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

by Ahed Tamimi

But what I did was a natural reaction to seeing belligerent foreign occupiers on my family’s land, an immoral army that had just nearly killed my cousin and was now shooting at children from the entrance of my home.

Most important, we have each other.

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.

Israel’s campaign to ethnically cleanse the land of its native Palestinian population didn’t stop in 1948. It has never stopped. Today, generations of Palestinian refugees, more than seven million of them and their decendants, live across the globe.

We’re not citizens of Israel; nor do we have a say or any political rights in the state that controls every aspect of our lives. We’re stuck with the inability to plan for our futures, to travel freely, or even to move about our territories from city to city without having to cross military checkpoints.

But we Palestinians have never accepted this life on our knees. Patriotism and activism course through the veins of the Palestinian people, particularly the ones from my village. We fought against the British when they occupied Palestine. We fought in the 1948 war. And when Israel’s illegal settlement construction made its way to our village, the people of Nabi Saleh resisted that, too.

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.

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. 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.

Daring to defend what was ours was not a crime. If anything, it was a duty.

Expecting our oppressors somehow to deliver us justice was a fool’s errand. The outcome would always be consistent with what the Palestinian people had experienced for decades: Israel can murder us, displace us, ethnically cleanse us, and usurp our land and resources—all with impunity.

“The Israelis took our most beautiful cities” is a common refrain I’ve heard since childhood.

They’re within sight, but completely out of reach.

And that so many tourists from around the world can easily see more of your country than you’ll ever be able to, despite the fact that you’re indigenous to it.

Jerusalem is the third-holiest city in Islam and preceded Mecca as the first qibla, the direction toward which the Prophet Muhammad and the early Muslim community faced to pray. Beyond that, the city is central to the Palestinian struggle and integral to the soul of every Palestinian, Muslim and Christian alike. It’s our eternal capital.

Jerusalem is and always will be the most important city for the Palestinian people. If we give it up, it means giving up the Palestinian cause. And that’s something we’ll never do.

The experience made me realize that, as Palestinians, simply by residing in our homes, we practice a form of resistance.

as Palestinians, simply by residing in our homes, we practice a form of resistance.

the Israeli military robbed all of us, young and old, of a choice. At a very young age, most of us learned the hard way that we weren’t any safer inside our homes than we were out on the marches.

And yet, we all acquired this skill even before we hit puberty. For example, it didn’t take me long to stop flinching when soldiers fired something in close proximity to me. That’s how normalized the violence in our lives has become.

It is the occupation that forces the children to go out into the streets. Of course our parents worry about us, but they raised us to be strong and not to cower in the face of oppression.

We resist to live because, ultimately, we truly love life. The occupation seeks to defeat our spirits and rob us of any semblance of a normal or safe childhood, but we refuse to let it. Just as we refuse to let ourselves be controlled by fear.

The fence in front of Janna and my uncle Bilal’s home is decorated with dozens of empty tear gas canisters, an unusual display that sends a message to the Israeli army that despite its attempts to literally choke and suppress us, we’re still standing. We strive to create life out of death, and we’ll continue to find beauty even in the ugliest parts of our lives.

In this one life I was given, I knew I had to do something to help my people. If I didn’t, I’d have to answer to God for it.

You don’t! And if you uproot an olive tree, we’ll plant one hundred instead!”

The famous cartoonist once explained, “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.”

He told me how much he loved Palestine and that Turkey would always support the Palestinian people. In response, I asked, “How can you say you love us when we have to enter your country with a visa, but Israelis can travel here with no visa?”

Abbas has devoted his career to pursuing fruitless negotiations with Israel that the majority of the Palestinian people reject. Rather than executing the will of his people, he has catered to Israel by effectively using his security forces as subcontractors of the occupation.

but it saddened me to think of the multitude of images of Palestinian children injured or murdered at the hands of Israeli forces and settlers that already existed.

Yes, our lives were exceptionally challenging, but I’ve never wanted to be seen through the lens of pity, and I certainly hadn’t traveled there to solicit it.

“Thank you for your tears,” I began. “But I don’t want your sadness. Nor do I want your money. Please save that for the people in your own country who need it. My people have dignity and don’t want your pity. We’re not the victims. The brainwashed Israeli soldier who carries his rifle and shoots with no humanity—he’s the real victim.

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.

This much was evident in how 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;

its unwavering support for Israel by consistently giving the country more military aid than it has ever provided to anyone else—a trend that shows no sign of ending anytime soon.

This was a profound betrayal of Palestinians and a significant break from previous U.S. administrations, which had considered, yet put off, making such a bold move.

We kept our faces wrapped in kuffiyehs as a safety precaution, to avoid being identifiable to the Israeli army and, in many cases, to our parents. But our anonymity to one another didn’t matter. We each had a part to play in our generation’s uprising against the apartheid

Growing up, I’d heard that Israel’s founders said of the Palestinians they forced from their homes to create their state, “The old will die and the young will forget.” But my generation is living proof of the contrary. The resistance of our grandparents lives on through us,

What justification did they have, first, to fire at children and, then, to invade the home of a sick and helpless old woman?

Unless you’ve experienced a foreign army occupying your land, imprisoning your parents, killing your loved ones, and shooting you and virtually everyone you’re related to, you’ll have a hard time understanding the rage with which I was overcome—seeing the entitlement of these soldiers as they walked around our property like they owned it.

Shortly after I was arrested, a prominent Israeli journalist named Ben Caspit wrote, “We should exact a price at some other opportunity, in the dark, without witnesses and cameras.” It still gives me chills to wonder what price Caspit had in mind, but more than that, I pondered the kind of hatred these grown men must have had in their hearts to write such repugnant things and wish such harm on a young girl.

He tried to mask whatever he was feeling and appear strong for me, but I understood fully how agonizing it must be for him to see both me and his wife there—in the same military court that had killed his only sister.

But he didn’t, instead insisting that the trial remain closed, most likely because a public trial meant more negative press for Israel. A trial carried out in the dark guaranteed that the world would not continue to see how my rights, like the rights of so many other Palestinian children, were being infringed upon.

She pointed out that according to the Geneva Conventions, occupation should be temporary, but through facts on the ground—such as the continued expansion of settlements and the attempts to annex more Palestinian land—Israel had shown that it had no intention of its occupation being temporary, thereby making it illegal. The occupation, she contended, should be put on trial, not me.

The killing was caught on film. A military court sentenced Azaria to eighteen months in prison. He had to serve only half of it due to his “good behavior.” Just a few months prior to my own release, he was freed to a hero’s welcome. Ultimately, he served only nine months in prison for his crime—just one month longer than my sentence for slapping an armed adult man in the face.

And so, the occupation forces continued to target and punish my relatives. It got so bad that some of the parents, with the help of local activists, organized teach-ins to prepare the youth in the village for arrest, blindfolding them to simulate the experience. They also carried out mock interrogations and educated them about their rights.

sit around her and try to console her, and before you knew it, all eleven of us would be simultaneously weeping and pouring our hearts out about whom or what we longed for. This inevitably happened a few times every week.

Beginning on March 30, 2018, which Palestinians commemorate as Land Day, the besieged people of Gaza had protested weekly along the fence separating them from Israel.

Seventy percent of Gaza’s population are, in fact, refugees.

Each week, Israeli snipers opened fire on the protesters, ultimately killing hundreds and wounding thousands over the course of the year-long protests. The scenes of bloodied protesters, journalists, and medics were shocking and heart-wrenching.