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ahed tamini
Why Do We Revere Malala But Not Ahed Tamimi?
"The point isn't that Malala doesn't deserve the platform she’s been given, but that while we celebrate Malala's advocacy for girls' education, we must ask why that platform is not extended to children like Ahed."
Dec 14, 2018
After Israeli forces shot her 15-year-old cousin in the head with a rubber bullet last December, Ahed Tamimi, a Palestinian girl from Nabi Saleh in the West Bank, stood up to the occupying Israeli forces and was arrested and charged for slapping a soldier. The story of the activist went viral.
But what Ahed was fighting for was largely buried beneath sensationalized media representations of her.
Her story is unlikely to circulate in the same elevated spaces granted to Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girl who survived a brutal attack on her school by the Taliban, even though both Ahed and Malala are fighting for similar rights and freedoms. Both are young women facing down brutal military repression at the hands of fully-armed men, yet their stories could not have been received more differently.
The reasons for our complicated responses to Malala and Ahed's stories are as multi-layered as the political realities that shape their lives. They encapsulate a range of ideas about gender and the girl-child, nationalism and education, and about forms of activism that are palatable and therefore deemed legitimate and those which are not.
Disrupting gender
Both Malala and Ahed refuse to be victims. Malala has dedicated her life to advocating for girls' education. Her story helps to send powerful and inspiring messages to girls around the world -- girls like Ahed, who dream of being a lawyer. Ahed turned the Israeli female prison unit where she was held into a school, where she and other incarcerated Palestinian women read and studied legal texts.
But Malala's platform also has the contours of a story that can buttress imperialist worldviews and justify militarized interventions in Asia. The use of rhetoric about saving women and children in the Middle East by politicians is one of the ways that liberalism appeals to Western emotions to garner support for the U.S. led "War on Terror," as the scholar Maya Mikdashi writes.
Ahed is too empowered, too unmanageable and altogether too adulterated by her community's struggle to appeal widely to liberal sympathies in the West. She is also too blonde, according to U.K. Prof. Yosefa Loshitzky. Loshitzky characterizes Ahed as someone who completely disrupts the gendered and racial logics of the Israeli occupation.
The point isn't that Malala doesn't deserve the platform she's been given, but that while we celebrate Malala's advocacy for girls' education, we must ask why that platform is not extended to children like Ahed. Anything less is a disservice to them both.
The liberal politics of hope
Malala's status as a worthy cause has a critical relationship to Ahed's status as an exception to that cause. The differences between the reception of Malala and Ahed in the global cultural marketplace illustrate this point in fairly stark terms: Malala's activism wins her the Nobel Prize, and takes her to Oxford, while Ahed's activism landed her in an Israeli prison.
Prof. Shanila Khoja-Mooji powerfully writes that Ahed's struggle, and the way it has been sidelined in the West by feminist and human rights groups, "exposes the West's selective humanitarianism."
Malala's story emerged amid the politics of hope that characterized President Barack Obama's campaign. She won the Nobel Prize in 2014. In 2016, the year Trump was elected, Ahed was denied a visa to the United States to be part of the speaking tour, "No Child Behind Bars/Living Resistance."
Whether the Obama administration would have had the political courage to grant Ahed a visa is impossible to know. Obama's gestures of support for Palestinians were largely superficial, while his financial support for the Israeli military was unwavering.
By comparing Ahed and Malala, we come closer to understanding the limits and even the failure of liberal visions of social progress in the 21st century. Ahed is a classic case of how American liberalism's blind spots breed discontent around the world.
Life stories in a global marketplace
Malala's advocacy circulates in a neoliberal economy in which much of the value of her story has become something that communicates the power of the individual to overcome extreme hardship and to effect social change against an enemy long reviled by the West. In this transaction, the politics that underwrite her suffering are managed by focusing on her personal story of survival.
In her story is redemption for the West, whose role in the violence that harmed her (and thousands of girls like her) is mitigated by their efforts to uplift her.
In Malala's story of fighting for the right to education, as a girl, the Western media and political machinary finds a story that chimes powerfully with arguments used to bolster the U.S. led military invasion of Afghanistan.
In this sense, Malala's message has been co-opted by the neoliberal idea that everyone can gain access to the same opportunities, so long as they follow the proper procedures. In her case, by fighting an enemy recognizable to us, Malala gains access to recognition, including entry to the oldest university in the country that colonized what is now Pakistan.
By contrast, Ahed cannot perform her suffering in ways that appeal to the paternalistic liberal imagination. Ahed's story cannot be yoked to the Janus-faced work of neoliberalism, global development and military intervention.
Ahed's enemy -- the Israeli army that maintains and deepens the illegal military occupation of her country -- can rarely be recognized in dominant Western discussions without accusations of anti-Jewish sentiments.
Stories like Ahed's that insist on collective forms of liberation over individual liberation, draw our attention to diffuse and entrenched systems of oppression that cannot be remedied through individual acts of uplift.
"There is no justice under occupation and this court is illegal," Ahed told her prosecutors, as she smiled and the international media captured the scene for the world to see.
Ahed's smile in these photos unsettles liberal conceptions of suffering that separate the rights of the individual from their social, political and economic making. Wringing our hands and watching from the West, we are implicated in the sham of liberal justice.
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Ahed Tamimi and Her Mother are Free - Sort Of
Ahed Tamimi and her mother were freed from prison on Sunday and Ray McGovern looks back on when he met the Tammy family last year in their West Bank village and reflects on the spirit that drives them.
Jul 29, 2018
When they left prison on Sunday Ahed Tamimi and her mother Nariman received a hard-earned heros' welcome from Palestinians and others opposed to Israel's occupation and colonization of Palestinian lands seized in 1948 and enlarged by the Israeli army in 1967.
Ahed is 16 years old. Last December, an Israeli soldier shot her cousin in the face. The next day Israeli soldiers menacingly showed up at her house the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh. What would you do?
Ahed slapped one of the armed-to-the-teeth soldiers. While some Israeli politicians said she should be put away for life and others demanded a sentence of at least ten years, the Israeli occupiers sentenced her to eight months for the slap seen around the world. Her mother Nariman filmed the incident and was thrown in jail too, this time for incitement. (It was not the activist Nariman's first time in an Israeli prison.)
Most Americans -- except for the relatively few who have spent more than a few days in Israeli-occupied territories -- find it hard to understand why Palestinians like Nariman and Ahed "persist." Most people in the U.S. are blissfully unaware of the history of Palestine and of the continuing injustices inflicted on its people today. The explanation for this lies largely in the way the U.S. mass media reports the story, almost entirely from the Israelis' point of view.
For those malnourished on Establishment media, here's a bit of history, without which it is impossible to understand the anger and the courage-against-all-odds shown by those who continue to use what they have -- even their open palms -- to make clear that they will never acquiesce in Israeli occupation.
How a Homeland Gets Occupied
The Israeli attack starting the Six-Day War in early June 1967 fits snugly into the category of "war of aggression" as defined by the post-WWII Nuremberg Tribunal. "Pre-emptive" attacks, when there is nothing to pre-empt, are now -- post Iraq war -- labeled more euphemistically as "wars of choice," but that too fits the Nuremberg definition.
To begin to appreciate the injustices inflicted on millions of Palestinians, whose land Israel coveted for itself, one must un-learn the legend that in attacking its neighbors in 1967 Israel was acting in self-defense. None other than then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin (1977 - 83) undermined that piece of propaganda in a speech to the U.S. National Defense University on August 8, 1982. (Apparently, even accomplished dissimulators get cocky on occasion and let the truth slip out.) Here are Begin's words:
"In June, 1967, we had a choice. The Egyptian Army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that [President Gamal Abdel)] Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him. ... The government decided unanimously: we will take the initiative and attack the enemy, drive him back, and thus assure the security of Israel and the future of the nation."
And now, a half-century after its successful six-day war of aggression with U.S. backing, Israel has been unlawfully colonizing the occupied territories, oppressing the Palestinians still living there, and thumbing its nose at UN Security Council Resolution 242.It was approved unanimously on Nov. 22, 1967, calling on Israel to withdraw from the lands it seized in June of that year. That was then.
And This is Now...
In February--March 2017, I was part of a small Veterans For Peace delegation in Palestine. One of our last visits was to a village named Nabi Saleh, where Ahed's father Bassem Tamimi, his wife Nariman, and Ahed's three siblings live when they are not in prison. Her older brother is in prison now. After two weeks of experiencing what life is like for Palestinians under Israeli occupation in the West Bank, I had a chance to ask Bassem about the nonviolent, but frontal, resistance to Israeli occupation and colonization.
"Your sons have been beaten and badly wounded and one's still in prison; your wife is in and out of prison: your brother-in-law was killed by a sniper bullet; you yourself have been tortured in prison; your house is on the list for demolition -- why do you persist; why encourage such actions?" I asked.
"We have no alternative," Bassem replied matter-of-factly, "it is our land and our life. I will not tell my children or my people to acquiesce in the Israeli occupation -- ever."
The following day we Veterans For Peace took part in a protest march to the separation Wall. Later, underneath the tear-gas and sheltered from the ensuing rifle fire, we watched the teens of Nabi Saleh dodge the Israeli soldiers chasing them through the village for two hours. When the Israeli soldiers, so heavily burdened with weaponry they could hardly run, finally went back behind their Wall, the young folk emerged shouting, "We won." It was a privilege to be there to welcome them back to the Tamimi house and some relative peace and quiet.
Chris Smiley, our delegation videographer, created an excellent 38-minute documentary as part of a serieson our experience in Nabi Saleh called: "One Day, One Village, One Family."
The Palestinian Spirit is Universal
Ahed "Didn't Get It From the Moon". This is the expression my Irish grandmother would use to make it clear that tribute and praise should go to the seed-sowers as well as the protagonists themselves. Other traditions use some variant of: "The apple does not fall far from the tree." Suffice it to say that, from what I was able to witness of the attitude and behavior of Ahed and her three brothers, they are clearly determined to honor the rich legacy of courage and Palestinian patriotism they inherit from Bassem and Nariman -- and not only from them.
One might say that Ahed and her siblings are honor graduates of the Bassem/Nariman Folk School, just as Rosa Parks was a graduate of The Highlander Folk School. The common curriculum has to do with courageous persistence in the pursuit of justice. Moreover, our delegation was to discover that Rosa Parks is a revered figure in the Israeli Knesset -- well, at least in the modest conference room allocated to Arab members.
Hanging prominently on the main wall were pictures of Rosa Parks, as well as of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. And now I can hear Ahed Tamimi's voice beneath that of Rosa Parks, who explained in 1992:
"I did not want to be mistreated ... It was just time... there was opportunity for me to take a stand to express the way I felt about being treated in that manner. I had not planned to get arrested. ... But when I had to face that decision, I didn't hesitate to do so because I felt that we had endured that too long. The more we gave in, the more we complied with that kind of treatment, the more oppressive it became".
Nonetheless, they persisted.
Welcome home, Ahed and Nariman.
Originally published at Consortiumnews.com.
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Beating the US 'Veto': Palestinians Need Urgent Protection From Israel
Israel should not have free reign to abuse Palestinians at will, and the international community should not stand by and watch the bloody spectacle as it continues to unfold.
Jun 13, 2018
What is taking place in Palestine is not a 'conflict'. We readily utilize the term but, in fact, the word 'conflict' is misleading. It equates between oppressed Palestinians and Israel, a military power that stands in violation of numerous United Nations Resolutions.
It is these ambiguous terminologies that allow the likes of United States UN Ambassador, Nikki Haley, to champion Israel's 'right to defend itself', as if the militarily occupied and colonized Palestinians are the ones threatening the security of their occupier and tormentor.
In fact, this is precisely what Haley has done to counter a draft UN Security Council Resolution presented by Kuwait to provide a minimum degree of protection for Palestinians. Haley vetoed the draft, thus continuing a grim legacy of US defense of Israel, despite the latter's ongoing violence against Palestinians.
It is no surprise that out of the 80 vetoes exercised by the US at the UNSC, the majority were unleashed to protect Israel. The first such veto for Israel's sake was in September 1972 and the latest, used by Haley was on June 1.
Before it was put to the vote, the Kuwaiti draft was revised three times in order to 'water it down'. Initially, it called for the protection of the Palestinian people from Israeli violence.
The final draft merely called for "The consideration of measures to guarantee the safety and protection of the Palestinian civilian population in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in the Gaza Strip."
Still, Haley found the language "grossly one-sided."
The near consensus in support of the Kuwait draft was met with complete rejection of Haley's own draft resolution which demanded Palestinian groups cease "all violent provocative actions" in Gaza.
The 'provocative actions' being referred to in Haley's draft is the mass mobilization by tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, who have been peacefully protesting for weeks, hoping that their protests will place the Israeli siege on Gaza back on the UN agenda.
Haley's counter draft resolution did not garner a single vote in favor, save that of Haley's own. But such humiliation at the international stage is hardly of essence to the US, which has wagered its international reputation and foreign policy to protect Israel at any cost, even from unarmed observers whose job is merely to report on what they see on the ground.
The last such 'force' was that of 60 - later increased to 90 - members of the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH).
TIPH was established in May 1996 and has filed many reports on the situation in the Occupied Palestinian city, especially in Area H-2, a small part of the city that is controlled by the Israeli army to protect some of the most violent illegal Jewish settlers.
This tragedy cannot continue. The international community and civil society organizations, - independent of the US government and its shameful vetoes - must undertake the legal and moral responsibility to monitor Israeli action and to provide meaningful protection for Palestinians.
Jan Kristensen, a retired lieutenant colonel of the Norwegian army who headed TIPH had these words to say, following the completion of his one-year mission in Hebron in 2004:
"The activity of the settlers and the army in the H-2 area of Hebron is creating an irreversible situation. In a sense, cleansing is being carried out. In other words, if the situation continues for another few years, the result will be that no Palestinians will remain there."
One can only imagine what has befallen Hebron since then. The army and Jewish settlers have become so emboldened to the extent that they execute Palestinians in cold blood with little or no consequence.
One such episode became particularly famous, for it was caught on camera. On March 24, 2015, an Israeli soldier carried out a routine operation by shooting in the head an incapacitated Palestinian.
The execution of Abd al-Fattah al-Sharif, 21, was filmed by Imad Abushamsiya. The viral video caused Israel massive embarrassment, forcing it to hold a sham trial in which the Israeli soldier who killed al-Sharif received a light sentence; he was later released to a reception fit for heroes.
Abushamsiya, who filmed the murder, however, was harassed by both the Israeli army and police and received numerous death threats.
The Israeli practice of punishing the messenger is not new. The mother of Ahed Tamimi, Nariman, who filmed her teenage daughter confronting armed Israeli soldiers was also detained and sentenced.
Israel has practically punished Palestinians for recording their own subjugation by Israeli troops while, at the same time, empowering these very soldiers to do as they please; it is now in the process of turning this everyday reality into actual law.
A bill at the Israeli Knesset was put forward late May that prohibits "photographing and documenting (Israeli occupation) soldiers", and criminalizing "anyone who filmed, photographed and/or recorded soldiers in the course of their duty."
The bill, which is supported by Israeli Defense Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, demands a five-year imprisonment term for violators.
The bill practically means that any form of monitoring of Israeli soldiers is a criminal act. If this is not a call for perpetual war crimes, what is?
Just to be sure, a second bill is proposing to give immunity to soldiers suspected of criminal activities during military operations.
The bill is promoted by deputy Defense Minister, Eli Ben Dahan, and is garnering support at the Knesset.
"The truth is that Ben Dahan's bill is entirely redundant," wrote Orly Noy in the Israeli 972 Magazine.
Noy cited a recent report by the Israeli human rights organization 'Yesh Din' which shows that "soldiers who allegedly commit crimes against the Palestinian population in the Occupied Territories enjoy near-full immunity."
Now, Palestinians are more vulnerable than ever before, and Israel, with the help of its American enablers, is more brazen than ever.
This tragedy cannot continue. The international community and civil society organizations, - independent of the US government and its shameful vetoes - must undertake the legal and moral responsibility to monitor Israeli action and to provide meaningful protection for Palestinians.
Israel should not have free reign to abuse Palestinians at will, and the international community should not stand by and watch the bloody spectacle as it continues to unfold.
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How Many Palestinians Have To Die For the World to Stop Israel's Crimes In Gaza?
Israel knows it will get away with its crimes, and therefore it keeps on committing them.
Apr 11, 2018
The sickening video of an Israeli sniper apparently filming himself gunning down a Palestinian protester across the fence in Gaza then rejoicing and praising his "success" with other soldiers has been widely spread and condemned. A week before, another video documented the shooting of another Palestinian protester in the back. This video has also received wide condemnation.
We must transfer all our rage and disgust into joining a growing movement that works beyond a machinery of words and short-term clicktivism to stop Israel's crimes.
However, for Palestinians what is most worrying about these videos from the recent Gaza Great Return March is that while these horrible scenes will trigger a wave of rage, it will only last for a short period until the next crime happens.
The world has forgotten Gaza and the decade-long blockade imposed by Israel on its people. It takes the killing of 31 Palestinians to remind the international community of the biggest open-air prison in the world that has become Gaza.
Distant and forgotten
While these videos present a potential archival material for human rights organisations and the International community, it is important that they, as well as hundreds of others, should not be just an "archive".
The commercial-digitalised world which we live in ensures that such videos get lost and buried under the heaps of information we consume every day. We are shocked by a video until we get used to such images and get prepared for more shocking images.
Moreover, people's struggles, resistance and sacrifices are often tailored for consumption, victims turn into trendy images and solidarity becomes a click through a keyboard. Distant and forgotten, Gaza has now become trendy again, only to receive another wave of short-term empathy.
Gaza has now become trendy again, only to receive another wave of short-term empathy.
It is also frightening that we know already by heart the arsenal of terms that is used each time Israel commits a crime against the Palestinians. The media equates between the victim and the attacker, calling it "clashes" and "confrontation"; the international community calls for "restraint", they express their "concern" and if they can afford to be harsher, they call for an "inquiry". This would probably be inquiry number one thousand, to join all those before it in a cold dark basement somewhere.
.And while any goodwill fades in the face of a well budgeted Israeli propaganda machine that terrorises media and politicians, the right to lecture the Palestinians on how to conduct their resistance becomes a practice of insolence
The root causes of violence
This is especially annoying when the world has lectured Palestinians for so long on how they should resist and, in other words, "be nice to their oppressors". Instead of pointing to the root cause of violence, the Palestinians are the ones put behind bars and ordered to prove to the world how "non-violent" they are.
This attitude is not only patronising, but also disregards the rich Palestinian culture of resistance, past and present, and their right to decide for themselves. Since the Zionist colonisation started in Palestine, there has been resistance, and it will continue as long as the colonisation continues.
Gaza protests are just a continuation of a long Palestinian history of popular protest. Not only in Gaza, but in other Palestinian cities and areas, popular resistance has been happening on a daily basis and in so many ways, through direct actions, culture, art, BDS, campaigning, creating independent economical project and so on.
Many Palestinian villages have been protesting weekly and facing the same brutality. No mainstream media attention, support or protection have been given to those taking part in the protests. Ahed Tamimi, for example, had to lose her childhood innocence so the world could take note of the struggle of a small Palestinian village, Nabi Saleh, where Tamimi hailed from, that paid a heavy price for demanding freedom and justice.
Israel, again, knows it will get away with its crimes, and therefore it keeps on committing them. We have the responsibility first to know where to point our fingers - it is certainly not against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip which, according to a UN report, will not be livable by 2020 - and second to transfer all our rage and disgust into joining a growing movement that works beyond a machinery of words and short-term clicktivism to stop Israel's crimes.
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The Price Of Murder: Stop Funding the Israeli Military
The US continues to fund the Israeli war machine with little regard for human life. Then it wonders why Palestinians, and supporters of Palestine, aren't fond of it.
Apr 05, 2018
In what many are calling the Passover Massacre, the Israeli military recently sprayed bullets at peaceful Palestinian protestors, killing 19-year-old Abdul Fattah Nabi, as he ran away from Gaza's fence bordering Israel.
At least 15 others were killed and another 773 were shot with live ammunition.
Like Nabi, the protesters joined 30,000 fellow Palestinians to protest the continued occupation of Palestinian lands, the economic strangulation and the restriction of movement of Gazans, and the Israeli expropriation of huge tracts of Palestinian land.
The march commemorated the 42nd anniversary of 'Land Day' when Israeli forces killed six unarmed Palestinians during another peaceful protest, calling for the Palestinian right to return.
In the Senate Report accompanying the spending bill passed recently, the United States has threatened to withhold UN funding for any "official action" it deems against "the national security interest of the United States or any ally of the United States, including Israel."
Israel is the only ally specifically mentioned in the Report.
This is three months after President Donald Trump threatened to withhold billions of dollars in US aid from countries that voted for the UN Resolution rejecting Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
In January, the United States slashed $65 million worth of pledged aid to the UN Relief and Works Agency, which is designated for Palestinian refugees.
Last month, the Trump administration requested $3.3 billion for 2019 in foreign military financing, while seeking an overall reduction in foreign aid. That includes $500 million in missile defense in foreign aid to Israel, a $200 million increase from last year.
To date, the United States has distributed $134.7 billion to the state of Israel in bilateral assistance and missile defense funding - more than any other nation since World War II.
This aid follows the Memorandum of Understanding, executed in 2016 during the Obama administration, resulting in the United States pledging $38 billion to the state of Israel over the course of the next decade.
The recent murders are the latest in a long string of human rights violations carried out by Israel, a staunch US ally.
In 2017, Human Rights Watch reported five overarching categories of human rights and humanitarian law abuses by the state of Israel including unlawful killings, forced displacement, abusive detention, movement restrictions, and the development of settlements.
Israel continues to justify these violations in the name of security or self-defence.
Four months ago, 16-year-old Ahed Tamimi was arrested for slapping an Israeli soldier standing outside her home, in occupied Nabi Saleh, hours after she'd learned that her 15-year-old cousin had been shot in the head at close range by Israeli soldiers. She was charged with assault and incitement, for using social media to influence public opinion.
While this child activist is serving eight months in jail, the Israeli army soldiers who murdered at least 16, are free.
A day after the Gaza protest, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went on Twitter, addressing his followers: "Well done to our soldiers. Israel acts vigorously and with determination to protect its sovereignty and the security of its citizens."
The official position of Israel is the soldiers fired in self-defense.
As the world watches, the United States has blocked a draft statement in the UN Security Council calling for an investigation into the use of deadly force on protesters.
All the while hundreds of Israelis march in Tel Aviv in solidarity with Gazans. Human rights lawyer, Michael Sfard, who attended the protest said, "Gaza is under siege and has been under occupation for the past decade. The people of Gaza are suffering from an enormous humanitarian crisis and now, when they tried to protest against it, they were met with brutal force which killed 16 of them and injured and maimed many others. As an Israeli, my duty is to protest against the evils that are done in my name."
Certainly, each nation-state is responsible for ensuring its security, but the use of deadly force on an occupied people during a peaceful protest does not qualify as national security. The US should not fund it.
That people abroad may hate American freedom is a mythology pandered to obscure the real effect of US intervention and "aid" has wrought across the globe. When the US subsidises human rights abuses, that is how national security threats are born. Is that not "against the national security interests of the United States"?
The United States has a special obligation to ensure its aid is not used to systematically dehumanise and usurp the land of the indigenous Palestinian population.
Because of its long standing history supporting Israel's military pursuits, the United States must condemn not only the latest murders of Palestinians, but also the consistent policy of Israeli land grabs in Palestine, in violation of international law.
Continuing to provide aid for Palestinian refugees is not only a humanitarian imperative, it is also an investment in US national security.
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'No Justice Under Occupation': Palestinian Teenager Ahed Tamimi Gets 8 Months in Prison for Slapping Israeli Soldier
"17-year-old Ahed Tamimi will serve 8 months in jail for slapping a soldier who invaded her home. Meanwhile, IDF soldier Elor Azaria will serve 9 months for executing in cold-blood a wounded Palestinian."
Mar 22, 2018
Ahed Tamimi, the 17-year-old Palestinian girl who was arrested in January for slapping an Israeli soldier, was sentenced Wednesday to eight months behind bars, enraging activists across the world who have advocated for her release.
"There is no justice under occupation."
--Ahed Tamimi
Tamimi confronted a pair of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers outside her family home in the occupied West Bank last December just moments after learning a solider had shot her 15-year-old cousin in the face.
Some compared Tamimi's sentence to that of an IDF soldier who was captured on video in 2016 fatally shooting an injured Palestinian man in what was described by one United Nations expert as an "extrajudicial execution."
Speaking with reporters after the sentencing on Wednesday, Ahed Tamimi said, "There is no justice under occupation."
"Ahed Tamimi, a teenage Palestinian girl who slapped a machine gun-toting Israeli soldier that came to her house as part of an occupying army, will spend eight months in Israeli prison for 'assault,'" Yousef Munayyer, executive director of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, told Newsweek.
"At the same time, an Israeli court shortened an already short sentence for Elor Azaria, who executed a prone Palestinian in cold blood, so that he will only serve nine months in prison," Munayyer noted. "The perverse Israeli legal system, in all its forms, functions to protect abusers as they trample on those who the state looks down upon."
Several others compared the sentences on social media:
For some, Tamimi has become the latest symbol of the injustice Palestinians face under Israeli occupation. She was denied bail earlier this year, and will receive credit for the time she was detained during the closed-door trial. The sentence resulted from a plea deal her lawyer reached with the Israeli military court. She pled guilty to four charges.
In additon to the jail time, she will pay a $1,400 fine, according to Haaretz, which reported that "the prosecution also reached plea agreements with Nur and Nariman Tamimi, Ahed Tamimi's cousin and mother, both of whom were involved in the videotaped slapping of the soldier."
Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of the Middle East division of Human Rights Watch, explained that "plea bargains are the norm in Israel's military justice system, which is characterized by prolonged pretrial detention, abuse of kids and sham trials."
"Ahed will be home in a few months," Whitson added, "but Israel is putting this child behind bars for eight months for calling for protests and slapping a soldier, after threatening her with years in jail."
"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 percent 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," Fadi Quran, a Palestinian activist and senior campaigner with Avaaz, wrote on Medium.
Whitson and Quran both pointed out that the Israeli military detains hundreds of Palestinian children each year.
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Ahed's Generation: Why the Youth in Palestine Must Break Free from Dual Oppression
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.
Mar 06, 2018
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.
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Nine Reasons Israel Is Not a 'Progressive Paradise'
Progressives realizing the realities of the state of Israel are precisely why Democrats are continuing to sympathize more and more with Palestinians.
Mar 05, 2018
From March 4th to March 6th, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) policy conference convened in Washington DC. This gathering is the largest of the year for AIPAC, the main arm of the American pro-Israel lobby.
AIPAC represents one of the most powerful lobbies in the United States, having a clout similar to that of the NRA. Former President of AIPAC, Steven J Rosen, once told a journalist, "You see this napkin? In twenty-four hours, we could have the signatures of seventy senators on this napkin."
Yet in the past few years, AIPAC has lost support within the Democratic party. Due to the influence of centrist groups such as JStreet, a thriving divestment movement on college campuses, and Donald Trump's unabashed praise for the Israeli government, AIPAC continues to lose influence among Democrats.
A 2018 Pew poll found that liberal Democrats sympathize more with Palestinians by a nearly two to one margin. The same poll found that Democrats overall are about as likely to sympathize with Palestinians than with Israelis.
This polling is vastly different from polls done on Democratic support for Israel in the past. In 2009, 42% of Democrats sympathized more with Israel more compared to just 27% of Democrats today. This had led Mondoweiss's own Philip Weiss to refer to Israel as a "tanking stock" among Democrats.
In an attempt to salvage that stock, AIPAC made it a point of this year's conference to reach out to progressives. In the same speech in which he praised Donald Trump to extended applause, AIPAC President, Mort Fridman, stated that "We need to embrace and involve many more Jewish Americans...The progressive case for Israel is just as compelling as the conservative one."
Jennifer Granholm, former Democratic Governor of Michigan, pledged "to support AIPAC...[and] to make sure that Israel remains a bipartisan issue" and also stated that "There is a strong pro-Israel voice within the Democratic party." Granholm also referred to Israel as a "progressive paradise" that is a "role model for other nations including America."
Granhold's Israel fable is contrary to realities on the ground. Progressives realizing the realities of the state of Israel are precisely why Democrats are continuing to sympathize more and more with Palestinians. I decided to compile a short list of nine reasons why Israel is not a "progressive paradise."
1) The Blockade of Gaza
The situation in Gaza represents a humanitarian crisis. The Israeli army has imposed a land, sea, and air blockade that has prevented 1.6 million Palestinians from entering. Under the blockade, there have been restrictions and prohibitions from basic supplies from getting in such as pasta, cookies, powdered milk, soap, shampoo, textbooks, and writing paper.
Due to the blockade, basic necessities for living such as food and water remain difficult for Palestinians. As a result, 95% of Gazans are forced to drink contaminated water and 54% of the population does not know where their next meal is coming from. In an attempt to "dry up" funds to Hamas, the Israeli government has also cut electricity to Gaza. This means that the average Gazan gets four hours of electricity a day, posing a particular risk for individuals such as dialysis patients.
Noam Chomsky has described the conditions in Gaza as those of "an open-air prison." In describing the rationale behind the blockade, Dov Weisglas, a former advisor to Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu said,"The idea is to put Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger."
Following the Israeli government's 2014 bombing of Gaza, the infrastructure of Gaza has also been utterly destroyed. At the rate that current supplies are coming in, it is estimated that it will take 100 years to rebuild Gaza.
13.2% of children in Gaza suffer from stunted growth due to malnutrition. The psychological toll on the children of Gaza has been just as bad as the physical toll. 70% of Gazan children suffer from nightmares and 75% suffer from bedwetting, due to the torturous living conditions they endure.
A group of 50 international aid organizations, including the World Health Organization and Oxfam, have called on an end to the blockade of Gaza, stating:
"For over five years in Gaza, more than 1.6 million people have been under blockade in violation of international law. More than half of these people are children. We the undersigned say with one voice: 'end the blockade now."
The International Committee of the Red Cross has also stated that
"The whole of Gaza's civilian population is being punished for acts for which they bear no responsibility. The closure therefore constitutes a collective punishment imposed in clear violation of Israel's obligations under international humanitarian law."
2) Israel is a Settler-Colonialist State
Israel is a state founded European Jews who colonized the land and, in 1948, conducted a genocide and mass expulsion of the indigenous Palestinian population living there.
Senator Bernie Sanders has compared this act of settler-colonialism to the settler-colonialism of Europeans who came to the Americas.
Sanders stated in 2017 that "Like our own country, the founding of Israel involved the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people already living there, the Palestinian people. Over 700,000 people were made refugees. To acknowledge this painful historical fact does not delegitimize Israel, any more than acknowledging the Trail of Tears delegitimizes the United States of America."
The creation of the state of Israel resulted in the creation of the largest refugee population in the world. While Israeli's refer to the creation of Israel as "Israeli Independence Day"(although it is not clear who they got their independence from), Palestinians refer to this day as the "nakba" or the catastrophe.
It is estimated that about 40% of the world's refugees are Palestinians who were expelled from their homes by the creation of the state of Israel. The United Nations regularly reiterates the right of Palestinians and their descendants to return to homes that they were expelled from, specifically through declarations such as United Nations Resolution 192 and the International Declaration of Human Rights. Still Israel continues to deny these refugees the right to return to their homes.
3) Israel practices apartheid
In the state of Israel, a person's ethnic identity determines the rights that they receive. Subjecting different sets of people to different sets of laws literally constitutes the definition of apartheid.
While Palestinians living under Israeli control in the West Bank are subject to military law, Israeli settlers living in the West Bank are full and equal citizens of Israel subject to civil law. They can vote in elections while Palestinians living there are not even considered citizens. Non-Jewish citizens of Israel are subject to discriminatory laws that make them second-class citizens.
South Africans who lived under apartheid have described Israel as all-too familiar to the situation they faced under apartheid. The African National Congress, Nelson Mandela's political party, which fought apartheid in South Africa has labeled Israel an apartheid state. The former chairperson of the ANC, Baleka Mbete, called Israel "far worse than apartheid South Africa."
Desmond Tutu stated that "Israel is an apartheid state...I go and I visit the Holy Land and I see things that are a mirror image of the sort of things that I experienced under the apartheid."
The apartheid South African government also released a report in 1978 in which it stated that "Israel and South Africa have one thing above all else in common: they are both situated in a predominantly hostile world inhabited by dark peoples."
Apartheid South Africa's military chief, Constand Viljeon, was an admirer of Israeli checkpoints in Occupied Palestine. Upon visiting, he stated that
"The thoroughness with which Israel conducts this examination is astonishing. At the quickest, it takes individual Arabs that come through there about one and a half hours. When traffic is heavy, it takes from four to five."
4) Mass Incarceration of Palestinians
40% of the Palestinian male population has been incarcerated in Israeli military courts. These military courts have a 99.74% conviction rate for Palestinians.
One of the Palestinians incarcerated in these courts was Issa Amro, a man who many refer to as the "Palestinian Gandhi." Amro engages in nonviolent action against Israel's building of settlements in the Occupied West Bank that are illegal under international law. Amro faced jail time for 18 charges, ranging from "insulting a soldier" to "assault." Amnesty International reported that "the deluge of charges against Issa Amro do not stand up to any scrutiny," calling the charges "baseless and politically motivated." Issa Amro is just one of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian men who are thrown in Israeli jails on baseless charges.
Palestinian women similarly are no exception to this system of incarceration. On December 18th, 2017, in the middle of the night the Israeli army burst into the Tamimi family home and arrested 16-year-old girl, Ahed Tamimi. They beat her father, mother, older and younger brothers and confiscated the families laptops, phones and cameras. Tamimi was charged with "slapping a soldier" and remains jailed to this day.
Human Rights Watch documented the Israeli military's abuse of Palestinian children in a report titled "Children Behind Bars" that:
"Each year, Israel arrests, detains, and prosecutes in the military court system some 500 to 700 Palestinian children suspected of criminal offenses in the occupied West Bank, according to Defence for Children International/Palestine Section. Israel is the only country that automatically prosecutes children in military courts. In 2015, Human Rights Watch found that Israeli security forces used unnecessary force to arrest or detain Palestinian children as young as 11 in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and have choked, beaten, threatened, and interrogated children in custody without parents or lawyers present."
5) Islamophobia
Israel has been a state that has sought public support by painting itself as some sort of civilizational battle between "Islam and the West." This is similar to the Islamophobia pushed by right-wing ideologues around the world including Donald Trump who famously stated that "Islam hates us" and pushed for a Muslim ban.
AIPAC has also pushed on this wave on Islamophobia. It was revealed last year that AIPAC donated to the "Center for Security Policy"(CSP), a hawkish far-right think tank headed by Frank Gaffney, which has been classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The American Conservative Union and Anti-Defamation League have also denounced CSP as an organization that promotes hatred of Muslims through delusional conspiracy theories. Regarding Muslims, Frank Gaffney said that "They essentially, like termites, hollow out the structure of the civil society and other institutions, for the purpose of creating conditions under which the jihad will succeed."
Gaffney also claimed that Republican strategist, Grover Norquist; current Congressman and Deputy Chair of the Democratic National Committee, Keith Ellison; and former President of the United States, Barack Obama are secret agents of the Muslim Brotherhood. He also accused Barack Obama of engaging in "the greatest bait and switch since Adolf Hitler."
The Conservative Political Action Conference(CPAC) banned Gaffney as a result of his Islamophobic conspiracy theories, all while AIPAC provided him with financial support to peddle these conspiracy theories. Rhetoric like that of Gaffney, such as comparing Muslims to termites and suggesting that the Muslim Brotherhood is seeking to control the US government, is similar to anti-Jewish rhetoric used both historically and contemporarily that "Jews control the government."
6) Segregated Schools
Israel's schools are both religiously and racially segregated. Jewish students attend a school based on their religious denomination while the Palestinians attend their own schools. Less than 1% of children attend the handful of integrated schools which Jewish Israelis and Palestinians with second-class citizenship are allowed to attend. Palestinian schools also receive less government funding per capita than Jewish schools, resulting in fewer students attending college than in Jewish schools.
The city of Tel Aviv has also built separate schools for the children of non-Jewish African immigrants seeking asylum. The Daily Beast detailed this in an article entitled "Israel's Most Liberal City Introduces Racially Segregated Kindergartens" which stated that
"The city built the new preschools for black children after Jewish-Israeli residents of the inner city area threatened to keep their children at home rather than allow them to learn how to count, fingerpaint and play on the swings alongside their peers from Eritrea and Sudan."
7) Mass Deportations
Many African refugees from countries such as Eritrea and Sudan have fleed to Israel after having faced war in their own countries. Expecting the liberal democracy that AIPAC surrogates speak about, the refugees instead faced massive resistance from Israelis who referred to them as "infiltrators." Israel has asked the African refugees to choose between detention in an Israeli jail or deportation to a third African country.
Michael Ben Ari, a member of Israel's Parliament, explained that this infiltration is simply the result of their existence as non-Jews within a Jewish state. Ben Ari stated that "Our country is different from other countries. Our country is a Jewish state...A Jewish and democratic state...In some cases, the two contradict each other. If you bring in a million Africans, it will no longer be Jewish."
Current Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, previously warned that if the non-Jewish population in Israel reached as high as 30%, it could pose a risk to the "Jewish character" of the state of Israel.
He has even announced a plan to expel 40,000 non-Jewish African migrants, branding the asylum seekers as "infiltrators" whose existence poses a threat to Israel's "Jewish character." Netanyahu's plans come after years of anti-Black protests in Israel where Israeli politicians across the political spectrum have made statements referring to African immigrants as a "cancer" and "emitting a bad stench" and "likely to cause all kinds of diseases."
8) Israel Admitted to Forcibly Sterilizing Ethiopian Jewish Women Against Their Will
Although the Ethiopian Jewish population lives under civil law, thus enjoying the benefits of citizenship, they still suffer much discrimination in Israel despite the fact that they are Jewish. There have been reports of police brutality in Israel against Ethiopian Jews, in addition to discrimination in jobs and public service. In 2013, the Israeli Red Cross was found to be throwing away the blood of Ethiopian Jews who donated it. When Pnina Tamano-Shata offered to donate blood as part of a campaign by the Israeli Red Cross, the Israeli Red Cross rejected her blood donation on the grounds that she was Ethiopian. That same year, the Israeli government admitted to injecting Ethiopian Jewish women with a birth control drug called Depo-Provera.
Gal Gabbay, an Israeli journalist, reported that many women were subjected to birth control shots while they were migrating from Ethiopia to Israel. Gabbay reports that:
"According to the program, while the women were still in transit camps in Ethiopia they were sometimes intimidated or threatened into taking the injection. "They told us they are inoculations," said one of the women interviewed. "They told us people who frequently give birth suffer. We took it every three months. We said we didn't want to."
Forced sterilization fits the United Nations genocide definition of "imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group." As a result of these forced sterilizations, the birth rate for Ethiopian Jews fell 50% between 2003 and 2013.
9) Israel Has Provided Arms to Genocidal Governments Around The World
Israel has been an exporter of arms to many repressive regimes around the world. Beyond just selling apartheid South Africa a nuclear weapon, Israel was the biggest arms supplier of apartheid South Africa. Israel has also provided arms to the Burmese government as they engage in a genocide of the Rohingya population. Israel also provided the Rwandan government with weapons as they engaged in a genocide of the Tutsi tribe, which is considered the fastest past of genocide in human history. Israel also provided the Serbian government with arms as they engaged in an ethnic cleansing of Bosnians.
Far from a "progressive paradise", Israel is actually an ethnoreligious state that violates the human rights of Palestinians, other ethnic and religious minorities within its borders, while also aiding Islamophobia and genocide on a global scale. It is for this reason that a significant and growing portion of the Democratic Party is clamoring for justice in Palestine. For as long as Israel continues to oppress, support for Israel will continue to be a tanking stock within the Democratic Party. No former Democratic governor can change that through fallacious assertions.
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Kindergarteners In Hebron Protest Israel's Detention Of 350 Children
They asked the international community to protect them and for international law to be upheld.
Feb 07, 2018
On Sunday, Palestinian kindergarteners protested Israel's jailing of 350 Palestinian children, in a march organized by the Hebron-based group Human Rights Defenders and the Palestinian residents of Shuhada Street. Israel detains children as young as 12 years old.
The kindergarteners rallied for three child prisoners in particular, a young girl named Razan Abu Sal, 13, who was sentenced to 13 and a half months and a fine of $870 (3000 NIS), Shadi Farrah, 12, who has already served two years of his three year sentence, and the infamous Ahed Tamimi, 17, who was detained (at age 16) on charges of incitement and slapping an Israeli soldier. She has become a worldwide symbol of child imprisonment and the Palestinian struggle for freedom.
Activists with Human Rights Defenders, Badee Dwaik and Arif Jabar, organized the rally in one of the most contentious areas of Hebron, the Tel Rumeida neighborhood where Palestinians systematically experience violence from settlers, and the Israeli soldiers in the area tend to turn a blind eye, or back up those settlers.
Badee Dwaik told the group that the demonstration marked the start of the annual campaign, "Dismantle the Ghetto," an effort to publicize and protest the horrors of life under the illegal occupation in the city of Hebron. The campaign is a call for the lift the closures inside of the city and the suppression of its population. It will be held on the 24th anniversary of the massacre at the Ibrahimi mosque by Baruch Goldstein. On February 25, 1994, Goldstein opened fire on Palestinians worshippers inside of the mosque, killing 29.
"They carried banners speaking of their anger at Israel and the Western countries that support Israel's racist, apartheid, colonial, occupation of the Palestinian people."
At the demonstration the children carried signs protesting the occupation, an all encompassing-word for the abuses and indignities that are carried out against them by Israeli soldiers and settlers. They chanted, "every child deserves a childhood." They asked the international community to protect them and for international law to be upheld. They carried banners speaking of their anger at Israel and the Western countries that support Israel's racist, apartheid, colonial, occupation of the Palestinian people. Israel is the only country in the world today that maintains an apartheid regime.
The demonstration culminated with settler attacks on two Palestinian journalists, Du'aa Yahya al-Atrash from Ma'an television and Zidan al-Sharbat. When the event ended, Israeli soldiers prevented the children from returning to their homes.
As the protest concluded, settlers approached the group. Anat Cohen, a settler notorious for slapping, kicking and yelling at activists, was filmed hitting Du'aa Yahya. Another settler, Ofer Hassan also known for his violence, attacked Human Rights Defenders' Arif Jabar. Hassan even attempted to stop a Palestinian from filming the protest from inside his house even as he pleaded, "I am in my own home. Get out of here!"
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A 14-Year-Old Girl Forced Into the Gaza Cage
Another routine mishap for Israel’s occupation.
Feb 04, 2018
How did a 14-year-old Palestinian girl who has never set foot in the open-air prison of Gaza find herself being dumped there by Israeli officials - alone, at night and without her parents being informed?
The terrifying ordeal - a child realising she had not been taken home but discarded in a place where she knew no one - is hard to contemplate for any parent.
And yet for Israel's gargantuan bureaucratic structure that has ruled over Palestinians for five decades, this was just another routine error. One mishap among many that day.
A single, abstract noun - "occupation" - obscures a multitude of crimes.
What crushes Palestinian spirits is not just the calculated malevolence of Israel's occupation authorities, as they kill and imprison Palestinians, seal them into ghettoes, steal lands and demolish homes. It is also the system's casual indifference to their fate.
This is a bureaucracy - of respectable men and women - that controls the smallest details of Palestinians' lives. With the flick of a pen, everything can be turned upside down. Palestinians are viewed as numbers and bodies rather than human beings.
The story of Ghada - as she has been identified - illustrates many features of this system of control.
She was arrested last month as an "illegal alien" in her own homeland for visiting her aunt. The two live a short distance apart, but while Israel considers Ghada a resident of the West Bank, her aunt is classified as a resident of Jerusalem. They might as well be on different planets.
Ghada, we should note, suffers from epilepsy. After two days in detention, and over opposition from Israeli police, a judge ordered her released on bail. All this happened without her parents present.
Israel controls the Palestinian population register too, and had recorded Ghada wrongly as a Gaza resident, even though she was born and raised far away in the West Bank. She is separated from Gaza by Israel, which she cannot enter.
Presumably, no Israeli official wanted to harm Ghada. It was just that none cared enough to notice that she was a frightened child - afraid of being alone, of the dark, of fences and watch-towers. And a child who needs regular medical care.
Instead she was viewed simply as a package, to be delivered to whatever location was on the docket. Despite her anguished protests, she was forced through the electronic fence into the cage of Gaza.
She was finally released by Israel and returned to her parents last Thursday, two weeks after her ordeal began.
Was this not precisely what Hannah Arendt, the Jewish philosopher of totalitarianism, meant when she identified the "banality of evil" while watching the trial of the Holocaust's architect, Adolph Eichmann, in Jerusalem in 1962?
Arendt wrote that totalitarian systems were designed to turn men into "functionaries and mere cogs in the administrative machinery", to "dehumanize them".
Even the worst bureaucracies contain few monsters. Its officials have simply forgotten what it means to be human, losing the capacity for compassion and independent thought.
After five decades of ruling over Palestinians, with no limits or accountability, many Israelis have become cogs.
Most of the Palestinian victims of this "system" remain hidden from view - like the small children of Abu Nawar who awoke this week to find their village school had been levelled because Israel wants their land for the neighbouring illegal settlement of Maale Adumim.
But a Ghada occasionally throws a troubling light on the depths to which Israel has sunk.
Another example is Ahed Tamimi, who spent her 17th birthday in prison last week, charged with slapping a heavily armed soldier during an invasion of her home. Moments earlier his unit had shot her 15-year-old cousin in the face, nearly killing him. She now risks a 10-year jail sentence for her justified anger.
Michael Oren, Israel's former ambassador to Washington and now a government minister, was so unwilling to believe Ahed could be blonde-haired and blue-eyed - like him - that he ordered a secret investigation to try to prove her family were actors.
Most Israelis cannot believe that a Palestinian child might fight for her home, and for her family's right to live freely. Palestinians are expected to be passive recipients of Israel's "civilising", bureaucratic violence.
Soldiers helping settlers to steal her community's farmland have scrawled death threats against her on the walls in her village, Nabi Saleh.
Oren Hazan, a parliament member from the ruling Likud party, told the BBC last week that Ahed was not a child, but a "terrorist." Had he been slapped, he said, "She would finish in the hospital for sure ... I would kick, kick her face."
This dehumanising logic is directed at any non-Jew with a foothold in the enlarged fortress state Israel is creating.
But belatedly a few Israelis are drawing a line. A backlash has begun as Israel this week starts expelling 40,000 asylum seekers who fled wars in Sudan and Eritrea. In violation of international treaties, Israel wants these refugees returned to Africa, where they risk persecution or death.
Unlike Palestinians, these refugees tug at some liberal Israelis' heartstrings, reminding them of European Jews who once needed shelter from genocide.
Nonetheless, Israel has incentivised its citizens to become bounty-hunters, offering them $9,000 bonuses for hunting down Africans. Progressive rabbis and social activists have called for Israelis to hide the refugees in attics and cellars, just as Europeans once protected Jews from their persecutors.
It is a battle for Israel's soul. Can Israelis begin to see non-Jews - whether Palestinians like Ghada ot Africans - as fellow human beings, as equally deserving of compassion? Or will Israelis sink further into the darkness of a banal evil that threatens to engulf them?
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