before and after this specific demonstration.

Ahmad Khalifah and Muhammad Taher Jabarin were convicted for slogans that are used by almost any Palestinian activist when protesting. They have already payed a hard price for chanting the words of their people, the common words of solidarity. This must be seen as direct attack on Palestinians right for solidarity, self organizing and political struggle. it requires a united Palestinian struggle to defend the basic freedom of expression and the collective right for solidarity.

Zionist mayor against the Palestinian community of Haifa

extreme Islamist’s […] coming from out of Haifa […] unlawful pro-Palestinian demonstrations… That’s what Yona Yahav, so called “liberal” mayor of #Haifa, has to say about the Palestinian protests against the genocide in #Gaza. This lie on a lie on a lie is more then “just” an attempt to de-legitimize the protests, and standing behind the police repression. This is a racist denial of the right of the #Haifa #Palestinians to exist as community. There is a subtext to the claim “coming from out of Haifa”, a term that never comes up when talking about Jewish protesters (or bullies). That claim makes every Arab a subject to the question “is he from Haifa” ? The answer to that question can be found in the first paragraph, where Yahav tells a story about his childhood, standing with his mother, shedding a tear about the Arab neighbors who “chose” (his words) to leave. We all know that old #Zionist fantasy story and we all know that the [vast majority of] #Palestinian #refugees were denied from return. The current #Palestinian community of Haifa is built mostly from people who came to Haifa after 48 and made it their home. A home to a diverse and active Palestinian community and a center of cultural and political life, including ,apparently, demonstrations. Yahav attempts to draw a legitimate protest of Haifa (and other places) #Palestinians – as “foreign” and illegitimate. and by-product, to question the roots of the #Palestinian residents of #Haifa, who “came from other places” sometime in the past and are therefor not entitled to own Haifa as a center and exist in it politically.

In June 2018, the brave youth of #Gaza strip had started a campaign against the siege, under the title “The march of return”. It was not a metaphoric march, they were literally marching to the separation wall, the wall of the largest open-air prison. under a shower of stun grenades, teargas and live armor, they were marching and they were murdered.
Very few responses to this horror show were seen around the world. The occupied territories of 48 of #Palestine were one of the areas that refused to be silenced. The anger on the #massacre and on the collaboration of the #Palestinian Authority was pushing the people to mobilize. In #Haifa, hundreds of people, mostly youth, from Haifa and other places, have responded to the call of #Gaza. Under the slogan “One fate, one blood” they gathered in Paris square, #Haifa, to protest, to show solidarity with our people in #Gaza who were forced to choose between slow death to sniper bullets.
The #police was ready before the first protester arrived. They surrounded the area of the protest from all sides. When the protest started they blocked all entries and exists, leaving no escape to those who thought to avoid troubles and to leave the protest. They attacked, of course, pushing and beating the people. at first, they were pushing us from the square to near a coffee-shop, huddling us together, beating and arresting. All we could do was try standing and chanting “With spirit and blood, we will redeem you, Gaza”. people were crashed into the tables and falling on the ground. The police attacked in waves, huddling more, beating more, arresting more, and the people kept chanting “With spirit and blood, we will redeem you, Gaza”.
A video of the event
in the aftermath, 22 were arrested, almost everyone were beaten, many were injured. one protester's knee was broken by a police officer while sitting handcuffed in the police station. Tough night for us, not so much of a price comparing to the horrors we protested against.
Today, the Israeli massacre machine is huddling the Gazans together and bombing them, murdering them, from the land, from the air and from the sea. They “evacuated” to the south and attacked there. Now they are preparing to invade the overcrowded southern city of #Rafah, which may escalate the bloodshed by an order. It seems like an evil monstrous version of that protest night. I can hardly imagine the tip of the fear, suffer and loss in Gaza. The least we can do is to chant once again:

With spirit and blood we will redeem you Gaza.

was written on new year's evening 2023/2024. 15 (2008) years ago, new year's night, Israel was committing one of it's largest massacre campaign in Gaza. A protest was spontaneously organized in Haifa. Just before midnight, we were marching from Massada St. to the German colony, chanting in Arabic and Hebrew. one slogan in Hebrew was

לא חוגגים לא חוגגים – כשרוצחים ילדים

Which says

No partying, no partying, while children are being murdered

When we entered the German colony, the police attacked. As a response, the Palestinian masses left the pubs and joined the protest. the confrontation was ended by all of us marching freely on the main street and chanting for Gaza.
Last night was a sad night with death and horror in #Gaza and the streets of Haifa relatively quiet. Not celebrating (so much), no protest.

Librem5 is finally here

Finally, after long waiting, I received my librem5 phone. Librem5, made by purism, aims to focus on privacy, security and freedom. It is impressively free on the hardware + firmware side and it runs 100% free software.

The long waiting has forced me to buy an interim device, a relatively cheep #PinePhone. comparing to the #PinePhone, Librem5 is much faster, which makes it's user experience significantly better and improves usability. It came with #PureOS (#purism home #Linux distribution) pre-installed, with rootfs partition encrypted. Chatting (#matrix, #signal) and browsing is finally easy and simple as it should be. I installed #Waydroid (Android in container) and I use WhatsApp on top if it. once again, it works much faster then on #PinePhone. #Librem5 has 3 physical kill-switches. they let you shutdown camera+microphone, WiFi+Bluetooth and modem, directly at hardware level, for privacy reasons. I don't plan to use those switches regularly, but it might be useful on some situations. There is still a lot to explore and many problems to fix, but it's another successful step to freedom.

One year to Gilboa prison break.

A year ago, at the heroic “Freedom tunnel” operation, 6 Palestinian resistance fighters managed to breakout of Gilboa occupation prison.

The 6 were: – Zakaria Zubeidi – Mahmoud Abdullah Ardah – Mohammed Qassem Ardah – Yaqoub Mahmoud Qadri – Ayham Nayef Kamamji – Monadel Yacoub Nafe’at

The freedom fighters were captured and sentenced to 5 more years in prison, the sad price that Palestinians pay for resisting the occupation.

The Gilboa prison break is undoubtedly the most significant prison-break in the history of #Zionist apartheid regime in Palestine. At the time, it gave a boost of enthusiasm and willingness to our vigils outside of the occupation prisons. Those vigils were taken, at the time, in support for hunger-striking administrative detainees and in support of the women-prisoners at #Damoun prison.

The Zionist authorities did investigate their fiasco. Some embarrassing (for the occupation) flaws in the floor foundation were exposed. It was actually discovered that concrete cylinders were partially made of styrofoam. There was also a gap between the prison floor and the ground... This can serve us as a global lesson:
No matter how high and strong are the walls of the prison, its foundations are unsteady, and people will break out. The foundations of the occupation, as of any oppressive regime, are unsteady, fragile and undoubtedly uneven. The people will break free.

Under the concrete floor of the Zionist prison, the ground is Palestine. One day we will emerge through the gap and we will be free. #Palestine will be free.

Mobian/PinePhone chatting experience

Chatting is an important usage of smartphones. For some, it's the main usage. It's reasonable to expect a Linux phone to be able to work with some real world chatting platforms. So what platforms have usable solutions on PinePhone ?

WhatsApp is an app I hate to use. It's non-free, which by definition compromises its security and privacy compliance. Another aspect of WhatsApp being non-free is that it's not available to a Linux environment. The only way to run WhatsApp on PinePhone is by using an Android container system such as Anbox or Waydroid. both work and both currently don't support camera, making it uneasy to set WhatsApp web, unfortunately.

Signal can be described as the most FOSS unfriendly you can be while keeping client source free. A free client means that security and privacy can be verified and trusted (to some level), which is a significant advantage over WhatsApp. However, the only Signal release for Linux is Signal-Desktop, which is an Electron application and does not have register functionality. A better option is Axolotl, an independent Signal client built for Linux. It's also an Electron app but at least it can register, and it's usable(ish) on PinePhone. With registered Axolotl you can also use Signal-Desktop on your computer. Some people have reported that they use Signal CLI, you are welcome to try.

Telegram Has few clients for Linux, they are generally the same, the only reason to try more than one is if you have bugs in the registration process, which I had. It took some ugly tricks to work around it and now it works.

Matrix is a platform I expected to find in much better status. It's bad enough that the only “official” Matrix client for Linux is an Electron application- after all, there are many other Matrix clients, right? Yes, but many of them don't support E2EE (end-to-end-encryption) – including both Neochat and Fractal, the home clients of KDE and Gnome, respectively. From those clients which do support E2EE: – Nheko works, with bugs. – FluffyChat has a horrible typing bug. Without this bug it would have been is an excellent client.

Other clients I tested where not usable on PinePhone.

This doesn't look good, indeed, but on the bright side, I'm able to use each one of those platforms, making PinePhone a suitable day-to-day device for me. One should have some fun on the path to freedom...

I have a new Linux phone and it's cool

Disclaimer: this is not a review, nor is it a recommendation to go buy something. I'm telling about my new Linux phone from the perspective of MY needs.

“No plan survives contact with the enemy”

yet another saying that Napoleon never said.

I love running Linux on my devices for many reasons: freedom, privacy, security, keeping away from Google spyware, together with personal taste. however, It was never my plan to buy #PinePhone, a relatively cheep #Linux phone. back in August 2019, I decided to support crowdfunding for Librem-5, a Linux phone made by #purism, a phone that attempts to maximize your freedom, privacy and security with hardware made (almost) from scratch and Linux as OS. the plan was to replace my old phone with that one, once delivered.

Just like Napoleon didn't say, the plan did not survive contact with the enemy. In this case the enemy was delays in Librem-5 production and delivery (it's currently postponed to November 2021) from one side, and the old phone starting to physically dismantle on the other side. so I had to buy cheep intermediate phone, and PinePhone was my choice.

So now I have PinePhone with Linux on it. it's not great, but it will improve. not only that the software it runs keeps improving, also the hardware is built with all main components being replacable. I can do basic phone tasks (calls, messages, contacts) and I have a large amount of applications available to install. not all applications work well, many Linux applications are designed with desktop in mind and do not scale well, or even work well, on mobile device. however, with the whole repositories of Linux distribution (Debian in my case, but you can choose between some) under my finger, I find suitable application for most of my needs. I also run some Android apps on it, using #anbox, but only if I have no other choice.

with all the troubles, having a real standard free Linux distro on my phone is an amazing experience, I may elaborate more in the feature about what can be done and what not (yet), but currently I'm having lots of fun with it.

and one last thing: If you are going to write a comment telling me that such devices “will never be good for the average user”, save it. I don't know who is the average user but I'm sure he (“he” because in our patriarchal society an abstract is always male) is not paying for my phone and is not using it, so it was never a consideration.