Ahed Tamimi, the detained Palestinian teenager, has accepted a plea deal and will spend eight months in the jail. She was convicted after being filmed kicking and slapping a Zionist soldier, outside her home in Nabi Saleh, in the Occupied West Bank, four months ago. Tamimi’s sentence includes too a fine of 5,000 shekels ($1,430). She told reporters on 21 March 2018, before the court accepted the plea bargain agreement, “there is no justice under occupation and this is an illegitimate court.”
Amid the silence of the International community, the Zionist military court system has, so far, convicted around approximately 300 minors in Israeli jails. A virtual silence, particularly Islamic and Arabic, upon Ahed Tamimi’s and another case, is unfortunately axiomatic.
Ahed Tamimi went on trial before a military court in a closed-door proceeding. The judge ordered journalists and diplomats to leave the courtroom, ruling that open proceedings would not be in the interest of Tamimi. After having unsuccessfully objected to the judge’s decision to close the trial, Gaby Lasky, Tamimi’s lawyer told journalists, “They understand that people outside Ofer military court are interested in Ahed’s case, they understand that her rights are being infringed and her trial is something that shouldn’t be happening.”
Britain’s minister for the Middle East, Alistair Burt, said in a statement that the jail sentence was “emblematic of how the unresolved conflict is blighting the lives of a new generation,” He added, “We will continue to call upon Israel to improve its practices in line with international law and obligations.”
Tamimi, 16 at the time of the incident, has been hailed as a hero by Palestinians who see her as bravely standing up to the illegal occupation of the West Bank. Outstandingly, she was only 9 years old when she started getting involved the regular demonstrations held in Nabi Saleh, besides in 2012, her video went viral in which she was yelling at Zionist soldiers.
Currently, numerous innocent children are being targeted, arrested and severely injured. The Zionist soldiers shoot tear-gas canisters at peaceful homes. The Zionists regularly fire lethal ammunition and rubber-coated bullets at children and teenagers, protesting against the occupation, to disperse them. Mohammed Sami Al Dadouh, a17-year-old, was shot in the neck and the bullet severed his spinal cord.
Human rights organisations estimate around 1,400 Palestinian minors have been prosecuted in special juvenile military courts over the past three years, according to the ‘Israel Defence Forces.’ Palestinian children often suffer from insomnia, bed-wetting, and nightmares. Michael Lynk, special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory has expressed, “Figures from Palestine show that Israel detains and prosecutes between 500 to 700 Palestinian children in military courts annually.”
Feminist solidarity movements around the world sprung up almost overnight over the issue of domestic violence and sexual harassment, yet indisputably, nothing comparable has been done to Ahed Tamimi’s cause. Those who present themselves as the purveyors of women empowerment and rights, such as the Western and even the Eastern feminist groups, human rights organisations and officials have shown a curious lack of support for Ahed Tamimi.
Further, the bias mainstream media have conveyed a narrative that removed critical context. Comparing Ahed’s case to their comprehensive coverage of the Syrian girl from eastern Aleppo Banna Al Abed reveals that this media is bound to the imperatives of the Imperialist Zionist foreign policy. Banna is an eight-year-old girl has become, almost overnight, a media sensation. Twitter had even verified the account, in violation of its own rules, which prohibit verification for minors as fighting in Aleppo between the National Army and the Popular Resistance against the terrorist groups intensified, in September 2016.
Bana Alabed showed up on the Oscars red carpet on 4 March 2018, at the 90th Oscars ceremony because she featured in Last Men of Aleppo, which was nominated in the Best Documentary category. She was also part of the group of activists who joined Common and Andra Day during their performance of the Oscar-nominated song Stand Up for Something.
In October 2016, a Twitter account of Banna appeared, gaining hundreds of thousands of followers, claimed to be tweeting from the neighbourhoods of eastern Aleppo under control of al-Qaeda affiliate, Jabhat Al Nusra, though it was unclear how that was possible as internet access was largely unavailable.
As the liberation of Aleppo, Banna tweeted, “My name is Banna, and I’m 7 years old. I am talking to the world now live from East #Aleppo. This is my last moment to either live or die.” Weeks after she said that her death was imminent, she appeared in the Al Qaeda controlled Idlib province in northern Syria, where the terrorists and their families had been bussed to in an agreement with the Syrian government.
In April 2017, Alisyn Camerota interviewed Banna in an apparently scripted interview on CNN. Later, in May, she got the Turkish citizenship. Soon after, Simon and Schuster awarded her a book deal, with the help of J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series. Dear World: A Syrian Girl’s Story of War and Plea for Peace, which documented her ‘tale’, was released in October 2017. Then she embarked on a promotional tour of the US, appeared at high profile film screenings in Los Angeles and had an article in Time Magazine.
However, Ahed Tamimi’s case coverage is in stark contrast as she is from one of a handful of West Bank villages, which stages weekly demonstrations against the Zionist occupation. Further, she is the daughter of prominent anti-occupation activists Bassem Tamimi, an organizer of protests against Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank. Regardless of the high profile nature of Ahed’s arrest, the prejudice mainstream media has taken a de-facto vow of silence, in glaring contrast to its fixation with Banna.
Another figure is Malala Yousafzai. Unlike Malala Yousafzai, who has a history of standing up to injustices, Ahed Tamimi has not gotten much attention or solidarity on social media and has not become an international phenomenon. She is a Pakistani student who stood up to the Taliban and shot in the head by a Taliban gunman, in 2012, but survived. Malala defends girls’ right to education and she is the youngest Nobel Prize laureate.
In 2016, the State Department denied Ahed a visa to visit the US as part of her speaking tour, entitled ‘No Child Behind Bars/Living Resistance’, which meant to highlight the plight of the Palestinian children. It cannot be because she is not Muslim; it is because Ahed is Palestinian and because her persecutors are Israelis.
Malala met the former President Barack Obama, as well as the then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and addressed the UN General Assembly. She received numerous accolades from being named one of the 100 Most Influential People by Time magazine and Woman of the Year by Glamour magazine to being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2013, and again in 2014 when she won. Although, there is even a Malala Day, neither statements supporting Ahed or reprimanding the Israeli state was issued nor an Ahed Day was declared.
