Ahed Tamimi

By Khaled Ghannam

24 April 2024

The lioness of Palestine, who has defied the occupation soldiers since she was 11 years old, when she was beating the occupation soldiers to make them leave her mother, Nariman. Her mother was a Palestinian activist who rejected the apartheid wall, which annihilated the lands of the West Bank and the Jerusalem area.

Nariman, Ahed’s mother, was participating in peaceful marches in her village, the village of Al-Nabi Al-Salih, west of the city of Ramallah. These peaceful demonstrations dazzled the whole world with the courage of Palestinian farmers who refuse to seize their lands under security pretexts, so they resisted the occupation with their bare chests and hands raising the banners of freedom and the necessity of the removal of the apartheid wall.

Ahed Tamimi’s father and mother are members of the Popular Resistance Committee against the Wall and Zionist Settlements, which was established in 2009 to organize activities against the Israeli occupation in the village. A media office was also established to monitor and document the crimes of Israeli forces against the people of the village, known as “Tamimi Press.”

For this reason, Ahed Tamimi and all the sons and daughters of her generation became accustomed to the presence of intruders in their village, including fanatical Zionist settlers and soldiers of the Israeli occupation army, and she watched the men and women of the village stand defiantly against this repeated aggression.

Her father, Bassam Al-Tamimi, was one of the wonderful speakers in the village demonstrations. He even spoke in Western media about the tragedy of his village and the necessity of removing the apartheid wall. Bassam Al-Tamimi is fluent in English. He is considered one of the symbols of popular resistance against the apartheid wall. He contributed to hosting and bringing international peace activists from several European countries and even from Australia, Canada, and the United States of America. To join the people of the wall villages protests and support in their struggle.

But her father was arrested several times, and during his arrest he was subjected to severe torture using the shaking method, where his hands were tied to the ceiling fan with a fast-moving rope, which caused him to become partially paralyzed in his foot and hand. Basem Al-Tamimi once said: “We are an example of a Palestinian family that suffers from the occupation. My sister was martyred in 1993 at the hands of the occupation forces, and my cousin from mother side, my cousin from my father side, and many of my friends were martyred by bullets from the Israeli army.”

As for her mother, Nariman, she said: “All the people of my village (Nabi Salih) are facing the occupation, and Ahed is a model for them. I am the sister of a martyr, my uncle from father side is a martyr, my uncle from mother side is a martyr, my eldest brother was injured at the hands of Israeli forces in Lebanon, and my father was detained for many years in occupation prisons.” Nariman said: We learned that documenting the crimes of the occupation is a heroic process, as are all acts of resistance to the occupation.

I taught my children the necessity of photographing all the attacks they saw on the village’s youth by Zionist settlers and soldiers of the Israeli’s occupation army. She added: Yes, I was the one who filmed Ahed Tamimi slapping the soldier. It is an important moment in my life, and I am proud of what Ahed did. She is an example of a Palestinian girl who rejects the occupation and has the courage to fight the occupation soldiers. Ahed had previously been hit three times by rubber bullets, leaving her bedridden, each time she was hit.

Ahed Tamimi, since her childhood, would participate with her parents in weekly marches against the construction of the apartheid wall. She would photograph the march’s activities and send them to pro-Palestinian Resistance websites, explaining to people why they were demonstrating? Why are they trying to prevent the construction of the wall? I learned from many international activists the necessity of using strong and expressive expressions. The pictures that she was taking helped to explain the goal of the march in an easier and clearer way, so she learned that the picture is a universal language that must be taken care of. Ahed Tamimi says that every time the occupation arrests a member of her family, it confiscates all the computers from their home, and she always maintains… Additional copies of the photos which she took on their marches on private websites.

Her parents also completed her university education and know of their degrees. Ahed and her siblings were continuing their education, and even during her arrest in 2018 with her mother, she was studying in prison and took the high school exams. Her mother helped her and other Palestinian female detainees to study intensively for the high school exams, and she was able to pass with a GPA: Grade Point Average. Acceptable, even though she was subjected to investigations, court hearings, and a lot of harassment by Zionist jailers. Al-Ahliyya Amman University (AAU) granted her a scholarship to study international law.

The memory remains in the memory of the video that Nariman Al-Tamimi filmed of her daughter, Ahed Tamimi, slapping the Israeli soldier who was trying to snipe the young men of the village as they were carrying out their weekly march against the wall and settlements, the soldier who infiltrated the home of Ahed Tamimi’s family. She slapped him and said to him: What are you doing in our house? Get outside, animal. The entire Palestinian people celebrated this brave heroine, and the Palestinian artist Khairy Hatem sang a special song for her entitled: “Kaf wa Nos” means a slap and half, written by Wajdi Ghannam, composed by Muhammad Al-Gharabli, and produced by Palestinian television.

Several books were also published about her struggle, including the book:

Ahed Tamimi, Ahed Tamimi: A Girl who Fought Back, authors by Ahed Tamimi, Paul Morris, and Paul Heron.

They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl’s Fight for Freedom, Authors by Ahed Tamimi and, Dena Takruri.

This icon of struggle continues to struggle and never thinks of backing down from its goals. When the Al-Aqsa flood battle began, Ahed Tamimi organized several marches in protest the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, and she told the media that the Israeli occupation army deliberately targets civilians and cultural monuments with the aim of forcing the Palestinians to leave their land.

On November 6, 2023, the occupation soldiers stormed her house, severely beat her, dragged her into a military jeep, and detained her until November 30, 2023, when Israel released in the early morning hours of Thursday the Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi, among 30 Palestinians political prisoners it released in the sixth batch of prisoner’s exchange, as part of the temporary truce. In the Gaza Strip.

Ahed Tamimi said: The homeland is very precious. Ordinary people may not feel the importance of the homeland, because they live freely in their independent homeland, while we live under an occupation that prevents us from practicing our normal lives and prevents our homeland from giving us love and security. We feel that we have a duty to work on Liberating our homeland from occupation, so that we can have a homeland like the rest of the world. The injustice we are experiencing makes us get very angry, challenge our weakness, and scream with all our might: Enough of injustice. We are a free people who reject humiliation and humiliation. It does not matter how much it costs me to challenge the occupation soldiers. What is important is that they know that I do not fear them, but that I am ready to resist and strike them if I can.