To read Ahed Tamimi’s words is to feel her bravery, her resilience. The resilience, strength, and livelihood of Palestinians.
This is not a review of a book, this is a gained understanding and a call to action by the Palestinian people, people under occupation. My people. This is a personal account of the way Palestinians have had to live, the way Israel treats people, and the power that the Palestinian people hold within themselves.
This was a hard read, as ive been learning (it’s been more like bombarding myself, as i have not turned a blind eye in 200+ days), like many others are doing, with whats happening to and in Palestine today. The apartheid and genocide of Palestine that the world is opening its eyes to, the actions that are happening now, have happened before, ahed tamimi speaks about the injustices that her people in nabi saleh and in all of Palestine go through.
The history of Nabi Saleh, where Ahed Tamimi is from, is the history of a village doesn’t only symbolize themselves, it is the fight of all Palestinians. It is the fight of people living under occupation, in a land that has been stripped from them since 1917 because of the Zionist agenda.
This is happening in the West Bank, this is happening in Gaza, this is happening to Palestinians living in Palestine under military occupation.
I dont think anyone should need an explanation to read this book, i think it’s important for everyone to have real accounts of what is happening. This happened in 2017, this happened in 1948, in 1967, in 2009, these things have been happening to people for a much longer time than people are coming to realize (or should be), these things are a daily occurrence for Palestinians living in the OCCUPIED West Bank, and in other villages where Israeli settlers have unjustly and violently forced themselves into.
People should know this did not start in October of last year.
It’s senseless to say you just dont know enough on this topic anymore. Google is an option, books are written to tell you their histories, food is made to nurture and sustain a culture that has been around for over a thousand years, songs are made about their resilience There is nothing to justify inaction and inability to understand.
I have learned so much from a young girls experience, from the traumas that her family and her village and Palestine have gone through. A country i am deeply connected to by blood, an ancestry that i didnt know of until a few years ago when i started piecing information together. The timing of my personal life coinciding with the world around me, continues to leave me a bit speechless.
Ahed talks a lot about family, it is what gave her the most strength while under such brutal conditions by Israel, from what i could get a sense of. The people in her village are related and so deeply connected to each other, there was a beautiful understanding that i maybe lacked knowledge of. It gave me strength. And a foresight into what life i am connected to. What beauty my people have, and what beauty has been so wrongfully taken from them. I am the granddaughter of a man from Bethlehem. My mother is half Palestinian. Their blood runs through our veins, their struggle is ours.
My mother fled the Salvadoran civil war, armed and trained by Israel! (83 percent of El Salvador’s military imports came from Israel)…
(ANSESAL the national security agency was trained by Israel, which turned out to be the secret security that created the death squads) the death squads had my mom as a target for being openly for the mf people. She was 15 when she fled, alone.
This is an issue that connects a lot of people, i encourage us all to learn, to see how Israel has played a role in not just the erasure of Palestine but how close these people in power are working, to continue their positions of power while others become martyred, displaced, and oppressed.
Ahed was made a symbol for Palestine when she was 17, they called her a lioness. She didnt choose this but her actions sparked international coverage. International coverage that is once again sparking actions across the world. You cannot turn around and ignore this. Your lack of awareness speaks to the lack of action, maybe even laziness. To pretend that what is happening to the people of Palestine, to the people of congo, to the people of sudan, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii, is TOO FAR to understand? Once you start unlearning and teaching yourself, it becomes a lie to yourself to be so unaware of the world.
I am encouraging anyone who has read this far to pick up this book, to read the words of the actions and power that lies within the Palestinian fight.
I took it upon myself to add all of the article links that came with the book into a word doc. You can see for yourself that this has been an ongoing issue, that this has been forced on the Palestinian people, and how closely related everything is. It’s our responsibility as people living to learn from them. There will be a separate post with the link, you can download it, dedicate some time to reading and have these links saved for future learning.
To ensure that Palestine will not be forgotten, it will one day be free, learning from their experiences puts us just a little closer to feeling humanity (No?)