Palestinian Citizen of Israel Jailed for Criticism of the War on Iran

Majd Asadi at a protest in Umm al-Fahm, 2025.

Earlier this month (March 2), Israeli police arrested and jailed Majd Asadi, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, on charges of “incitement” and support for “terrorism.” Asadi is an opera singer and activist from Daliyat al-Karmel, a town in northern ’48 Palestine. He had written a Facebook post critical of the US-Israeli war on Iran. It appeared after Israel, aided by the CIA, assassinated Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, also killing his daughter and grandchild.

In his post, Asadi had dared to say that it was a good thing that under Khamanei, Iran hadn’t surrendered to Western imperialists. He also added that the US-Israeli war was motivated by wanting to control Iran’s oil and resources. The authorities considered this a form of “identification” with a “terrorist” organization (the Iranian government).

Asadi’s words rained on the parade of most Israelis, who cheer for the bombing of Iran almost as aggressively as they cheer for the bombing of Gaza. In an interview last Friday, Asadi explained that he deliberately wrote in Hebrew in addition to Arabic, so that Israelis get a dose of truth that Zionist media would never air. He views the use of the Hebrew language as a political weapon. “I want to disrupt the supremacist use [by Zionists] of Hebrew, without in any way coddling Israeli readers,” he said. And since Asadi is a vocal supporter of BDS and outspoken against the genocide in Gaza, Israeli authorities were happy for any pretext to punish him.

For his post, Asadi was arrested and jailed in the notorious Megiddo prison. Prison authorities shaved Asadi’s head, just as the German Nazis did in their concentration camps. This practice is reserved for Palestinians; Jewish dissidents don’t have their heads shaved in the Israeli prison system. Asadi was also threatened with torture, which Palestinian prisoners – especially those without citizenship – are regularly subjected to. Megiddo prison is known to use sexual violence, tear gas, dogs, and infectious disease against prisoners. Last year, a 17-year-old Palestinian from Silwad (in the West Bank) was martyred in Megiddo.

On left: Majd Asadi in Megiddo prison earlier this month. On right: Asadi shortly after his release.

Following pressure from activists and lawyers, Asadi was released within days. The conditions for his release included not posting anything about Iran or the war for five days. He was also fined 4,000 shekels ($1290 dollars).

Asadi’s treatment is another example of the apartheid system Israel has created for Palestinian citizens. Beyond the well-known dispossession and exploitation, this apartheid manifests in tight surveillance of ’48 Palestinians’ speech, facilitated by companies such as Facebook which collaborate with Israel. In 2015, for example, Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour was imprisoned and later put on house arrest for posting a poem on Facebook titled “Resist, My People, Resist Them.” For Palestinians who aren’t citizens, the situation is obviously far worse than this baseline apartheid. But stories like Asadi’s and Tatour’s debunk the idea that passport holders live in any kind of “democracy.”

’48 Palestinians have long noted how Israel’s prisons shatter the myth of Zionist democracy. In The Pessoptimist, a 1974 novel by Palestinian communist Emile Habibi, a protagonist named Saeed is repeatedly imprisoned for ridiculous violations. As Saeed is taken to prison one time, his captors lecture him about the virtues of Israeli democracy. “Our democracy is just not right for you people,” one Zionist says. Once in the cell, Saeed is viciously beaten by a group of guards. Reality is harsher than fiction: Palestinians face not only torture but also lethal rape, extraction of organs, and other horrors in Israeli prisons. As of September 2025, Israel held over 10,000 Palestinians under “administrative detection” (imprisonment without formal charges or trial) or similar forms of incarceration justified by colonial “security” reasons.

Yet this genocidal regime is more fragile than it may appear, which is why Israel desperately tries to silence critical speech. Majd Asadi, however, is undeterred. He left prison with renewed strength. “During my arrest, I didn’t back down from anything,” Asadi wrote in a March 6 Facebook post, after his release. “I stood behind what I had said without fear or reservations. And despite the wave of smears and accusations against me, I was cleared of all charges. A victory against the racism and lies!”

The post Palestinian Citizen of Israel Jailed for Criticism of the War on Iran appeared first on CounterPunch.org.