Palestine Advocacy Project’s latest billboard ad campaign intends to raise awareness about Ahed Tamimi, the 17-year-old Palestinian activist who now faces up to 10 years in Israel’s military prison over an altercation with Israeli soldiers. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have called for Ahed’s immediate release.
On December 19 at 3AM, the Israeli military raided and ransacked Ahed’s home, arresting her along with her mother and cousin, and charged Ahed with 12 criminal counts, including assault and incitement.
During a protest, Ahed’s 14-year-old cousin was shot in the head at close range by an Israeli soldier. Israeli soldiers then invaded the Tamimi family’s home and threatened the entire family.
Ahed demanded the soldiers leave . After they refused, the unarmed Ahed slapped one of the heavily armed soldiers. It is clear from a video that later went viral, Ahed posed no actual threat to these soldiers.
The first billboard compares the apartheid regime in Israel with the former apartheid regime in South Africa. The text strikes through the name of Nelson Mandela and instead proposes Ahed Tamimi just below. Both Nelson Mandela (imprisoned for 27 years by South Africa’s apartheid government) and Ahed symbolize courageous resistance to a repressive government and apartheid systems. Ahed, who spent her 17th birthday in military prison, was arrested without charge and can be held up to 6 month with no due process rights, like so many other Palestinians. When she does go to trial, she will be in a court that has a 99.74% percent conviction rate for Palestinians. Israel’s settlers operate with virtual impunity in the Occupied West Bank.
Mona Abdo an activist with the Palestine Advocacy Project said, “Like Nelson Mandela for South Africa during apartheid, Ahed Tamimi has become a symbol of Palestine’s 50 years of resistance to Israeli’s brutal occupation and apartheid system. The world called for the release of Nelson Mandela then, and now we must call for the release of Ahed Tamimi and the 350 other child prisoners held in Israel’s military prisons.”
The second billboard picks up the focus on freeing the child prisoners in Israeli military prisons. According to Defense for Children International-Palestine, “Israel has the dubious distinction of being the only country in the world that systematically prosecutes an estimated 500 to 700 children each year in military courts lacking fundamental fair trial rights”. Additionally, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reports that ill treatment in the Israeli military detention system remains “widespread, systematic, and institutionalized throughout the process.”
How long before this comes down?
Love it
Wonderful billboard, I am just sad that it has a reason to exist.
To Palestine Advocacy Project: excellent to draw the parallel with former apartheid South Africa, keep doing that over & over & over again.
In addition, along the same lines you keep drawing the parallel with former Nazi Germany.
People have to realise that the racist polity and the regime are no better than those 2 historic racist regimes; in fact, Israel has fine-tuned, tweaked what those 2 countries did. No, there are no gas chambers, but Israel is slowly choking the Palestinians to death. It is a slow, incremental genocide, a Slowocaust as someone once described it aptly.
Speaking of “child prisoners” under Zionism’s boot:
Video: ‘Stone Cold Justice’ on Israel’s torture of Palestinian children
https://vimeo.com/86575949
“A film produced by a group of Australian journalists has sparked an international outcry against Israel after it explicitly detailed Tel Aviv’s use of torture against Palestinian children.”
“The film, titled ‘Stone Cold Justice’ documents how Palestinian children, who have been arrested and detained by Israeli forces, are subjected to physical abuse, torture and forced into false confessions and pushed into gathering intelligence on Palestinian activists. Australia’s foreign minister Julie Bishop has spoken out against Israeli’s use of torture stating that ‘I am deeply concerned by allegations of the mistreatment of Palestinian children,’ Israel’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor has described the human rights abuses documented in the film as ‘intolerable.’ But rights groups have slammed this statement, saying that the Israelis are doing nothing to change Tel Aviv’s policy to torture Palestinian children.
“Last year a report by the United Nations International Emergency Children’s Fund or UNICEF concluded that Palestinian children are often targeted in night arrests and raids of their homes, threatened with death and subjected to physical violence, solitary confinement and sexual assault. The film Stone Cold Justice has sparked an international outcry about Israel’s treatment of children in Israeli jails. However, rights groups have criticized Tel Aviv for not doing anything to create a policy that protects Palestinian children against arbitrary arrest and torture.”
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uDPeeD_RPk
Precarious Childhood: Arrests of Jerusalemite Children
This film addresses the process of arrest, interrogation, and the policy of house arrest and their effects on children. The film provides accounts of children who were arrested in order to highlight a larger policy of persecution and targeting of Palestinian children in Jerusalem.
Re: The Gaza Strip, the world’s largest outdoor prison:
Video: http://obliteratedfamilies.com/en/story/shuheibar/