Judge in Israel Rules an Arab’s Poetry Criminal

JERUSALEM —  An Israeli Arab writer has been convicted of fomenting violence in a collection of poems that praised the Palestinian uprising in the occupied territories.

Shafik Habib, 51, an accountant by profession, was fined $3,100 and given three years’ probation by a judge Sunday. Lawyer Yaron Kedar said it was the first time a poet in Israel had been convicted of a crime for his works.

The poems in “Return to the Future,” Habib’s collection published two years ago, reportedly also criticized Israeli army attacks on Arab rioters in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Judge Rahamim Zemach of Acre, in northern Israel, ruled that the poems encouraged violence that might cause the death or bodily harm of another person.