They Called Me a Lioness Quotes

“Laughter sends a powerful message: We’re still alive, we’re still laughing, and we love life.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“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. We need permission to build our homes, to travel, to work—all the basic rights and freedoms you might take for granted living in a civil society simply don’t exist when you’re living under military occupation. It’s not an easy life, and yet, it’s the only one I’ve ever known.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“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, and in truth, we perhaps have even more patriotism and energy than our elders.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“I ask also that you remember your humanity, because that’s what will decide what you do when you turn these final pages and close this book. Are you going to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian cause and help in whatever way you can—whether by spreading awareness to others, pressuring your government, or further educating yourself about what’s happening? Or will you ignore what you’ve learned, put this book down, and carry on with your life as usual? The choice is yours.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“Palestinians make up 20 percent of Israel’s population, and despite the fact that they live in their own homeland, Israel relegates them to second- or even third-class status. One of my classmates had discovered that more than fifty laws discriminated against the Palestinian citizens of Israel based solely on their ethnicity. Another discussed how government resources were disproportionately directed to Jews, leaving the Palestinians to suffer the worst living standards in Israeli society, with Palestinian children’s schools receiving only a fraction of the government spending given to Jewish schools. They also talked about how difficult it was for Palestinians to obtain land for a home, business, or agriculture because over 90 percent of the land in Israel was owned either by the state or by quasigovernmental agencies (like the Jewish National Fund) that discriminated against Palestinians. And they lamented the fact that if they or any of their relatives chose to marry a Palestinian from the West Bank or Gaza, they couldn’t pass on their Israeli citizenship to their spouse, thanks to the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law. Their spouse wouldn’t even be able to gain residency status to live with them inside Israel. This meant they’d be forced to leave Israel and separate from their family in order to live with their spouse.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“Watching television in our cells, we became glued to news of the Great March of Return in Gaza, a series of demonstrations that had begun while we were attending our classes. 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. They were demanding an end to Israel’s crippling air, land, and sea blockade, which had effectively trapped them for over a decade inside the world’s largest open-air prison. And they were demanding the right to return to their homes, which Zionist militias had forcibly removed them from to clear the way for Israel’s creation in 1948. Seventy percent of Gaza’s population are, in fact, refugees.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“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.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“Eventually, the oppressed find a way to liberate themselves.”
― Ahed Tamimi , They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“We know that Jews suffered terrible, unimaginable crimes at the hands of the Nazis, and all of humanity should stand against such murderous hatred and make sure it’s never repeated. But how does that give Zionists the right to push us off our own land to make a country for Jews alone? 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.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“One of the more surprising things I learned is that as a population living under occupation, we are granted by international law the legal right to resist through armed struggle. It’s protected under the Geneva Conventions, reaffirmed in a 1982 UN General Assembly resolution. The resolution reaffirmed “the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“There is no justice under occupation, and this court is illegal.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“But whereas previous U.S. administrations at least pretended to possess some degree of neutrality, Trump burst onto the scene fully embracing Israel’s right-wing policies and appointing Zionists to key positions. He tapped his bankruptcy lawyer, David Friedman, as his ambassador to Israel. Friedman threatened the International Criminal Court over a war crimes investigation into Israel and declared that the illegal settlements did not violate international law. Trump’s own son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, was a personal friend of then–Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and even had financial ties to the illegal settlements. And this was the man Trump had tasked with leading the “peace process.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“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. We want you to see us as the freedom fighters we are, so that you can support us the right way.” I went on to explain how important it was for them to show their solidarity by boycotting Israel politically, economically, and culturally.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“The main rule was that our grassroots resistance movement had to be unarmed. The aim was to struggle and resist without hurting or killing anyone.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“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—”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“ENTERED 2021 FEELING a general sense of disenchantment. I was in my second year at Birzeit University, studying law, but the Covid-19 pandemic meant all my classes were online. Even though I was already living at home with my family in Nabi Saleh, a ten-minute drive from Birzeit, I missed the daily buzz and excitement of campus life. I yearned to be learning in an actual classroom, instead of my bedroom. But there was no telling when things would return to normal. At the same time, Israel was receiving global praise for leading the world in vaccinating its population, including settlers like the ones living across the road from our village. But not us. Despite its international obligations as an occupying power, Israel did not initially provide vaccines to the millions of Palestinians living under its occupation, a grotesque display of medical apartheid, and something that only added to my mounting frustration.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“I try, for a second, to put myself in their place. Military conscription is mandatory for them once they turn eighteen, but I could never imagine myself carrying a gun, raiding a house, or arresting someone my age or younger. Even if you brought before me the very soldier who killed Khalo Rushdie, I would never be able to pick up a weapon and shoot him.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“When I open my eyes, I see the Israeli soldiers patrolling the area by the spring on the street below. We’re the same age now, me and them, but our lives couldn’t be any further apart. I think about the teenage Israeli girls my age serving in Israel’s army, and I’m overcome with sadness. Despite the fact that they got to grow up with privileges and freedoms Palestinian children have never known, 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.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“Not just Halamish, but all the settlements where 700,000 Jewish Israelis now live on our stolen land. The violence committed by many of these settlers continues to escalate to frightening new levels, as we witness more of our people being attacked, our buildings vandalized, and our olive trees and farmland purposely set ablaze.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“The Jews have suffered, and we have suffered. And we need to find a way to live here in one country, with everyone as equals, not in this apartheid state where Palestinians are forced to live on shrinking pieces of our homeland while the best land is reserved for one group. The world did not accept this in South Africa. Why would they accept it in Palestine?”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“Zionists’ ideology claims that they have the right to take other people’s land, to push them out. And I can’t accept this. No Palestinian can accept this. No human should accept this. It’s not racist to say this—it’s the opposite. We need a country where Jews and Christians and Muslims can live together as equals, with the same human rights and democracy. Zionism rejects this vision, demanding that all of Palestine be a “Jewish” state. And some Western countries sympathize with this because of the Holocaust.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“I’m a firm believer that the international community must boycott Israel and pursue it for war crimes in the international courts. I also believe that the only possible and acceptable resolution at this point is a one-state solution. My vision is for us to live in a single democratic state where everyone is equal, Muslim, Christian, and Jew. Judaism is a religion, just like Islam. It is a different way of worshipping the same God we call Allah, and we respect that. But Zionism is a political ideology that says Judaism is not only a religion, but primarily a nationality—and that it needs a country. Not just any country, but our country, and that it needs this country to be for Jews alone. Zionism has taken our country, where Jews, Christians, and Muslims have lived for centuries, and made it a country that is ruled by and for Jews alone.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“This has been one of Israel’s worst fears, so much so that the state launched a vigorous campaign to criminalize BDS through legislation. Its top ally, the United States, has also attacked and criminalized the movement. Since 2014, state and local legislatures and even the U.S. Congress have enacted more than one hundred measures penalizing groups and businesses that boycott Israel. Thirty-two U.S. states have passed anti-boycott laws—this in a country that claims to uphold free speech. In its fierce crackdown on the movement, the United States has followed Israel’s lead in dishonestly branding BDS as anti-Semitic. But it’s not anti-Semitic. It’s anti-Zionist, and conflating the two not only is dangerous, but it dismisses our valid grievances as a population denied our human rights and our rightful land. Once again, as Palestinians, we are punished if we protest violently and nonviolently.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“The BDS movement, which was inspired by South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement, was formally launched in 2005 by 170 Palestinian grassroots and civil society groups. The aim is to put political and economic pressure on Israel to respect Palestinian rights and comply with international law. The three goals of the BDS movement are to end Israel’s military rule over the Palestinian land it occupied in 1967, full equality for the Palestinian citizens of Israel, and the right of return for Palestinian refugees who were driven out of their homes in 1948.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“As my family and I were preparing to embark on our European trip, we got word from a Palestinian Authority committee that liaises with Israeli counterparts that Israel planned to ban me from traveling. There was no legal basis for it to ban me; this was just its latest method of political harassment, an attempt to suppress me and to keep me from continuing to tell my story—their story. A large international media campaign blasting Israel for banning me from travel became just the latest public relations nightmare for the Zionist state. After a heavy backlash and the threat of my family suing, Israel eventually announced that it had not banned us from traveling abroad, but that I was banned from entering the 1948 territories because I posed a security threat to the state. As soon as we heard this news, my father told us all to hurry up and pack what we could, because he wanted to put their statement to the test immediately.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“We drove to Ramallah, to the presidential compound called the Mukata’a, where former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is buried in a mausoleum and where the current president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, is headquartered.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“Yasser Arafat”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“When Palestinian prisoners are released, Israeli authorities typically drop them off at a checkpoint, where their families excitedly wait to greet them and bring them home.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“THE ISRAELI EQUIVALENT TO a U.S. parole hearing is the shleesh, which translates to “one third.” A prisoner gets this hearing when they have completed two thirds of their sentence. They’re expected to apologize to the court for their crimes, and if the court deems them worthy, they can have up to a third of their sentence deducted and be released early. For Palestinians, this is a very rare outcome, but many of us roll the dice and attend our shleesh hearings regardless.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“Khalida explained to us that while it was very important for us to use international law and international humanitarian law as a mechanism to advance our cause for self-determination and equality, we had to understand that our fate ultimately depended on politics. Many politicians around the world were willing to sacrifice the rights of people and turn a blind eye to violations, especially when it came to Israel’s occupation. She reminded us that international law had been created by colonial powers and was disproportionately applied to serve their interests. It frustrated me to realize the limitations of international law we faced as Palestinians seeking justice. I now understood that it would never serve as a silver bullet for our cause, given how countries like the United States shielded Israel from any sort of punitive measures. Holding Israel accountable via international law would have to be accompanied by other strategies, like boycotts and divestment.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom