The story about 16-year-old Ahed Tamimi - Page 12 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14892430
Suntzu wrote:Is he still able to throw rocks?
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:


Sorry I do not know you so do not know where you are coming from. You seem to be laughing at a child being so injured that part of his skull had to be removed. I am sorry I do not understand people who enjoy seeing children harmed.

He was not throwing 'rocks' when he was shot. He was not throwing 'boulders' either, not even stones and while I know that Israel can legally kill children for throwing stones, but only if they are Palestinians not if they are Jews, when the UK army had to put up with stone throwing in Northern Ireland it was forbidden to shoot them - the reason being that the people of Britain had not dehumanised them as you appear to have dehumanised Palestinian children.

The protests are against the stealing of their water and land. Obviously it is hard for people when thieves have an army which shoots you if you protest against the theft of your land and an essential resource such as water. Obviously if people find the massive wounding of children hilarious then we have unfortunately once again reached a point of inhumanity we have not seen since WW2.
#14892541
It looks like due to Trump shouting 'fake news' and his followers believing him every time something is said which he does not want said, that Israel also believes that all they need to say is 'Fake News' and that puts them in the clear as well- not that they have not been doing this in a more subtle way before but basically now clearly you cannot believe a word they say.

The Intercept has a good article on this. He was released because there were complaints by a rights groups that a child who was still so seriously wounded would be taken in for interrogation....and it appears that the reason was to get him to agree that he fell off his bike which of course he did. This apparently resulted in them marking the news of him being hit in the head with a rubber bullet as 'fake news'.

https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploa ... 1000&h=483



“Israel arrested an injured, post-traumatic 15-year-old in the middle of the night and got him to lie out of fear of being sent to prison in his condition,” the Tamimi family said in a statement.

To debunk the Israeli claim, the family also released Mohammed’s medical records, showing that he had undergone emergency surgery to remove a bullet from the left side of his head on the day he was shot in December. Images of the bullet, in a CAT scan of Mohammed’s brain before surgery, and after it was removed, were published by Israeli journalists.

......

Sarit Michaeli, an activist with the Israeli rights group B’Tselem, which documents the occupation, shared some of the medical records online and called the Israeli military’s attempt to deny reality “Orwellian.”

....

The Tamimi family statement also noted that this attempt to deny that Mohammed had been shot by an Israeli soldier followed a bizarre claim from another senior Israeli official who argued that Ahed and her cousins were unrelated actors only pretending to be oppressed by Israel.

“What began with a far-fetched attempt to claim that we are not a real family at all has now moved to the denial of documented reality,” the Tamimis said.


cont'd
https://theintercept.com/2018/02/26/pre ... test-icon/

It really does stretch the imagination as to how thick the Israeli Government believes its citizens are. Let's hope at last they begin to see that they are being fed a load of tosh.
#14892628
The situation becomes even stranger. Israel newspapers are apparently going along with this hoax in order to deceive Israelis

The IDF spreads a lie and the Israeli press plays along

https://972mag.com/the-idf-spreads-a-li ... ng/133493/

It was important to make Mohammed make this 'confession'. Ahed is correctly saying that it was seeing Mohammed shot which made her react to the soldier as most be would agree was a perfectly understandable emotional response to seeing your cousin shot in the head. This does not work for Israel's intent to put Ahed in jail for ten or twenty years for this. In order to do that they have to keep up their drama that they are not real people, so they get Israelis to believe that there was no shooting of Ahed - and they will do it...and up the shouts of antisemitism to get them all to agree to everything they say as they cower in fear and harm the 'other'. They are destroying themselves.

another 972 article on this Military dictatorship requires dehumanization

https://972mag.com/military-dictatorshi ... on/133507/
#14892704
I did wonder if they beat the boy with an exposed brain into this absurd confession because of Ahed's "crime" of slapping that soldier happening as a response to the boy being shot in the face by IDF terrorists.

Really though, trying to claim the kid shot in his head "fell off his bike". Israel's military are quite the comedians. :lol:

Those military courts in occupied territory always beat or torture kids into admitting to whatever Israel says and the same courts have a 99% conviction rate, so yay to justice in that only democracy yada yada, they're going to imprison Ahed for a long time.

alethea wrote:I see in the article below the Israelis tried to stop the Red Crescent getting him to hospital


I didn't know that about this story, but know Israel does this type of thing routinely, along with stuff like bombing hospitals and refugee shelters during its intermittent massacres.

alethea wrote:That is a good little thread he has there.


This one too:





#14892800
Oxymoron wrote:Saying Jews are racist to Arabs, is beyond hilarious being that they are both Semites. :lol:

only a zionist or a White Nationalist would suggest anyone would suggest Jews are racist!




Note point 1)Anyone who thinks the terms Jews, Israel and Ziionism are interchanable may well be an antisemite

points 5 and 6 of course are applicable to people speaking about Muslims also.

Jews have historically been against racism and ethnic Nationalism. A big reason why most Jews were against Zionism certainly until the holocaust, possibly the 50's. In this Israel from the beginning has differed. The British in Palestine noticed the big difference between Jews in general and Zionists on the issues or racism and etnic Nationalism, noting the Zionists were very racist.

If it had not been for the American Christian Zionist desire for Armageddon Israel would have continued to have been acknowledge by the UN and world as a Racist State.

Lenni Brenner speaks here about the racism of early Zionists particularly Jabotinsky. Netanyahu's father was his personal secretary and Natanyhau and the Likud party without question follow this. Of course there are even worse in Israel now.

https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/d ... /index.htm

White Nationalists recognise that Israel and them are on the same page.

https://972mag.com/neo-nazi-tells-israe ... sm/129321/

and of course Israel is currently making friends with all the Western Far Right Parties and ignoring concerns of their Jews about their antisemitism.

Ben white is not an antisemete.

Now back on topic.
#14893203
@alethea you might find this podcast interesting:


Even The Washington Post is laughing at Israel's claims that a boy its soldier shot in the face "fell off his bike". :D
How a Palestinian teen’s rubber-bullet injury to the brain turned to a biking accident overnight
JERUSALEM — At their West Bank home last month, 15-year-old Mohammed al-Tamimi’s family said it was a miracle the teenager was alive after being shot in the head with a rubber-coated metal bullet by an Israeli soldier.

Mohammed himself only talked a little, still struggling with his injury. A deep scar ran along his head, which sagged on the left hand side where part of the skull had been removed. He had spent nearly a week in a coma, they said.

But on Monday night, a top Israeli military chief for the Palestinian territories slammed his story as “fake news,” despite medical records and testimony from witnesses that backed up the family's version of events.

The teen, who had been arrested in a night raid in the early hours of the morning as he was still awaiting surgery to have his skull bone put back in, had admitted under questioning that he had been injured when he had fallen off his bike, Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai posted on Facebook. Mordechai is the head of the Israeli military authority responsible for government policy in the Palestinian territories, known as COGAT.

That fact exposed that “culture of lies and incitement continues among the children and adults of the Tamimi family,” he said.

It is just the latest twist in a long-running saga between the well-known Palestinian activist family and Israeli authorities. Mohammed’s 17-year-old cousin Ahed is on trial for charges including assaulting a soldier, after a video went viral of her lashing out at two soldiers in the yard of her home.

With Ahed turning into a Palestinian cause celebre, the family says that Israeli authorities are desperate to silence them. At the first hearing of Ahed’s trial earlier this month, the military judge ruled that it should be held in secret, despite her lawyer’s protestations. Part of her defense is that the soldiers were part of a group that had shot Mohammed just moments earlier.

“They want to do anything in their power to discredit not only Mohammed, but also the family,” said Mohammed’s uncle Attalah Tamimi. He said that the boy was scared, not in a fit medical state to be questioned, and said he had fallen off his bike because he was afraid that he would be detained if he admitted he was shot during a demonstration. He is on anti-epilepsy medication to prevent seizures, he said.

“He must be the first Palestinian teenager that the Israeli army believes when he denies he is involved in clashes,” said Jonathan Pollak, an activist with the campaign to free Ahed. He described the turn of events as “preposterous.”

The extended Tamimi clan dominates the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, where they hold weekly protests against Israeli occupation and the neighboring Israeli settlement, which they say has stolen their land and water spring. Israeli critics paint them as provocateurs and even actors, with a subcommittee of the parliament launching an investigation in 2015 into whether the family was real or actors.

A spokesman for the Israeli military declined to comment whether there was a record of anyone having been shot with a rubber bullet in Nabi Saleh on Dec. 15, the day in question. A medical report provided by the family from a hospital in Ramallah says that Mohammed was admitted with a bullet injury. The hospital confirmed that it was genuine.

The bullet had entered his head, but there was no exit wound, the report said. It described him as drowsy and bleeding “profusely.” After an urgent brain scan, a “metallic bullet [was] noted in the left temporal lobe,” it said.

“This is not a case of he says, she says,” said Pollak, who said he was about 30 meters away when the incident happened and helped Mohammed to a hospital. “The boy was shot.”

Rights groups said that Mordechai's statement is shocking. A statement from COGAT later reiterated that the post under the heading “The truth about Mohammed Tamimi” and with “Fake News” stamped across it in red was based on Mohammed's version of events, which he repeated several times. “The truth is always our guiding light and we will continue to present the truth in order to expose the Palestinian incitement apparatus,” it said.



“A surgeon removed the bullet from Tamimi's skull after he allegedly fell off his bike,” said Amit Gilutz, from the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem. He said that the arrest of a 15-year-old as he awaited surgery to replace part of his skull after being shot in the head is “testament to just how little regard Israeli authorities have for the well-being and lives of all Palestinians, including minors.”

“Having been interrogated under such conditions, it's no wonder if Tamimi indeed confessed to sustaining the injury due to a bike accident,” he said. “He may as well have confessed to it being the result of a dolphin-back-riding accident in the sea of Nabi Saleh.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wor ... overnight/


#14893209
skinster wrote:@alethea you might find this podcast interesting:


Even The Washington Post is laughing at Israel's claims that a boy its soldier shot in the face "fell off his bike". :D




Yes I have listened to that massad podcast. I couldn't find it or I would have put it in. I would recommend everyone listening to it. It made a lot of things just tie in with me.

They have to be a laughing stock now, have to be. The thing is they have been doing this for years. They tell their people something like 'there is no occupation' and their people start to believe that. I have watched Israelis change their history year on year and possibly the saddest thing is that they really believe what they are saying, the less acceptable thing is that the US lets them away with it - even joins in.

This time I think they have simply gone too far. How you can change what is known and recorded and documented as an injury caused by a rubber bullet with steel insert being fired at close range at the skull to being a kid falling off his bike. It is just too ridiculous, none but the insane and those who never want anyone to trust them again will go with. I remember with the MM. The IDF initially put up the record of its first talk with it. Then they took it down and put up one with a load of things taken from other places pretending the people on the MM were being antisemetic to excuse their later murderous attack. I heard the first recording. It was only available for about half an hour but I heard it so I knew immidiately when they came out with the antisemeitic one that it was a fraud. I have also heard where all the bits and pieces came from but most Israelis I speak to genuinely believe the fraud call the IDF put in from the MM was genuine. That is why it works for the extreme right in Israel. They really manage to get their people to believe the whole world is against them because they are Jews. Another example. In 2014 Bennet spoke to the Saban Forum. He told them that what he intended doing was annexing Area C and giving the Palestinians little bantustans where they could have some automony. Now these were Israels staunchest American Jewish supporters. One of them said (it was the one who was in charge of the last piece effort but the name escapes me). He said 'do you really think that anyone is going to accept the Palestinians being the only people in the world to live without self determination for ever.' Bennett said yes, it just takes a little psychological work. They have done that now.
#14894452
Ahed’s Generation: Why the Youth in Palestine Must Break Free from Dual Oppression
As global voices continue to demand the freedom of 17-year-old teenage Palestinian girl, Ahed Tamimi, Israeli authorities have arrested nine additional members of her family.

Those who were detained on February 26 include Ahed’s 15-year-old cousin, Mohammed Tamimi.

Israeli troops had shot Mohammed in the head last December, shattering his skull. The teenager, who is awaiting reconstruction surgery, is unlikely to receive proper medical care in Israeli prisons.

Ahed’s crime was that she slapped an Israeli soldier in a video that, since then, went viral, shortly after her cousin was shot. He was then placed in a medically-induced coma.

The Israeli soldier who shot Mohammed did not receive even a reprimand for shooting-to-kill an unarmed boy.

The Israeli military provided an outrageous explanation of why the Tamimi family members, all hailing from the small village of Nabi Saleh, were detained in a pre-dawn army raid.

“The detainees are suspected of involvement in terrorist activities, popular terror and violent disturbances against civilians and security forces,” the Israeli military spokesperson said.

By ‘popular terror’, the statement was referring to the recurring protests led by the 500 residents of Nabi Saleh against the illegal settlements and Apartheid Wall. These protests have been a staple in the everyday life of the village for nearly 12 years.

Anywhere between 600,000 and 750,000 illegal Jewish settlers live in settlements placed strategically throughout the Occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. They are a glaring violation of international law.

Aside from the massive Israeli army build-up in the Occupied Territories, the armed settlers have been a major source of violence against Palestinians.

Ahed and Mohammed Tamimi, along with hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children and teenagers, were born into this violent reality, and feel trapped.

Their collective imprisonment is not only as a result of the perpetual military occupation of their land by Israel, but also by the fact that their leadership has operated for many years in a self-centered fashion, orbiting far away from Nabi Saleh and its tiny, struggling but brave population.

Nabi Saleh is relatively a short distance away, northwest of Ramallah, the political base of the Palestinian Authority (PA); but in some way, both places are a world apart.

The PA was formed in 1994, as one of the outcomes of the Oslo Accords, which was initially reached and signed in secret by the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel.

Most Palestinians in the Occupied Territories matured politically or were even born after the advent of the PA. They have no other frame of reference but Israel and the Ramallah-based authority.

The latter has grown comfortable by its wealth and status and, with time, evolved into a culture of its own. It is no longer a democratic institution, and definitely does not represent all Palestinians.

Thus, Palestinian reality is now shaped by three forces: the domineering Israeli occupation, the subservient and self-centered PA and the indignant and leaderless Palestinian youth, which is held captive in dual bondage.

This is why Ahed’s slapping of the Israeli soldier resonated throughout Palestine, and among Palestinians across the world. It was a symbol of defiance that, despite the twofold oppression, Palestine’s youth still have the power to articulate an identity, one that is, perhaps, captive but nonetheless resilient.

Although Mohammed’s skull is crushed, he continued to speak out as soon as left the hospital. The spirit of the Palestinian people is clearly not broken, and Palestine’s youth are the only way out of the double-walled cage.

Alas, the mission of this generation of young Palestinians is even harder than previous generations, especially Palestinian youth that led and sustained a 7-year-long uprising, the Intifada of 1987 – also known as the Intifada of the Stones.

That generation resurrected the Palestinian cause as they daringly organized their communities, mobilizing all efforts to challenge the Israeli occupation. Thousands were killed and wounded at the time, but an empowered Palestinian nation arose in response.

The Palestinian leadership used the Intifada to reinvent itself. It exploited the attention young Palestinians had garnered to negotiate Oslo, which ultimately gave some Palestinians special status and denied the rest any rights or freedoms.

The PA, led by aging President Mahmoud Abbas, understands well that if the youth are to be given the chance to mobilize, another Intifada would dismantle his entire leadership, possibly in a matter of days.

This is why, no matter how serious the disagreements between Abbas and the Israeli government become, they will always stay united against any possibility of a popular Palestinian revolt, led by the youth.

Numerous Palestinians have been arrested, imprisoned or tortured by Palestinian police in the years that followed the formation of the PA. The latter did so in the name of ‘national interest’ while, in reality, it was done in the name of Israeli security.

Indeed, Oslo has allowed both Israel and the PA to maintain ‘security coordination’ in the West Bank. This has mostly been used to keep the illegal settlements safe and to prevent Palestinian youth from confronting the Israeli army.

Such a practice has meant that the PA became a first line of defense against rebelling Palestinians.

While Palestinian officials continue to pay lip service to Ahed Tamimi and thousands of young Palestinians who continue to endure imprisonment and ill treatment by Israel, in truth, Ahed epitomizes the antithesis of everything that the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah stands for.

She is strong, morally-driven and defiant; the PA is subservient, morally bankrupt and quisling.

Palestinian youth already understand this, and it is mostly up to them to free themselves from the confines of military occupation and corruption.

In his seminal book, ‘The Wretched of the Earth’, anti-colonial author and revolutionary, Frantz Fanon wrote, “Each generation must discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it, in relative opacity.”

Ahed and Mohammed Tamimi’s generation have already discovered their mission, and it will be them who will continue to fight for its fulfillment – their freedom and the freedom of their homeland.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/03/07 ... ppression/
#14895800
What's going on, first The Washington Post and now NBC :eh:

Slap heard ‘round the world: Ahed Tamimi becomes symbol of Palestinian resistance
NABI SALEH, West Bank — The online footage of a 16-year-old Palestinian girl, Ahed Tamimi, slapping and punching armed Israeli soldiers towering over her reverberated around the world.

After being arrested with her mother, Nariman, days after the Dec. 15 incident, the teen with long blond curly hair swiftly became a global symbol of resistance to Israeli occupation.

Tamimi, now 17, did that by simply bucking a longstanding stereotype of Palestinian activists — hoary old warriors and rock-throwing young men — and in the process electrifying a Palestinian population disheartened by years of settlement-building on land envisioned as a future state. She also prompted renewed international attention on Israel's occupation of the West Bank, and on the Palestinian cause in general.

The teen's fate now lies in the hands of an Israeli military judge who is weighing charges of incitement and assault. She has been imprisoned since her arrest, and her trial was scheduled to resume Sunday behind closed doors.

Sineen Amereh, 16, a Palestinian resident of Arab-majority east Jerusalem, has no doubt about Tamimi’s importance to her people's struggle against the occupation, as well as to the role of girls in that resistance.

“She’s a perfect idol for all girls her age — nobody before has done something like that,” said Amereh, an 11th grader. “If we weren’t brave, then the Israeli soldiers would think we’re weak, think we will just give up.”

Amereh says she and others are scared of soldiers like the ones Tamimi faced, but her fellow teen's actions have given her confidence to stand up to injustice.

“Everyone is afraid, but we will keep fighting because it is not easy to give up on your land, on your home,” said Amereh.

It is commonly felt by Arabs in east Jerusalem and the West Bank — which Israel has occupied since the 1967 war with Syria, Jordan and Egypt — that Israel is deliberately driving Palestinians from their homes. From 1967 to 2016, some 200 Jewish settlements housing around 600,000 people were built on occupied land, according to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem. There are some 2.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank.

Israeli checkpoints limit the movement of Palestinians, and many cannot get to land that they say is legally theirs but lies near Jewish communities. Meanwhile, a process to create an independent Palestinian state as part of a “two-state solution” has foundered.

While Ahed Tamimi has excited many Palestinians hoping to end decades of statelessness, she and her family have been denounced in Israel for being, at best, terrorist-sympathizers who train children to deliberately provoke soldiers on film to discredit the country and its army.

“It’s an extended family that committed terror attacks, and she’s part of this theater,” said Anat Berko, a member of Israel's Parliament and an expert on female and child Palestinian suicide bombers.

“You’re speaking about a society that used and abused those children," Berko said of the Palestinians, adding that filmed episodes involving Tamimi and her family were classic “Pallywood” — an attempt to manipulate the media to score public relations points against Israel.

Berko praised the Israeli military — “the best soldiers on earth” — who have been criticized for heavy-handedness in this and other cases.

“She slapped a soldier and he didn’t do anything,” Berko said. “An American soldier or a British soldier — do you think he would let her push him in such a way?”

Berko does not question the Tamimis' authenticity, but others have.

Israeli Deputy Minister Michael Oren sparked outrage in January after admitting that the Tamimis had been the subject of a classified investigation into whether they actually "light-skinned" actors and not a real family.

Ahed Tamimi has long been filmed and photographed protesting and confronting soldiers in Nabi Saleh, a cluster of buildings on a couple of hillocks in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

An Israeli watchtower sits in a gray-walled base on the road into town. Next to it a sign warns in white lettering against red: “The Entrance For Israeli Citizens Is Forbidden, Dangerous To Your Lives And Against The Israeli Law.”

Rows of neat red-roofed houses sit within sight of the village. This is Halamish, a Jewish settlement deemed illegal by international law.

In 2009, led by Ahed Tamimi’s father, Bassem Tamimi, villagers and rights groups started holding weekly Friday protests against what they saw as the settlement’s expropriation of land and appropriation of the village’s water source — a spring.

In a recent act of violence in Halamish, a Palestinian man broke into a home in July and fatally stabbed three member of one family

Nabi Saleh has an estimated population of around 600, almost all of whom are Tamimis, a clan famous for its decades-long resistance to Israeli occupation. Hundreds of villagers have been detained, wounded or killed protesting.

In 2011, Mustafa Tamimi died after a tear-gas canister hit him in the face at close range as he threw rocks at soldiers. In 2012, Rushdi Tamimi was shot dead by Israeli soldier while he was throwing stones. Tamimi’s cousin Ahlam Tamimi was imprisoned for her involvement in a 2001 suicide bombing of a Jerusalem pizza restaurant that killed 15 and wounded more than 120.

A handful of Israeli soldiers stand smoking on the side of the main road into Nabi Saleh one day last week. Three skinny young men hover around 100 yards away. A couple of hours later, a series of booms echo up the hill, sending a herd of goats scurrying to the edge of a field. White clouds of tear gas drift over the rocky ground before dispersing.

A few children wander the town’s streets, chatting and joking with journalists. One is Mohammed Tamimi, 15, a gangly boy who looks like part of his skull has been sliced off at an angle.

According to the family, Mohammed's injury provoked Ahed’s outburst in December. Family, rights activists and journalists who have seen medical documents say he was shot in the head by an Israeli soldier minutes before the confrontation in the front yard of Ahed’s house.

At least one Israeli military official contests that account, and says Mohammed admitted during interrogation that he was injured falling off a bicycle. Later, Mohammed said he had been under duress during the detention — part of regular sweeps of Nabi Saleh’s young people — and was afraid he wouldn't be let go if he told the truth.

Israel has been criticized for its arrests of boys and more recently girls — a trend Ahed has been part of.

In 2015, one out of every 250 inmates in Israeli prisons was a girl, according to Ayed Abu Eqtaish of the Defense for Children International Palestine, which advocates for the rights of minors in Israeli detention. After October 2015, that ratio rose to around 10 girls out of every 300 inmates.

Amnesty International has also criticised Ahed's detention, saying in a statement that “footage of this incident shows that she posed no actual threat and that her punishment is blatantly disproportionate.”

She's also garnered the support of a series of public figures in the U.S., including the N.F.L.'s Michael Bennett, the academic Cornel West, and the actors Danny Glover and Rosario Dawson, who signed a petition calling for her release.

The comedian Sarah Silverman provoked praise as well as outrage when she said on Twitter that Jewish people had “to stand up EVEN when — ESPECIALLY when — the wrongdoing is BY Jews/the Israeli government.”

When asked to comment on this story, an Israeli military spokesperson said in a statement that “unfortunately, in recent years, many minors, sometimes very young, have been involved in violent incidents including acts of terror, and other offenses.”

“When the law is enforced against minors, it is done taking their age into account,” it added.

Privately some Palestinians are asking whether they should allow their sons and daughters to get caught up in protests at all. While there has been no public discussion on the issue, Nabi Saleh’s children haven’t held a protest in weeks.

One Palestinian who asked not to be named because he didn't want to put his children in the public eye said that while he admires Ahed as a fighter for Palestinian rights, he would not wish for his own daughter to do the same.

“She should go to school and be at home,” he said.

Ahed’s younger cousin Janna, 11, does not stay at home. She calls herself the world’s youngest journalist and has some 275,000 followers on Facebook, where she goes by the name Janna Jihad. She's been active since the age of 6 or 7.

Janna speaks English with an American accent, and finishes many of her statements with, “So yeah.”

“I wanted to be the voice of the Palestinian children and send their message to all the world," Janna said. "Let this world know about our suffering our feelings, our parents getting killed, our sisters and brothers getting injured and arrested."

Janna then climbed a tree next door to pick green almonds for her family and guests, before kicking a soccer ball up the road outside Ahed's home.

Bassem Tamimi, Ahed's father, is exhausted by the constant media requests, as well as from looking after three children without his wife — who remains in jail too — while also working at the Interior Ministry of the Palestinian National Authority.

An experienced activist, he has been detained many times by Israeli authorities, and convicted of “sending people to throw stones, and holding a march without permit.”

Amnesty International has called Bassem Tamimi a prisoner of conscience, while the European Union has labeled him a human rights defender.

A tour of Ahed's bedroom reveals orange walls out of the 1970s, dirty clothes spilling out of a hamper and posters of Ahed on one of two single beds covered in rumpled purple sheets.

While Tamimi says he’s slept in his daughter's bed a few times since she went to jail, he is unsentimental about raising his children to fight the Israeli occupation. For one thing, he said, it is impossible to keep them out of trouble, what with regular military raids and the presence of soldiers.

“In India they give a small amount of poison to every child born to protect him and defend him from the snakes,” he said. “And we must train ourselves from the snakes in our life, the occupation.”

His children have no choice but to live under occupation where “there was no safe place,” he said.

But, he adds, “if you give me a promise from your country, and European countries ... if we have a promise that the occupation will leave our life [in] 10 years, I will send [Ahed] to be a dancer.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/slap ... ce-n854501
#14898238
Israeli Court Rejects Ahed Tamimi's Request for Public Trial 'For Her Benefit’
The military appeals court rejected the request of Ahed Tamimi, the Palestinian teenager who will stand trial for striking Israeli soldiers, to hold the proceedings in open court, claiming a lack of authority.
Last week the military prosecution told the court that it had no objection to a public trial. The decision to hold the trial behind closed doors, which the prosecution did not ask for, was made by a lower court, which said that it was for “the minor’s benefit,” even though all of her detention hearings prior to her being charged were public.

...added that Tamimi’s request was denied in the absence of authority but that the defense can ask for reconsideration.
http://archive.is/MmaSr#selection-2607.0-2607.120


Sarah Silverman Slammed After Calling for Palestinian Teen Ahed Tamimi’s Release
#14898559
Ahed Tamimi has been sentenced to 8 months in prison for slapping an occupying soldier who was amongst those who shot her cousin in the face, minutes earlier. Of course the murderer-soldier gets to sleep in his own bed at night, in between maintaining a brutal military occupation on the natives of the land, the Tamimi family being amongst them. Israel is disgusting.
#14899180
Three reasons why Israel backed down, and Ahed Tamimi will walk free
Diplomatically, many nations that were already worried about the ill-treatment of Palestinian children in Israeli military prisons spoke up. The EU said it was “deeply concerned” about the arrest of minors. Diplomats from around the world were mobilised to watch Ahed’s hearing, with representatives from Germany, France, Belgium, Spain, and many others attending her trial.

(3) Ahed’s arrest was supposed to deter Palestinian youth but instead it inspired them to organise

The Israeli military hoped that the arrest of Ahed would deter the youth of Nabi Saleh (Ahed’s village) and Palestinians across the region from protesting. What happened was the opposite: The youth were inspired by Ahed’s agency, and protests in Nabi Saleh and elsewhere became larger and more intense.

Youth from the villages around Nabi Saleh also joined its protests. And Palestinian students began the process of organising a #March_for_our_freedom. Fearing further upheaval, and unwilling to make Ahed a bigger hero, the Israeli military was forced to give in and drop 8 of the charges against Ahed. Instead of spending over 3 years in prison based on what they had initially pursued, she will now be out in July — early enough to go to her first year in college. The only thing she was booked for were the things in the video — slapping a soldier and calling for protests. They dropped the charge of inciting to bombings and stabbings for her and her mother, and the charge of stone throwing. For the next 4 months in prison, Ahed will focus on her studies and take her final year exam.
The Israeli military was forced to give in and drop 8 of the charges against Ahed as part of a plea bargain, in which Ahed recognized in court the fact that she slapped the soldier and called for protests. In return, Ahed will get the minimum sentence of 8 months instead of spending at least 3 years in prison based on what the military prosecutor was initially seeking. Lawyers at Ofer Military Court told us we would be lucky if they offered a 2 year plea bargain. But now, Ahed will be out in July — early enough to go to her first year in college. For the next 4 months in prison, Ahed will focus on her studies and take her final year exams. Ahed’s mother, Nariman, will also be released at the same time.

The fact that a child will be jailed for 8 months for slapping a soldier whose troops just shot her 15 year old cousin in the face is extreme, but in the context of the 99% conviction rate in the Israeli military court system and right-wing incitement against Ahed, this compromise by the Israeli military shows they have decided to back down in the face of growing pressure to release Ahed. In fact, they were begging Ahed’s lawyer, Gaby Lasky, to accept the plea bargain. Below are the 3 main reasons why the Israeli military was forced to back down, and give Ahed the minimum possible sentence:

(1) Ahed refused to be coerced so there wasn’t enough evidence to convict her

Israel subjected Ahed Tamimi to intense military interrogations led by a member of Israel’s military intelligence. The interrogation tactics were meant to coerce her into admitting guilt on the 12 charges brought against her. Detained children, who are often beaten, disoriented, and afraid, end up saying anything the interrogator wants them to — but Ahed courageously maintained her right to remain silent throughout the entire interrogation.

Unable to break Ahed, the Israeli military arrested 10 other Palestinians from Nabi Saleh, 8 of them children. These children also remained steadfast and refused to allow the military to coerce them into giving false testimony to indict Ahed.

Hence, the prosecutor did not have enough evidence to indict Ahed, which made it difficult to complete here trial, especially while it was garnering significant international attention.

(2) Ahed’s case created massive global uproar from citizens to diplomats: millions around the world watched in shock as a 16 year old girl was terrorized, and Israel failed to spin the story.

After a massive right-wing Israeli campaign calling for the arrest, and sometimes even murder, of Ahed, which was followed by her arrest, Ahed quickly became a symbol of Palestinian children. Dozens of media networks flocked to cover her story, and in so doing shed a spotlight on the detention of Palestinian children in Israeli military courts. Over 1.75 million people around the world took action with Avaaz and demanded that Ahed and Palestinian children be released. Amnesty and Human Rights Watch joined her campaign — and news networks from the BBC to Xinhua, and from CNN to Al Jazeera reported her story.

In an effort to spin the story in Israel’s favor, former Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, claimed that the ‘Tamimi family were actors’, which journalists did not buy. Oren further claimed that the Knesset had a committee investigating the “authenticity” of the family, which was quietly ridiculed in diplomatic circles as a sign of Israel’s paranoia and its inability to humanize Palestinians.

In a last ditch effort to defame the Tamimi family, 15 year old Mohammad Tamimi, whose skull was shattered when a soldier shot him in his face, was arrested. Ahed slapped the soldier because she heard her cousin Mohammad was shot and in critical condition — and that story intensified global support for her case. The Israeli military interrogated Mohammad and successfully coerced him into saying he got his head injury (a third of his skull was missing and he needed surgery to replace it) from falling off of a bicycle. Major General Yoav Mordecai posted Mohammad’s “confession” on his Facebook page. However, the Tamimi family quickly released x-rays, footage, and hospital records that proved without a doubt that Mohammad was shot, forcing the military to retract.

It is essential that we tell Ahed’s story as it is, one of steadfastness in prison and a failure by the military to break her. In court, Ahed said: “There is no justice under occupation.” She’s right, and that’s why this plea deal, as unfair as it is, was the best she could hope for and the biggest possible compromise the Israeli military, under pressure, could give. There are 356 children, all like Ahed, still in military confinement. Every year over 750 children are arrested. Let’s continue to take action until they are all free.

Check out the HUGE campaign to free Ahed and all Palestinian children here: https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/fr ... lobal_loc/
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