Israeli Arab Poet Dareen Tatour Gets Five-month Sentence for Incitement on Social Media
Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour was sentenced to five months in prison Tuesday by the Nazareth District court. Tatour, an Israeli citizen, was convicted in May of incitement to violence and supporting terrorist organizations, based on her social media posts.
Following the sentencing, Tatour said she was not surprised. "I expected prison and that’s what happened. I didn’t expect justice. The prosecution was political to begin with because I’m Palestinian, because it’s about free speech and I’m imprisoned because I’m Palestinian."
Tatour, 36, a resident of the Galilee village of Reineh, near Nazareth, was arrested in October 2015 after posting, among others, a poem titled “Resist, my people, resist them."
The indictment included a translation of the poem, with the lines: "I will not succumb to the ‘peaceful solution’ / Never lower my flags / Until I evict them from my land."
"My trial ripped off the masks," Tatour stated in May. "The whole world will hear my story. The whole world will hear what Israel’s democracy is. A democracy for Jews only. Only Arabs go to jail The court said I am convicted of terrorism. If that’s my terrorism, I give the world a terrorism of love."
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– Tatour’s video