Ahed Tamimi, a 16-year-old Palestinian girl, was recently arrested in a night-time raid on her home. The Israeli authorities accuse her of “assaulting” an Israeli soldier and an officer. A day earlier she had confronted Israeli soldiers who had entered her family’s backyard. The incident happened shortly after a soldier shot her 14-year-old cousin in the head with a rubber bullet, and fired tear-gascanisters directly at their home, breaking windows.
Her mother and cousin were arrested later as well. All three remain in detention.
There has been a curious lack of support for Ahed from Western feminist groups, human rights advocates and state officials who otherwise present themselves as the purveyors of human rights and champions of girls’ empowerment.Ahed, like Malala, has a substantial history of standing up against injustices.
Their campaigns on empowering girls in the global South are innumerable: Girl Up, Girl Rising, G(irls)20 Summit, Because I am a Girl, Let Girls Learn, Girl Declaration.
When 15-year-old Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head by a member of Tehrik-e-Taliban, the reaction was starkly different. Gordon Brown, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, issued a petition entitled “I am Malala.” The UNESCO launched “Stand Up For Malala.”
Malala was invited to meet then 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.
bc malala’s nonviolent approach and subsequent attack over what seems like just the issue of education for girls could easily be preached by western (white) feminists as a solely feminist issue.
but when girls & even women actively fight against the police state that oppresses them, mainstream media refuses to pick it up bc it is inherently and undeniably political, and many western (white) feminists are pro police.
To clarify, Ahed’s too-active defiance of the soldiers who shot her cousin was simply a slap. She slapped a man with a gun. This is in every practical sense not “violent resistance”, it’s just too much for white women to handle.
They sit at their computers an ocean away, tittering about whether or not resistance to the occupation is antisemetic and refusing to condemn the arrest of a teenage girl for slapping a soldier with a gun who trespassed in her backyard, on her land.
The occupation is ruining the lives of Palestinian women and taking childhoods from Palestinian girls. You cannot be a feminist and refuse to condemn the occupation.
wearethepsychedelicdefenceleague