Micaela Miranda, Nabil’s wife, describes the abduction of The Freedom Theatre’s Artistic Director Nabil Al-Raee, in the early hours of Wednesday June 6th. Please continue to put pressure on the Israeli authorities to release Nabil by calling and e-mailing your local Israeli Embassy or Consulate.
“We were sleeping and the dogs woke up my brother-in-law who went out to see what was going on. He came to wake me up saying the army was there. We thought at the time that the army was in the area and just I got up to check why the dogs where making such a noise.
I come out of our house and I see more than 6 soldiers at our front gate and surrounding wall, all pointing guns with flashlights on at me. One of our dogs was jumping on them like mad and I was afraid they would shoot her, so I continued walking in their direction and took her inside to close her in the stairway.
As soon as I took the dog out of the way they rushed into the limits of our house and directed themselves towards the front door that was open. I ran before them and closed the door in their face. “There are women getting dressed here” – at this moment my sister-in-law had woken up and was covering her head. They waited a little while and then knocked on the door strongly. My brother-in-law answered, they asked for his name and said “Where is Nabil?”
We called Nabil, they sat him down in the sofa on our veranda and asked us to bring his shoes, his coat, his phone and some money: “for him to be able to come back”.
At this point it was clear they were going to take him – I started asking them in Arabic, because they spoke Arabic: “Why are you taking him? Where are you taking him?”
They answered “You will know later, go inside.”
I continued to insist: “You invade my house, you are taking my husband, it’s my right to know, this is not acceptable, its 3.30 am, if you want to interrogate him you call him in.”
The responsible commander told them to take Nabil and Nabil tried to calm me down, he said “dont worry, I’ll be back soon.” He got away from the soldiers to kiss our daughter Mina goodbye and said “I’ll go on my own feet, you don’t need to push me” and he walked with them into the dark. We did not see any jeep or car, they walked away from our sight.
Three soldiers stayed on the veranda continuing to insist for us to go inside the house, and one of them took the lead and told us “If you don’t go inside I will make you go in by force.”
I told him “ We will not go in and you go out, you got what you want.”
He threatened us with his body language and directed himself to my sister-in-law, I stood in front of her and told him “Don’t you dare to touch the woman.” He stood back and said, “So then don’t go out of this veranda” and he went back to the rest of his group that were now standing by our gate, pointing their guns at us.
At this moment I could only tell them: “You don’t have anything else to do? What do you feel when you do this kind of things? Are you happy you did a good job? Why don’t you go and do something better? Go and read some books, surf the internet all night long… are you happy and proud you obey your commander? This man is an artist!”
They mocked me from afar and told me “You are wasting your words.”
“You are wasting your lives” we told them.
Nabil was calm and cooperative, as all Palestinians he knows that he had no choice and I felt he was trying to avoid any kind of conflict. We all believed in that moment that he would be back soon.”
