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

by Ahed Tamimi

The partition plan gave 55 percent of the land of historic Palestine to the Jewish state and only 42 percent to the Palestinian Arab state. But Palestinians at the time made up 67 percent of the population and owned the vast majority of the land, while Jews made up 37 percent of the population and owned only 7 percent of the land.

Israel declared its statehood on May 14, 1948, but not on empty, uninhabited land. The state was established on the land of my grandparents: historic Palestine. European Jews created a state on territory where the majority of residents were the indigenous Palestinian population. And in order to achieve this state in which they would be the majority, the Zionists had to violently evict the Palestinian majority. Even today, many Zionist thinkers freely admit that without the ethnic cleansing of 1948, they would not have had their Jewish state.

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.

“administrative detention.” Israel uses this designation to imprison Palestinians for up to six months without having to charge them or give them a trial. After six months, the state can renew the detention through a military administrative order. Some Palestinians end up serving years under administrative detention without ever knowing why they’re being held.

Every Palestinian knows that there can never be peace in the absence of justice—so this false concept of “peace” wasn’t just elusive; it was farcical.

The root problem is Israel’s colonial settler project, which seeks to control us, steal our land, and ethnically cleanse us from it. The problem is the occupation itself. And so, exposing the injustices of the occupation for the world to see was one of the most important goals of our movement.

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. Stones help us act as if we’re not victims but freedom fighters. This mindset helps motivate us in the fight to reclaim our rights, dignity, and land.

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

Palestinian lives are cheap. Israel couldn’t make that any clearer.

“You’re laughing now, but we’re the ones who will be laughing when Palestine is free!” I shrieked. “I’m not scared of you!” I went on. “You think just because you’re in body armor and you’re holding a gun you scare the Palestinians? You don’t! And if you uproot an olive tree, we’ll plant one hundred instead!”

While I believe that it’s the right of all colonized, occupied, and oppressed people to stand up to their oppressors, 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.

“We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

Women make up half our society, and they raise the whole of it. We have to ensure that they’re strong and empowered with education and political awareness in order to raise the next generation, who will liberate Palestine.

I learned that I had been dubbed “the Palestinian Joan of Arc” and had been likened to legendary civil rights activists like Rosa Parks. They called me a lioness. I was being nicknamed “Palestine’s icon,” a title I was honored to have but of which I didn’t deem myself worthy.

Once again, as Palestinians, we are punished if we protest violently and nonviolently.

Why should Palestinians compensate—lose our homeland, our property, our rights, even our lives—for the Holocaust committed by Europeans? We shouldn’t have to pay for the crimes of the Europeans against Jews. That’s just wrong.

I truly feel sorry for them. The occupation has brainwashed them, both the men and the women. It threatens to rob them of their humanity and their conscience, and once you’ve lost those two things, you’ve lost everything that matters in life.

Nothing built on injustice and might lasts forever. Eventually, the oppressed find a way to liberate themselves. May we all one day break free from our oppression and imprisonment. Until then, the struggle continues.