Racist police beat up Palestinian student

MUHAMMAD MANSUR is an Israeli Palestinian medical student at the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem. On 8 January following a football match between
Beitar Jerusalem (an Israeli Jewish team) and Sons of Sachnin (an Israeli
Palestinian team) which ended with a victory for the latter, Muhammad went to
a shopping mall where he works.

Three plainclothes men approached Muhammad, and told him that there were
many violent fans of Beitar around and asked him to come with them to his car
for his own security.

Muhammad replied that he didn’t have a car and that he had to get to work.
The policemen grabbed him and took him to the parking area and there they just
started to beat him up.

When Muhammad asked "Why are you beating me up – you have just offered to
protect me", these racist police thugs replied that he was an Arab and
therefore a member of an inferior race.

After a while the policemen left him, but when he tried to use his phone
(to call for help) one of them took it from him. He was then bundled into an
unmarked car and taken to a police station.

There, Muhammad explained, he was tortured and humiliated for a long time.
He spent the night at the hospital because of the wounds he received.

Israeli Palestinian students contacted members of Maavak Sozialisti which,
like the Socialist Party, is affiliated to the
Committee for a Workers’
International
and asked for our help in a campaign against this racist
brutality. Along with other activists, Maavak Sozialisti issued a call for a
one-hour student strike on 10 January on the university campus which Muhammad
attends.

Within hours a joint leaflet signed by Maavak Sozialisti members and
Palestinian activists was produced in both Hebrew and Arabic calling on
students to join the action.

Although there was not full observance of the strike, many students, both
Israeli Jewish and Palestinian, supported this call and over 120 of them
organised an impromptu demonstration around the campus. Even Israeli Jewish
students living in the Jewish settlements around Jerusalem participated in
this demonstration. This was one of the biggest demonstrations on this campus
recently.

Later, over 50 students demonstrated outside a local police station against
the brutal attack on Muhammad. Both events took place despite threats from the
state apparatus to take repressive action against activists and Maavak
Sozialisti members who called for these actions.