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Ahed Tamimi

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Ahed Tamimi
عهد التميمي
Tamimi in 2016
Born (2001-01-31) 31 January 2001 (age 23)
Nabi Salih, Palestinian National Authority (West Bank)
Known forActivism
Parent(s)Bassem (father), Nariman (mother)

Ahed Tamimi (Template:Lang-ar ‘Ahad at-Tamīmī, also Romanized Ahd; born 31 January 2001) is a Palestinian activist from the village of Nabi Salih in the occupied West Bank. She is best known for appearances in images and videos in which she confronts Israeli soldiers. Tamimi's supporters consider her a symbol of resistance against Israeli occupation in the West Bank, and a courageous advocate for Palestinian autonomy; her detractors argue her acts are staged performances aimed at discrediting Israel.

In December 2017, she was detained by Israeli authorities for slapping a soldier. The incident was recorded on video and went viral, sparking international interest and debate. Tamimi was sentenced to eight months in prison after agreeing to a plea bargain.

Personal life

Ahed Tamimi was born on 31 January 2001 to Bassem and Nariman Tamimi in Nabi Salih, a small village located about 20 kilometers (12.4 mi) northwest of Ramallah in the West Bank (Palestinian National Authority). The Tamimi family arrived in the village from Hebron in the 1600s and about 600 of its inhabitants are related by blood or marriage.

Tamimi belongs to a second generation of Palestinian children who have grown up under conditions of occupation. She aspired to be a lawyer as a young girl. To protect Tamimi from harassment, her family relocated her to a relative's home in Ramallah. There, she continued her secondary education and could avoid the danger of passing through Israeli checkpoints en route. By her father's estimate, the family home, which had been slated for demolition in 2010 just prior to the village's adoption of its weekly protests, has been subjected to some 150 military raids as of late 2017.

Activism

The Tamimis were involved in protests and political agitation, demonstrating their opposition to the expansion of Jewish settlements and detention of Palestinians. Tamimi shares similar convictions to her family's and commentators have been polarised in their assessment of her. She believes documented, organized protests against the Israeli occupation will lead to wider recognition of the Palestinian struggle for autonomy; her viral images and videos have produced a wave of public reactions in Israel and Palestine, as well as internationally.

At 11 years old, Tamimi was commended for her courage by President of the Palestinian National Authority Mahmoud Abbas for attempting to intervene during her mother's arrest in August 2012. By 2012, she had become an internationally recognized figure; as an Israeli soldier arrested her older brother, Tamimi confronted him while waving a fist, a scene that went viral and earned her an invitation to visit Turkey from then-Prime Minister of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. She gained recognition once more three years later, after being filmed biting and striking a masked Israeli soldier who was apprehending her brother for throwing stones.

In December 2016, the US denied Tamimi a visa for a speaking tour titled "No Child Behind Bars/Living Resistance".

Slapping incident

On 15 December 2017, Tamimi took part in a demonstration in Nabi Salih opposing the expansion of Israeli settlements near her village. The protest turned violent when around 200 of the demonstrators threw stones at Israeli soldiers; the soldiers organized to quell the unrest and entered the Tamimi house to subdue protesters who, according to the army, continued to throw stones from inside the house. According to the Tamimi family, during the protest her 15-year-old cousin Mohammed Tamimi was shot in the head at close range with a rubber-coated steel bullet, severely wounding him. In response, Tamimi, along with her mother and cousin Nour, approached the two soldiers outside the Tamimi home, and were filmed slapping, kicking, and shoving them; the soldiers do not retaliate.

Her cousin was put in a medically induced coma to treat his head injury, and regained consciousness a few days later. Footage of the incident was uploaded to Nariman Tamimi's Facebook page and went viral. Days later, on 19 December Tamimi was arrested in a nighttime raid. Despite concerns about the use of military court for a minor who may have been singled out for "embarrassing the occupation", thirteen days later Tamimi was charged with assault, incitement, and throwing stones; her mother and Nour joined her, having been arrested in relation to the incident. The case drew global attention and spurred debate over the soldiers' restraint in Palestinian and Israeli societies. The Israeli military was sharply criticized by the international community, and rallies in support of Tamimi occurred in major cities throughout North America and Europe.

Tamimi agreed to a plea bargain with prosecutors on 24 March 2018, in which she is to serve eight months in prison and pay a 5,000-shekel ($1,437) fine. As part of the agreement, she pleaded guilty to one count of assault, one count of incitement, and two counts—‌unrelated to the December 2017 incident—‌of obstructing soldiers. The British Foreign Office criticized the verdict, calling it "emblematic of how the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict is blighting lives of a new generation", and urged Israel to improve conditions for minors incarcerated in its military prisons and to "safeguard vulnerable people in its care."

Hanan Ashrawi, Ammar Dweik, director of the The Independent Commission for Human Rights,Peter Beaumont and social media, contrasted the length of the sentence Tamimi received for slapping a soldier with that of an Israeli border guard who was sentenced to nine months for shooting dead an unarmed Palestinian demonstrator, and with the case of another Israeli soldier, Elor Azaria, who eventually received a sentence roughly of the same length as Tamimi’s after he executed a wounded Palestinian militant while the latter lay on a road.

Analysis

Tamimi has been described as one of the new symbols of Palestinian resistance to Israeli military occupation in the West Bank. Many Palestinians have protested their living conditions but Tamimi is one of the few internationally recognized figures of the cause. She is credited with energizing Palestinians demoralized by years of Israeli settlement building and bringing renewed attention to Israel's occupation of the West Bank. Ben Ehrenreich, a journalist who documented the Tamimi family in 2012, saw her physical appearance as a factor in her celebrity; "A great deal of work goes into ‘othering’ Palestinians", he wrote, "to casting them as some really recognizable other". Ehrenreich continued: "when suddenly the kid doesn’t fit into those stereotypes—when she actually looks like a European kid or an American kid—then suddenly all that work of dehumanization can’t function".

Tamimi's detractors consider her actions staged performances aimed at discrediting Israel. She and her family have been heavily denounced in Israel as "terrorist sympathizers". Others, including Israeli parliamentarian Michael Oren, accuse her of dressing up in "American clothes" to provoke responses from soldiers. Some Palestinians also suggest that the video may have hurt their cause by showing the soldiers behaving passively.

Documentary

Jesse Roberts of Rise Up International and Jesse Locke of AMZ Productions filmed a documentary, Radiance Of Resistance, that featured the then 14-year-old Tamimi and 9-year-old Janna Jihad. In 2017 it was screened worldwide at a number of festivals, including the Respect Human Rights Film Festival in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where it won Best Documentary. The Singapore Government's Media Development Authority (IMDA), which the previous year had prohibited showings of Tan Pin Pin's award-winning documentary To Singapore, With Love, claiming it was one-sided, also banned public screenings of Radiance of Resistance for its "skewed narrative" which could cause "disharmony" in the country. The government's ban was described as censorship.

References

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