Thursday 21 December 2017

Ahed Tamimi… A Child Who Is Not

Since writing this, Ahed's father has also been arrested.

Ahed Tamimi… A Child Who Is Not

I understand the sense with which people opt to protest the arrest of Ahed Tamimi with claims she is just a child, however, Ahed is a warrior. Her childhood was stolen, along with that of her siblings, by thief in the night Israel. She was raised a warrior. Had to be.. like all the other youth of Palestine. The youth of Palestine are armed with words, marches, banners and flags… and, yes, stones, bottles, slingshots and fire. Fighting against an occupying, colonizing, heavily armed military is the life to which they are born. Living precariously on the soil of generations, not knowing on which day or what moment the soil will be stolen or family will be stolen, homes destroyed, brothers or sisters shot, maimed, mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews, cousins and friends beaten, arrested, imprisoned… or worse.

Ahed’s brother, Mo, lies in a coma resulting from a bullet to the head. A signature of the sociopathic troops who terrorize children daily. Sister, Nour and Mother, Nariman are now, also, in jail. Their battered home is surrounded by illegal settlements and military outposts, checkpoints and inbred settlers

I am hoping Ahed and all the youth of Palestine can be respected as the resistance force they inevitably must be. They know, all too well, the consequences of their actions and the elusive wisp of life that is theirs, if only in the moment. To see them as children is to diminish the role they play in a life of subsistence and survival and is an unwitting suspension of reality which blinds us… separates us from truth while we express acknowledgment of their plight.

Solidarity is essential. Respect is imperative. Ahed and family, friends and fellow warriors alike… To Resist Is To Live And To Die. It Is The Breath In At The Moment Of Birth… And It Is The Exhale At The End. Sadly, the struggle represented in the assaults upon the family, Tamimi, is experienced every moment of every day in Palestine. It must end someday… but that day often seems to run away as swiftly as it approaches.

Our hearts are with the Tamimi’s and all the families of Palestine. Each stone they throw is a strike for freedom… not the expression of lost children disposed to youthful hooliganism. May there forever be stones.

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