The military judge closed the doors on 17-year-old Ahed Tamimi’s initial trial hearing for slapping a soldier in occupied Nabi Saleh December 19. He said he was acting in the best interest of a juvenile defendant. But it is in Ahed Tamimi and all Palestinians’ interest for the trial to be open so that the occupation can be revealed to the world.
Ayelet Shaked, the Israeli justice minister has done it again: She has spelled out Israeli Apartheid in unequivocal terms, and tied it directly to Zionism: “There is place to maintain a Jewish majority even at the price of violation of rights.”
When Israeli lawmaker Oren Hazan, a member of the governing coalition, told BBC he’d kick Ahed Tamimi’s face and land her in hospital, Israeli apologist ‘Honest Reporting’ attacked the BBC, in a piece titled “BBC News Kicks Israel in the Face”. But Hazan was saying what other Israeli leaders have said.
An Israeli ‘legal rights group’ said Wednesday it is suing two New Zealanders for “moral and emotional injury” after they allegedly convinced the pop singer Lorde to cancel her performance in Israel. The lawsuit appears to be the first filed under a contentious Israeli anti-boycott law.
Granted an op-ed in the New York Times to spread distortions and lies regarding Israel’s critics, the country’s Education Minister Naftali Bennett attempts to whitewash the recent Israeli ban against BDS activist groups, by demonizing them as “enemy soldiers” and slyly comparing them to those who “helped Nazi Germany.”
Israeli poet Yehonatan Geffen caused a furor in Israel for his comparison of Ahed Tamimi to Anne Frank, but he has now recanted his offending comparison. This followed incitement by Israeli government ministers creating what he calls “effective house arrest” for the past week. Not so bad compared to Ahed Tamimi’s detention or Dareen Tatour’s house arrest.
Michael Oren has made himself a laughingstock by starting an investigation into whether the Tamimi family of Nabi Saleh is “a real family”, because they wear baseball caps backward. The more important question is whether Israel is a real country; and it gets harder and harder to believe that it is.
And on the day the story of the struggle is told,
You, Ahed Tamimi,
With red hair,
Like David who slapped Goliath,
Will be mentioned in the same line
As Joan of Arc, Hannah Szenes and Anne Frank.
On Monday, Israeli poet Yehonatan Gefen posted a poem on his Instagram honoring Ahed Tamimi. Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman was so infuriated by this he called for all media outlets to ban Gefen and his work completely.
The Israeli military spying unit 8200 came to public attention in 2014 when reserve soldiers refused to serve as “tools for the deepening of the military regime in the occupied territories.” Now, facing a shortage of soldiers the unit will be seeking to get its recruits from the 10th grade.
Israeli officials in the Population and Immigration authority have begun distributing an ‘information page’ for African refugees at the Holot desert detention center. The document is chilling. It does not name the third country the refugees would be deported to, but ends with a warning that “if you do not agree to leave voluntarily to a third country, enforcement and deportation steps will be taken against you.” Not mentioned in the document is the new rule that refusal to leave will entail indefinite incarceration. The document ends with a “best of luck” wish.