In the middle of the night on Monday, around 3 a.m., the Israeli military raided the central occupied West Bank village of Nabi Saleh in full force, a common occurrence for the village’s internationally-recognized residents, the Tamimi family, who have seen several family members — a large portion of them minors — arrested from the village in the past few months.
On Monday alone, Israeli forces detained 10 members of the extended Tamimi family, including five minors between the ages of 14-17, a 19-year-old, and the rest between the rest between 21 and 29 years of age, according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society.
Among the detainees was 15-year-old Muhammad Tamimi, who is scheduled to have reconstructive surgery on his skull on March 5th. Muhammad was released later Monday afternoon.
Israeli soldiers had shot Muhammad in the face with a rubber-coated steel bullet in December, during demonstrations in Nabi Saleh against US President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
Moments after Muhammad was shot, his then 16-year-old cousin Ahed learned of his injury as Israeli soldiers continued to surround the village, including her family home.
It was then that Ahed was filmed kicking and slapping an armed Israeli soldier who had encroached on her family’s property — an incident she would be detained for days later, along with her mother and cousin.
Ahed, who spent her 17th birthday in Israeli prison, is now being prosecuted behind closed doors in an Israeli military court that has a conviction rate of over 99 percent.
After spending days in a coma and undergoing several life-saving surgeries, Muhammad — who has been injured by Israeli forces before, and was previously detained when he was 13 — was released back home to Nabi Saleh with half of his skull missing.
Over the course of the two months since Muhammad’s injury and Ahed’s detention, the extended Tamimi family of Nabi Saleh and its twin village Deir Nitham have seen over a dozen of their relatives arrested, at least three put on trial in military court, and one — 16-year-old Musaab Tamimi of Deir Nitham — shot and killed by Israeli forces.
Campaign of Vengeance
By Monday afternoon, Muhammad had been released, while the nine others who were arrested remained in Israeli custody, according to Bassem Tamimi, the father of Ahed Tamimi.
Despite being released, Bassem told Mondoweiss that the fact that Muhammad was even arrested in the first place is indicative of Israel’s disregard for basic human rights.
“Muhammad is critically injured because of the occupation, and they put his life in even more danger last night,” Bassem said, adding “this just proves they don’t care about any international opinion, human rights or international law.”
Bassem told Mondoweiss that Monday’s detentions were just another part of Israel’s campaign of vengeance targeting the Tamimi family in the wake of Ahed’s arrest.
“Every international institution that deals with the Palestinians and human rights issues are responsible for the lives of our children and for the suffering of the Tamimi family and Nabi Saleh village,” Bassem said.
The Tamimi’s relatives in Deir Nitham expressed similar sentiments following the killing of their son Musaab in January, saying that days after Ahed’s arrest, the people of the village were threatened by Israeli soldiers who told them “The day will come when you wish you are not a Tamimi.”
“We have become a symbol of nonviolent resistance, and they [Israel] don’t want the voice of Palestine to be heard from anywhere or anyone,” Bassem said, “who knows what they will do next.”
International campaign for Ahed’s release continues
The Tamimi family of Nabi Saleh is well known internationally for their activism against the Israeli occupation, which maintains a heavy, near-constant presence in their village.
Ahed is famous across Palestine and the Arab world for videos of her, since her childhood, defiantly resisting Israeli soldiers who clash with Palestinians in her village nearly every week.
Two years ago, her family made headlines when an Israeli soldier violently attempted to arrest her younger brother, who had one arm in a cast at the time. Ahed and her mother manager to pull the soldier of her brother and free him.
Since her arrest in December, Ahed has become the subject of dozens of solidarity campaigns across the world demanding her release from Israeli prison, and an end to Israeli detention of Palestinian children.
As Ahed and her mother Nariman — who was arrested after her daughter — are being prosecuted behind closed doors, international rights groups such as Amnesty International have called for their immediate release, saying that Ahed’s detention “is a desperate attempt to intimidate Palestinian children who dare to stand up to repression by occupying forces.”
The group highlighted that under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Israel is a state party, “the arrest, detention or imprisonment of a child must be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time,” adding that Ahed is currently facing up to 10 years in prison
According to prisoners rights group Addameer, as of January 2018, there were 330 Palestinian children being held in Israeli prison.
Meanwhile, Bassem, who has been denied permission to visit Ahed in prison, waits until the next court date to catch a glimpse of his daughter.
Can`t be long before they round up all Palestinians in the O/T and Gaza and the Palestinian Arab Israeli citizens and secure them in barbed wire high fenced perimiters , turreted gun positions and dog patrolled camps. They should be able to get the American taxpayer to pay for this interim final solution.
All of this just goes to show the belligerent, despicable character of the Tamimi clan. Bassem Tamimi is spouting a lie when he suggests that his clan epitomises nonviolent resistance, and he strives constantly to feed the anti-Israel behemoth with propaganda.
“Born Again” in Deir Nidham: Against the Illegal Military Occupation, from a Black-American Prophetic Christian Perspective
Taurean J. Webb
“But this experience, as well as every experience during this first time in Israel and the occupied West Bank, was most profoundly framed by a moment that arrived upon me as I drank coffee, sitting in a family’s living room in Deir Nidham. Two weeks prior, the Israeli military unjustly abducted the family’s eldest son—seventeen—in the middle of the night.
So there we were together, this unlikely group—two white US American men, an Australian man, a Black US American man and a Palestinian woman who brilliantly facilitated and translated the experience—sitting, fully observant as the mother recounted the family’s story:
It’s 2:30 in the morning; everyone is asleep. Suddenly, the front door is broken down, as approximately twenty Israeli military soldiers storm inside. They are outfitted in full military attire, automatic weaponry, and camouflage face paint. They overturn furniture, shatter keepsakes and destroy property, as they drag everyone out of their respective bedrooms.
Military dogs accompany the men. Eventually, soldiers drag the eldest son and his younger brother into the living room. They stay for hours. So long, in fact, that another military truck arrives around 6:30 AM, bringing food to the soldiers who carried out the initial raid. When they finally decide to leave, they blindfold the eldest son and carry him away, telling no one where they would take him. Three days later, the family hears that he is detained at Ofer. ”
http://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/34264/Born-Again-in-Deir-Nidham-Against-the-Illegal-Military-Occupation,-from-a-Black-American-Prophetic-Christian-Perspective
on the 972 article about Mohammad’s arrest, the facebook trolls are typing ‘parents sending their children to the battlefield as human shields’. not surprising, but still disheartening.
https://972mag.com/months-after-shattering-his-skull-idf-arrests-teen-in-pre-dawn-raid/133443/
@Mayhem
“All of this just goes to show the belligerent, despicable character of the Tamimi clan. Bassem Tamimi is spouting a lie when he suggests that his clan epitomises nonviolent resistance, and he strives constantly to feed the anti-Israel behemoth with propaganda”
Been sniffing that old Zioglue again.
“Anti- Israel behemoth” FFS.Poor little David having belligerently and despicably neutralised Goliath( with a stone – doesn`t that ring a bell mayhem) is now facing a behemoth. No stones needed though. Ziocash non belligerently doled out in the good old US will suffice.
BTW The most moral are now claiming that Mohammed Tamimi was not shot by a rubber bullet but sustained his horrific injury “falling off his bike”. Hey Mayhem take a look at the picture:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/releasing-medical-records-tamimi-family-disputes-claim-teens-head-wound-a-con/
So Mayhem I expect you and the Israeli “military official” being honest and upright Zionists would welcome a medical examination by a truly independent specialist say from the EU to establish the truth of the case.
And if not shouldn`t the Giro D`Italia organisers be warned in advance that ” falling of bikes” in Zioland is not the same as falling off bikes back in civilised Europe as it can have the same effects as a rubber bullet shot to the skull.