On Saturday, police in Haifa detained for questioning three Arab protesters who waved Palestinian flags and, on the same day, other police stopped a performance by the Palestinian rapper Tamer Nafar in the Christmas Market in the village of Kafr Yasif, claiming that his songs incite the state (See page 3).

These events are serious. They signal a change for the worse in the attitude, bad to begin with, toward the Palestinian minority, and they seem to be an attempt to criminalize Palestinian identity. The song that led police to stop Nafar’s show was “Salam Ya Sakhbi” – about violence in Arab society.