An Israeli company forced Mohammed Suorey, a 21-year-old from Ras Al-Amud in occupied Jerusalem, to leave his only source of livelihood because of the alleged threat from his mobile phone’s ringtone and a picture on the phone’s cover with an image of the late leader Yasser Arafat, also known as Abu Ammar, Quds Net News Agency reported.
Suorey explained to the news agency that after more than four months of working as a messenger and cleaner at an Israeli company located on Jaffa street in west Jerusalem, he was subjected to pressure from the company and the Israeli police, who demanded for him to either change his phone cover or leave his job. He subsequently experienced an attempted attack that he managed to escape only with the help of his friends.
The Jerusalemite elaborated that he had set his ringtone for the WhatsApp messages that he receives as a volunteer in the civil defence programme to play the song “Shake Israel’s Security”. He said that when he received one of these messages at work and got his mobile phone out of his pocket, which also shows an image of former President Yasser Arafat on its cover, a number of the company’s employees demanded his dismissal.
Suorey said that the company’s staff then contacted the occupation’s police forces, claiming that he is a member of a sleeper cell affiliated with Abu Ammar, and they brought the young man in for a lengthy interrogation. He told Quds Net that: “They asked me about the shoes that I got from the civil defence programme and the lighter I use for smoking, trying to link me with a security accusation in any possible way.”
He added that the Israeli police asked him to remove his phone cover and to throw it in the trash, and then remove the trash bag from the office with his hands, but he refused. The company’s manager responded by telling him to leave work.
Suorey mentioned that on the way back home he was chased by five settlers who were trying to assault him after he got off the tram at one of the stations, before two of his friends intervened, causing a fight between the two sides.