Appraisals of Ahed Tamimi’s looks have been featured in reports around the world on the 16-year-old girl who slapped a soldier in her occupied Palestinian village: her long blonde hair, her western-style clothing. But this is perverse and demeaning. Ahed Tamimi’s bravery has nothing to do with what she wears or what color her hair is. The discussion needs to be about what she did, not her looks.
Why is Haaretz, a supposedly liberal outlet, publishing a one-sided, decontextualized smear piece on the Tamimi family by a known propagandist?
Israeli forces killed 17-year-old Mus‘ab Firas al-Tamimi from the West Bank village of Deir Nitham near Ramallah. “He died shortly after the occupation forces fired a bullet into his neck,” a spokesman for the Palestinian health ministry told Al Jazeera. Mus‘ab was a member of the Tamimi family, who live in the adjacent village of Nabi Saleh.
Ariel Gold writes, “Before we consider whether Ahed deserves a life behind bars, we must first take a closer look at what is a criminal action, and what is a life of enduring state violence. Is it the 16-year-old girl who dares to raise her hand to a fully armed Israeli soldier who is the criminal? Or is it the ongoing illegal occupation that places soldiers in the lives of unarmed teenage girls?”
The Israeli military prosecution against Ahed Tamimi has indicted her on 5 counts. Jonathan Ofir analyses the most essential of them – ‘incitement’ – and how it is based on arguably flawed translation of her mention on Facebook of “martyrdom operations” to mean “suicide bombings,” in an effort to make Tamimi into a terrorist in the eyes of the world.
The divergent western reactions to Ahed Tamimi’s slapping occupying soldiers– of celebration or condemnation– show there is no middle ground left in the discourse of the conflict; but the progressive side is gaining some new adherents. Lisa Goldman was moved by the case to state that she lost her Zionism observing the violence in Nabi Saleh.
The Palestinian prisoner’s network Samidoun reports the Tamimi women have been charged in Israeli military court: “Palestinian teen and youth activist Ahed Tamimi, 16, whose arrest and detention by the Israeli occupation military has drawn worldwide attention, was charged in an Israeli military court with multiple allegations on Monday, 1 January. Her mother, Nariman, was also charged with several allegations related to the Tamimi family’s anti-occupation organizing and expression; the detention of both Ahed and her mother was extended for an additional eight days, until next Monday, when the military court will convene again.”
The power of Ahed Tamimi’s slap in the eyes of Palestinians: “Your slapping of those soldiers speaks for all of us,” Hatim Kanaaneh writes. “Israelis slapped us in 1948 and in 1967 and innumerable times since. By slapping their faces, you are telling those aggressors to permit the return of the exiled Palestinian Refugees and to end the apartheid their state forces on us under the dogma of ‘the Jewish State.’”
Mariam Barghouti reports from Nariman, Nour, and Ahed Tamimi’s latest hearing where the three women’s detention was extended even though no official charges have been brought against them. Nawal Tamimi, Ahed’s aunt, tells Mondoweiss, “in the end, this is an occupation. If they could they would officially charge us with the crime of being born Palestinian.”
When liberal Zionist groups say anything about Ahed Tamimi, the 16-year-old Palestinian girl who has been imprisoned without charges for slapping an Israeli soldier occupying her back yard, it’s to praise Israeli soldiers for their restraint. They know the case has made the Palestinian cause heroic in the eyes of the world, but they are not allowed to identify with Palestinians.