Merely armed with a handful of vocal cords, a high fist full of ideals, and two feet on the ground that they tried to snatch from her at gunpoint, she caused a commotion intending to demonstrate the strength her people raise. At twelve years old, she put her body to protect her brother, and at seventeen, she did it again to defend millions of people against the occupation: her courage led her to prison. However, even though the State of Israel thunders the affront, a thousand years of suffering and ostracism will never be enough to make her give up a single centimeter of her humanity: “I dream of a world without imperialism, in peace, built up from equality.” Hardened but not losing tenderness, she jumped the walls of censorship and the artificial borders imposed on us by supposed territorial distances to embrace Argentina. But to what extent do we relate to Palestine? What could be powerful enough to generate brotherhood beyond all the artificial differences? “It has already been said by Che Guevara: ‘My homeland is where injustice exists’”.
From the beginning, Theodore Herzl’s Zionism made sure to install the idea that the inhabitants of Palestine were invisible, therefore convincing themselves that the lands they were occupying were ultimately “empty.” “[…] Zionist colonists compared Palestinians to animals and American natives. What aspects do the Palestinian and Latin American fights have in common?” wondered Rodolfo Walsh after visiting the Palestinian occupied territories where a quarter of a century had passed since the start of the extermination of the Arab people. By the start of the genocide, there were 1,200,000 Arabs living in 94% of the territories, against 600,000 Jews who possessed the remaining 6%. And it continued: “On November 29, 1947, with a two-thirds majority headed by the United States and the Soviet Union, the United Nations Assembly approved the Partition Plan, precipitating the misfortune of the Palestinian people, the genocide, the exodus, and the war. The offensive’s target was the Palestinian population, unarmed and disorganized.” More than seventy years have passed, and it is still a closed night in the Middle East. The official writings have made an effort to make the right of native people over their territory disappear; a reality that we perceive as so distant geographically but that ultimately echoes with the colonized and outraged American continent. Moira Millár, the worker Mapuche from the Pillar Mahuiza community, expressed that “the aboriginal communities of Latin America are the European Palestinians.” And she was not mistaken: the Spanish also claimed that this was a wasteland with no people to justify their slaughter. They are both distorted stories, in which an occupation is seen as if it was a conflict; and a slaughter narrated as if it was a war.
Walsh described, in his chronicles from the “Palestinian Revolution,” a connection with our own neighborhoods: “There are 20,000 refugees in this camp (Borje Barashne), which is actually a town, a slum that perfectly resembles some of the blocks from Retiro’s slum: little houses made out of concrete blocks, with roofs of metallic sheet, hallways with gutters that carry water, collective taps. Moreover, exactly as people from our slums do, the Palestinians plant wherever they have space to, even a flower in the tiniest little free space: memory of the countryside they both belong to.” Ahed Tamimi was born on January 31, 2001, in the Palestinian town of Nabi Salih, of 600 inhabitants and 10 km².
She is seventeen years old, and from the most absolute ignorance, it could be said that her life is different from that of most teenagers. However, she denies such an observation, with a slap that brings us closer to her daily reality: “What you see me do is what every Palestinian kid does, the only difference is that I was lucky enough to be captured with a camera.” She was not even ten years old when she began to actively take part in the first manifestations. Her small place in the world could not escape the Israeli occupation. They built a settlement on her lands and in particular over the community water well. This new usurpation generated that every Friday people left to protest, from 2010 to 2016, when 350 neighbors were injured by military troops. The tragedy and the struggle of the Tamimi family reflect the catastrophe and the resistance of Palestine. Her father, Bassem, is a historic militant for liberation. He was imprisoned dozens of times and saw blood spilling hundreds. In fact, his cousin Mustafá died in 2011 with a tear gas grenade thrown in his face. And only a year later, Rushdi, uncle of Ahed, died of a shot in the back. Both were executed by the Israeli army. Those years represented a hinge for the whole family and for her in particular.
In 2011, her emaciated little body and her fist always high began to become known when confronting the military. And in 2012, when she avoided the arrest of her brother by biting the hand of a soldier, her face became a symbol of courage and awareness.
At the end of 2017, Donald Trump’s decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem led to intense Palestinian demonstrations. In one of them, Mohamed Tamimi, Ahed’s cousin, was hit in the head by a rubber bullet that left him in a coma. He survived, but his face was disfigured, which prompted her to protest energetically and slap a soldier. That recording went viral through the networks. And they did not forgive her: a military report considered it «too dangerous,» and three days later, with the world press talking about the fact, she was arrested. She was held in a prison in Sharon, north of Tel Aviv, until August of this year. Two months later, Ahed Tamimi shouts on the cover of ‘La Garganta Poderosa’ (The Powerful Throat).
We virtually moved to the State of Palestine through daily communication with Bassem through telephone calls, emails, WhatsApp audios, and videos, between the limited times of his daughter. Only in the week that we set up the interview, they were in Spain – where they were received by the Real Madrid club -, Tunisia, and Jordan, vociferating the cause of their lives. «Thank you for all that you are doing for us,» in English, his father thanked us in one of the many times we could talk. One afternoon, in Buenos Aires, already in the Tunisian night, Bassem surprised us: «Somebody here wants to give you a message,» we listened carefully. A voice, acute, resounded: «Hello.»
«We thank our family in Argentina for their support, we consider them our allies. We, as Palestinians, continue to resist against occupation, colonialism, Zionism, capitalism, and imperialism. And we will continue fighting,» she said, directly, like someone needing to spit the anger that was accumulated for decades and from generation to generation.
As soon as they arrested her, they had her almost a whole day in a cold cell, to then carry out the first interrogation. Without the presence of any relative despite her being a minor, she stood firm for two hours in which neither the Israeli Police nor the Intelligence could break her.
-How did you live eight months in jail being so young?
-The feeling of being locked up is hard since one is permanently under great emotional tension, always thinking of the family; psychologically one gets tired, because of the pressure that this implies and because of the suffering that is experienced.
-What was the hardest thing you endured?
– Without question, the interrogation. In it, they use methods of torture, both psychological and physical. They also use The Bristol, which is a kind of car, all made of iron, in which they leave you chained for a long time, without food, without water, without even being able to go to the bathroom.
-How did you get chained?
-In the hands and feet. In addition, they turn on the heating in summer and the air conditioning in winter. They make you suffer, they put you in a very small place until you feel claustrophobic.
They wanted to destroy her freedom, give a fear message to the Palestinian youth, but the only thing they achieved was that her image traveled around the world. Currently, there are approximately 6,500 Palestinian political prisoners from the occupied territories of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Jerusalem, and about 350 are minors. In 2016, the Israeli law that allows bringing twelve-year-olds before military courts and sentencing them to twenty years in prison was approved.
-Why do you stand that much pain?
– This suffering we sustain and endure because we know we are fighters for freedom and not victims. But it wasn’t easy to hold an eight-month prey. You can feel the pain from being away from your family since they forbid us any kind of visit. The rooms have really small beds and no ventilation at all.
Ahed Tamimi speaks firmly, although her voice denotes a logical weariness. She is sure of what she wants to be: a ‘Football player and a lawyer.’ And there is no way she is going to study away from her birthplace because that will mean banishment: those who decide to reside in another country, the State of Israel doesn’t let them come back. ‘I hope you support Palestine and do everything you could, such as organizing youth awareness seminars in universities and schools to inform them what’s happening. In the same way, we believe it is necessary to isolate, boycott and prosecute the State of Israel as a war criminal. We will continue fighting until the end of the occupation.’
By the end of 2017, Amnesty International showed that 60% of the West Bank is under absolute Israeli control; more than 100,000 Palestinian hectares were appropriated for Israeli settlements,
50,000 homes and structures had been demolished; and more than 600,000 Israelis live in occupied Palestinian land, of which 9,000 were in Gaza. Plus, there is no investigation into the more than 1,000 allegations of torture by the Armed Forces. It seems like little? According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, during the first five months of 2018, the attacks against their village left a balance of 19,640 wounded people registered in hospitals and medical centers. In addition, there is another problem: 96% of Gaza’s water is contaminated. A Palestinian uses, on average, 70 liters of water a day, while the Israelis consume 280 liters per day, which is four times more. Injustices can’t be fought indoors; they have to be fought with union among all the attacked villages: ‘That’s how Che Guevara expressed it, including the meaning: ‘Where the injustice exists, that’s my homeland,’ said Ahed, alluding to the man of the star.
– How do you presage the future in terms of the struggle in the Middle East?
– We aren’t going to desist and we’ll keep fighting against the injustice in the world. As Palestinian people, we suffer every day, and that’s very difficult to cope with. For example, the arrests, the murders, the daily intrusions. If we even have to prevent ourselves from going to school. Despite this, I repeat what I said before: we try to show ourselves as fighters for freedom and not as victims. Why? Because the victim is the one who accepts the control of the occupation over their mind and heart.
From 1947 to the present, Palestine has been deprived of more than 70% of its territory. Today, there are more than 2 million Palestinians trapped in the Gaza Strip, which is subjected to a blockade by land, sea, and air. Ahed synthesizes the scourge: ‘The politic of the Zionist movement is ethnic cleansing, through the destruction of towns and villages, achieving the displacement of its inhabitants: 523 villages were destroyed and emptied because of the occupation and extermination policy.’
‘I won’t live abandoned or tied up. I have a tomorrow, and for that tomorrow, I’ll march, revolutionary and rebel. I’m not afraid of the tornados on the horizon. I’ll provoke an earthquake in the whole world and I’ll march with a united army.’ Mariam Abu Daqqa wrote to Ahmed Shukeiri, the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), when she knew that the recruiting didn’t include the female sex. Women were and are part of the resistance, although they are always invisibilized. To illustrate this, just one Ahed is enough.
In Latin America, in the Middle East, and on any continent, the union of women is making the ground shake: ‘I want to talk to all of them in Latin America, who are fighting for their rights, I want them to know that we support them. We are one to get justice and equality, because we are half of the society and the responsible of educating the other half. I’m sure the change will happen, that’s why I fight and wish that the world is in peace, without capitalism, without imperialism, built around the bases of love and justice.’
‘I said that I approve the violence of the oppressed villages who fight against their oppressors ‘–Walsh wrote at the close of her chronicle– ‘And that the insurrection of the Palestinians against the occupiers of their homeland is as legitimate as, for example, the Warsaw Ghetto uprising against the Nazis.’ The panorama has not changed much since then: Palestine continues oppressed and compressed to a city surrounded by towering walls.
We would like to close our text talking about freedom, but it is impossible… Palestine, it’s still.
