News - Middle East: The once vibrant and lively venue of the Freedom Theater in Jenin now bears the painful marks of brutal vandalism by the occupation forces. The walls are marred with bullet holes and the rooms are strewn with broken chairs and debris after a series of raids in recent weeks.

During the three-day raid in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin, which concluded last Thursday (December 14), Israeli forces killed at least 12 Palestinians and rounded up hundreds of Palestinians.
On the intervening night of December 12 and December 13, the Israeli military carried out another raid on the Freedom Theater, a popular symbol of peace and hope in the occupied West Bank.
Photos shared by the Freedom Theater show how Israeli forces ransacked the theater and spray-painted the Star of David and a menorah (a Hanukkah candle holder) on the outer wall.
Inside the cinema screening room, the wall and the screen were also scrawled with the Star of David.
The military raid on the internationally renowned Palestinian cultural center came amid Israel’s genocidal war on the besieged Gaza Strip, which has already killed more than 20,000 people.
Since the regime launched its deadly campaign in the coastal Gaza Strip on October 7, arbitrary military raids have also increased in the occupied West Bank, with more than 300 people killed.
More than 3,000 others, mostly children, have also been abducted in the occupied West Bank since the events of October 7 on trumped-up charges, according to the Palestinian Prisoner Society and the Commission of Detainees Affairs, an independent body that keeps a tally of prisoners in Israeli jails.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a recent update that 2023 has been the “deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank” since it began recording casualties in the occupied territories in 2005.
Freedom Theater continues to be targeted
In recent weeks, the Israel regime’s random and reckless raids and arrests in Jenin have resulted in the killing of three members of Freedom Theatre: 17-year-old Yamen Jarrar, 26-year-old Jehad Naghniyeh, and 30-year-old Mohammed Matahen.
“For decades, Palestinian artists have been arbitrarily detained by the Israeli regime, sometimes for years,” the Freedom Theater said in a statement on Thursday.
“In the last few weeks in Gaza, an unprecedented number of writers, poets, theater makers and journalists have been killed,” the statement added.
The theater authorities said the regime “continues to target and destroy buildings of cultural heritage, a war crime under international law,” referring to a surge in raids since October 7.
During the latest raid on the theater house, the Israeli military shot from inside, destroying the offices and knocking down a wall of the building that houses the theater.