They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

by Ahed Tamimi

Nabi Saleh, by contrast, is small and simple. We have a school, a mosque, a little market, and a gas station. Most important, we have each other.

In doing so, the British gave away land that wasn’t theirs, with no regard for the indigenous-majority population living there: the Palestinians.

theyre just bein miley ...

Jews were savagely murdered by Nazi forces in World War II, devastated European Jewry but also changed Palestine forever.

Israel declared its statehood on May 14, 1948, but not on empty, uninhabited land.

Even today, many Zionist thinkers freely admit that without the ethnic cleansing of 1948, they would not have had their Jewish state.

This is so foul and hypocritical...

But in the end, Israel had seized way more of Palestine than the United Nations’ partition plan ever gave it.

Israel’s campaign to ethnically cleanse the land of its native Palestinian population didn’t stop in 1948. It has never stopped.

Some Palestinians still hold on to the old iron keys of the houses from which they were expelled, in the hope of finally being granted the right of return—a right that is supported by international law but vehemently denied by the state of Israel.

It has succeeded in convincing its own people and its supporters around the world that it needs to do so out of fear of existential elimination. But the facts tell a different story.

While they’re governed by Israeli civil law, we’re ruled by Israeli military law. There’s even a color-coded identification system to help facilitate this apartheid. We’re forced to carry green identification cards at all times, which dictate the limited possibilities of our lives. The white license plates that Israel assigns to our cars stipulate which roads we’re allowed to drive on.

He was tear-gassed for the very first time before he even turned ten. But that didn’t deter him from devoting his life to activism in the hope of freeing Palestine—something

“Why did you give me this awful name?” he bawled, throwing his hands up in the air in exasperation. Salam, in Arabic, means “peace,” and he was sick of constantly hearing all the adults around him curse peace as they discussed failed negotiation after failed negotiation between Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

Omg

Without thinking, we sprinted straight to her and her older sister Bisan’s bedroom

Differrnt Bisan. But this mde me sob. I think about her everyday all day

I wanted to meet him and become as good a player as him. But with time, the sobering reality of what it meant to be a Palestinian child growing up under occupation forced me to give up both those dreams.

All of her stories were educational. They not only shaped my imagination, but also revealed to me the generational trauma that’s embedded in our DNA.

Given the bulletproof uniform he’s wearing and the armored vehicle he’s riding in, a stone is highly unlikely to cause him any serious bodily harm. A stone, for us, is a symbol. It represents our rejection of the enemy who has come to attack us. To practice nonviolence doesn’t mean we’ll lie down and surrender to our fate submissively. We still have an active role to play in defending our land.

This this this. Lots of spiritual girlies need to take note

It didn’t take long for violence to become a completely normalized aspect of our lives.

One week, for example, we took up a soccer theme in solidarity with the campaign to expel Israel from FIFA, with some of us dressing as soccer players. For added drama, I ran up to one of the soldiers and flashed a red card in his face. Each week, we took a different path.

I learned that our problem was not with the Jewish people but, rather, with Zionism. It’s not a religious problem, but a political one. Zionism is the ideology that says that historic Palestine must be a country for Jews only. Zionism is what led to the dispossession of our land, which continues to be seized and occupied.

Zionism has occupied the minds and the humanity of far too many Israelis. That occupation is truly more frightening and intractable.

One of the many horrible consequences of the Oslo Accords is that it gave Israel full control of the water supply in the West Bank. At best, we get only about twelve hours of running water a week, compared to the twenty-four-hours-a-day supply of water (plus swimming pools) enjoyed by the settlers of Halamish, across the road.

Skunk water was invented by an Israeli company called Ordotec, which hails itself as a “green” company and calls its product “100% safe for people, animals and plants” in addition to being “the most effective, cost-efficient and safest riot control solution available.”

The news of Mustafa’s death sent shockwaves through the village and across Palestine. In accordance with Islamic customs, we buried him the next day.

And isNOTreal gives them no time to honor let alone retrieve the bodies at all in current affairs. Disgusting. A nightmare

Israel can murder us, displace us, ethnically cleanse us, and usurp our land and resources—all with impunity. I decided that, from that point on, I’d be staying indoors, where it was safer. At least, that’s what I thought.

Israel built its illegal apartheid wall to encircle Bethlehem, surrounding it on three sides. Each time I see the monstrous structure there, I cry. It breaks my heart to witness how the city believed to be Jesus’s birthplace has been strangled, cut off from its historical sister-city Jerusalem and isolated from the rest of the West Bank.

Janna always says that her camera is her gun. And truly, what she’s able to shoot with it is far more powerful than any weapon.

but they raised us to be strong and not to cower in the face of oppression. They also taught us that while it’s important to resist, we must never hate, because hatred will eat us up from inside. We resist to live because, ultimately, we truly love life.

When my Khalo Rushdie died, a part of me died, too. But so did my fear.

And if you uproot an olive tree, we’ll plant one hundred instead!”

“Handala was born 10 years old and he will always be 10 years old. It was at that age that I left my homeland. When Handala returns, he will still be 10 years old, and then he will start growing up.”

What was true about me as a child remains true now: I’ve never been scared of anyone or put anyone on a pedestal—not even a head of state.

Queen

matter the circumstances or the person in front of me, it’s always been impossible for me to silence what’s on my mind.

Yes

By 2015, the level of danger on our streets had reached an alarming new height. Sometimes, within just minutes of our demonstration starting, the soldiers would open fire on us without any warning. They also began deploying snipers, who fired live .22-caliber ammunition at protesters, aiming for their legs. We all knew they were aiming for a particular nerve in the lower leg that can leave a victim paralyzed.

This is IOF reaction to peaceful protest. It doesnt work here and it wont work there

It might strike some as odd for a young Palestinian girl to put her body on the line to defend an Israeli, but that’s not how I see it. Miko is on the right side of history. Even though it means going against his society and the army in which he once served, he puts his body and privilege on the line to support us and fight for justice. His allegiance is not to a particular country or flag, but rather to those who share his values. Miko puts humanity over nationality, and that fact alone makes him one of us.

Americans take notes

The camera was our weapon and our shield—the

After my confrontation with the soldiers went viral, some settlers published my address online, the name of my school, and the path I took to walk there every day.

Doxxing a 14 year old is crazy dude. Brainwashed monsters

I’ve always been convinced that staying alive and conveying our message through unarmed resistance is more powerful and strategic than our dying. I can’t serve the Palestinian cause if I’m dead.

The United States had long tried to sell itself as an honest broker of peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians, though anyone even remotely paying attention knew this was a farce. We had decades of proof that the United States would always favor Israel’s interests over ours.

America has repeatedly used its veto power at the United Nations to protect Israel from having to comply with various UN and human rights resolutions; in how it has turned a blind eye to Israel’s continued illegal settlement construction despite such construction’s being in violation of long-standing U.S. policy; and, perhaps most notably, in how it has demonstrated its unwavering support for Israel by consistently giving the country more military aid than it has ever provided to anyone else—a

And still does. I fucking hate this place