[ Ed. note – Ahed Tamimi, the famous blonde-haired Palestinian girl who has been seen in so many videos she probably merits the status of “superstar,” has been arrested–apparently for slapping an Israeli soldier.
The arrest took place before dawn this morning when soldiers raided her family’s home in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh.
“A large Israeli force raided our house at dawn and arrested Ahed while she was sleeping in her bed,” Basem Tamimi, Ahed’s father, told the Anadolu Agency. “My daughter was handcuffed and taken into an unknown destination.”
Here is a video that has been posted and which appears to show Ahed (in the light blue sweater) slapping the soldier.
The entire Tamimi family has been at the forefront of ongoing protests in Nabi Saleh, and some family members have also been active in documenting clashes that have occurred at these protests–so it perhaps comes as no surprise that in raiding the Tamimi home this morning, the soldiers also made off with computers, cameras, and mobile phones, or at least this is what is reported in the Ma’an article below.
Apparently the Israelis didn’t get quite every single recording device, though.
Here is a brief video that was shot as Ahed was being led away and later posted on Twitter:
I have put up posts about Ahed in the past, including one I posted in December of last year after she was denied a visa to go on a speaking tour in the US. That post got more than 2,000 shares on Facebook. Below is the article from Ma’an News about Ahmed’s arrest. ]
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RAMALLAH (Ma’an) — Israeli forces detained a 17-year-old Palestinian girl from the Nabi Saleh village in northwestern Ramallah in the central occupied West Bank on Tuesday morning before dawn.
Israeli forces raided the home of the al-Tamimi family, well-known internationally for their activism against the Israeli occupation, and detained Ahed al-Tamimi, 17.
Israeli forces also confiscated computers, mobile phones and cameras from the house during the raid.
According to locals, Ahed was arrested over a video went viral on social media of her slapping an armed Israeli officer during a raid on Nabi Saleh.
Ahed Tamimi is well-known across Palestine and the Arab world for videos of her, since her childhood, defiantly resisting Israeli soldiers who clash with Palestinians in her village nearly every week.
Two years ago, her family made headlines when an Israeli soldier violently attempted to arrest her younger brother , who had one arm in a cast at the time. Ahed and her mother manager to pull the soldier of her brother and free him.
Israeli military raids into Palestinian cities, towns, and refugee camps are a near daily occurrence.
According to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS), since US President Donald Trump’s announcement recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Israeli forces have detained 450 Palestinians, including 138 minors, and nine women.
Prisoners rights group Addameer recorded 6,198 Palestinians were detained by Israel as of October. The group has estimated that some 40 percent of Palestinian men will be detained by Israel at some point in their lives.
[ Additional ed. note – A #Free_Ahed_Tamimi hashtag has been created on Twitter. Here is a tweet posted on it a bit earlier this evening. The video contains something of a compilation of some of Ahed’s previous confrontations with Israeli soldiers:
الطفلة الفلسطينية التي ردت على صفعة القرن بصفع جنود الاحتلال مراراً@1F2Pa#قروب_احرار_فلسطين#ثوره_ع_المحتل#الحرية_لعهد_تميمي#Free_Ahed_Tamimi#عهد_التميمي_جميلة_فلسطين#عهد_التميمي
And here is another tweet with the same hashtag. I don’t know if Ahed could qualify as the Palestinian Joan of Arc or not ( I sincerely hope it doesn’t come to that, since Joan of Arc was burned at the stake at the age of 19 ) but she does seem to cut quite the heroic figure:
#عهد_التميمي ثورة الغضب ضد الاحتلال من الطفولة إلى الشباب#الحرية_لعهد_التميمي#قروب_فلسطيني #Free_Ahed_Tamimi
As I mentioned above, Ahed was to have participated in a speaking tour of America, but was denied a visa to enter the US. The speaking tour was to have been entitled “Living Resistance,” and was to have been sponsored by Friends of Sabeel of North America. The tour was to have taken place in January of this year. Here is a video that was posted by FOSNA after Ahed was turned down for a visa:
“We should extend our struggles to one another in order to end all of the world’s injustices.”
–Ahed Tamimi
I don’t think I could have said it better. ]
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