GUEST BLOG: Lois Griffiths – Palestinian Heroine
What would you do if armed soldiers of an occupying force shot your 14-year old cousin in the face at close range and then tried to force their way into your property?
What would you do if you were a mother and saw your teen-aged daughter and her cousin trying to stop the soldiers?
Not easy questions to answer for anyone in New Zealand as we’ve never lived under such a frightening situation. We find it hard to imagine such a situation could even occur in this day and age, in a normal country, at least not in a normal Western country. But Israel isn’t a normal Western country.
On 15 December, an IDF soldier shot 14-year-old Muhammad Fadel Tamimi in the face. Soldiers then entered the Tamimi property. 16-year old Ahed Tamimi , her cousin Noor and then her mother Nariman tried to push the soldiers away. Ahed lightly slapped one of the soldiers. The slap was caught on video and has gone round the world.
The incident took place in Nabi Saleh, a West Bank village. Like the people of Bil’in, of the movie 5 Broken Cameras, the Nabi Saleh villagers are hated by the Israelis for refusing to lie down quietly and die.
Right-wing anti-Palestinian Israelis fumed at the insult, the humiliation of their beloved Army. Revenge was demanded. The next night Israeli soldiers broke into the Tamimi home and arrested Ahed. Later Noor and Naiman were arrested as well.
Ahed has since then been transferred between several prisons, an Israeli tactic to wear detainees down. As of this writing she still is in detention without being charged.
This particular incident is not so isolated , Palestinian teenagers are often hauled away in night raids and abused while in custody. Several hundred Palestinian children are in detention now.
Ahed’s case though has attracted world-wide attention. Demonstrations have been held in several European cities and in New York too , calling for the release of Ahed and other child detainees. People who follow what goes on in Israel and the illegally Occupied Territories will remember other incidents when Ahed has confronted Israel soldiers, including the time when she and other women tried to stop her young brother from being arrested.
The reactions of powerful, influential Israeli right-wing groups, in sinister language calling for revenge should send a shiver down our spines.The Minister of Education Nafthali Bennett has said, “The women should spend the rest of their lives in prison”.
Ben Caspit, a journalist with Israel’s Maariv newspaper, has said, “In the case of the girls, we should exact a price at some other opportunity, in the dark, without witnesses and cameras.”
Why do we hear nothing about Ahed Tamimi from our so-called media? We should all be protesting at the Israeli Embassy demanding the release of Ahed, of all child prisoners and all political prisoners.
To the Israelis, a teenaged Palestinian girl, angry about the shooting of her cousin , lightly pushing and slapping, an Israel soldier, is a heinous unforgivable crime.
An IDF soldier shooting a 14 year old in the face is trivial. Mohammed Tamimi had climbed a ladder leaning against the wall surrounding a vacant house. Israeli soldiers were posted in the yard. When the boy poked his face over the wall, he was shot, at close range in the face, just below his left nostril. His parents rushed him to a nearby village that had an intensive care ambulance and then to a new private hospital founded by some Palestinian businessmen. Seven surgeons worked from 9:30pm to 4:30am to save his life. Mohammed ‘s mother was told that had the bullet hit just a half-millimetre to the side, she would have lost her son .
My information is from mondoweiss.net, electronicintifada.net, samidoun.net and Haaretz nesspaper. A fascinating book about the people of Nabi Saleh , is The Way to the Spring by Ben Ehrenreich.
How much longer is the West going to turn a blind eye to the oppresion of the Palestinians?
There is some good news.
A Bill before the US Congress, submitted by Minnesota Congresswoman Betty McCollum, is demanding that the US stop funding Israel’s human rights abuses against children.
Let’s hope the Bill gets passed. And let’s hope it raises public awareness, and anger, in the US and here too. So much is at stake, including our sense of humanity.
Lois Griffiths is a human rights activist and Palestinian advocate.
Please try to bring this blog to the attention of Lorde – the singer.
(I’m a very low-tech unwell 78 yr old & don’t know how to get in touch with Lorde who is under pressure (I understand) to reverse her decision to NOT SING IN ISRAEL – THE PATHOCRATIC STATE.
Please try to bring the above blog entry to the attention of Lorde – the singer, who I undertand is under pressure from Israel to reverse her decision to NOT SING AT TEL AVIV next year.
(I’m a very low tech, unwell 78 yr old & have no idea how to contact Lorde – haven’t even heard her sing.)
It’s simple really. Israelis are schooled and indoctrinated to believe that on the one hand they belong to a superior race and have been chosen by God to inhabit Palestine.On the other they are indoctrinated to regard the Palestinians as sub-human to be removed by ethnic cleansing as an impediment to God’s plan. So any level of brutality is not off the table. Much like what happened in Nazi Germany.And deranged Christians throughout the Western world have supported, aided, and abetted it in their Biblical inspired Delusions.We have come a long way in our evolution, havn’t we?!!
Let’s make no mistake here: Ben Caspit is advocating raping girls.
The comment is reported here: http://mondoweiss.net/2017/12/should-israeli-journalist/
This is the country that Lorde has decided not to tour: a country where it appears to be acceptable for a prominent journo to advocate rape as a weapon.
Even our most virulent right-wing media personalities (Hosking, Henry, et al) would recoil in horror at such a veiled threat.
It’s not that Caspit made the suggestion. It’s the fact that Israeli society has become so inured to violence, fear, and hatred that his repellent comment is not challenged.
If this is symptomatic of the fear that Israelis have toward Palestinians (even young Palestinians with only bare hands to defend themselves), then they have driven themselves into a dark corner. Fear can make people do irrational things and Israel is becoming more irrational with each passing day and year.
They have lost whatever conflict they believe themselves to be in.
Thank you Lois. I will be sharing this on social media. It validates Lorde’s decision to stay away from that country.
Why does the West support a country of people who practice such widespread genital mutilation of its male population?
When done to adolescents I’m sure it leaves psychological trauma.
Some more articles about this case:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/12/27/1727904/-The-girl-who-slapped-an-Israeli-soldier
https://www.thenation.com/article/ahed-tamimi-has-become-the-symbol-of-a-new-generation-of-palestinian-resistance/
https://www.newsweek.co.uk/i-watched-ahed-tamimi-grow-i-know-why-she-attacked-israeli-soldiers-534951?utm_source=social&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=/i-watched-ahed-tamimi-grow-i-know-why-she-attacked-israeli-soldiers-534951
And from the “you couldn’t make this this shit up” file – they’re naming a train station in Jerusalem after Trump because of his “courageous” decision to name it as Israel’s capital:
http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/New-Western-Wall-train-station-to-be-named-after-Trump-520135
From the, ‘You couldn’t make this shit up’ file:
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.831466
The foyer of the new Donald Trump apartheid train station won’t be complete, without a larger than life-size image of its new Zionist namesake champion, stomping on a Palestinian face forever.
Well maybe not, forever.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46565/ozymandias
The slap heard around the world.
The ridiculous outraged comments from Right wing Israelis that a slight Palestinian girl had the courage and the wit to insult a brutal and heavily armed soldier, with a well timed, and deserved, slap to the face.
Their outrage demonstrates one thing. That Zionists don’t consider Palestinians to be human beings, they are offended that Ahed Tamimi demonstrated her humanity and courage, by expressing in one small gesture, captured forever, her fearlessness and indignation at the way Palestinians are treated by the Israelis.
In another time and in another place, if footage of a young Jewish girl had been caught slapping the face of a heavily armed German soldier, only the most unthinking and unfeeling fools would dare express outrage at the girl, and sympathy for the hurt feelings of the German soldier.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hvqmiw2XZQ
Habeas corpus the right to a fair trial. A simple basic human right denied to Palestinians in apartheid Israel. Even Members of Parliament can be denied this basic human right. That is, if they are a Palestinian.