Arab-Israeli poet Dareen Tatour was sentenced to five months in prison Tuesday for incitement to violence and supporting a terror organization, due to the poems and comments she posted on social media.Tatour, who lives in Reineh near Nazareth, has become a cause célèbre for left-wing activists who accuse the state of repressing free speech in this case. Social media erupted with condemnation of the sentencing following its announcement. Tatour was convicted by the Nazareth District Court on May 3.Israeli prosecutors insisted, however, that her poems and social media posts encouraged and promoted violence at a febrile time in the country when Palestinians were committing stabbings and other attacks on an almost daily basis.Tatour, 36, was indicted in November 2015 for inflammatory pictures and poems posted to Facebook and YouTube which the prosecution said encouraged violence and terrorist acts against Israel as the “Stabbing Intifada” at that time was just beginning.In October 2015, she posted a YouTube video of her reading her poem “Resist my People, Resist Them,” accompanied by pictures of Palestinians clashing with Israeli security forces.An English translation of the poem, translated by Tariq al Haydar and posted on the website arablit.org, includes the lines: “Resist, my people, resist them./ Resist the settler’s robbery/ And follow the caravan of martyrs./ Shred the disgraceful constitution/ Which imposed degradation and humiliation/ And deterred us from restoring justice.”
Samuel Thrope and Yonah Jeremy Bob contributed to this article.