The “Palestinians” have a new media darling (she has just been featured in Vogue) to symbolize their “struggle” against the Israeli “occupiers.” She’s a 17-year-old girl named Ahed Tamimi, who comes from an Arab village, Nabi Saleh, in the West Bank, where everyone is related to everyone else, both by blood and through cousin marriage. Ever since she was a tiny ten-year-old, she has been sent out by her parents to “confront” Israeli soldiers, a ritual as stylized as Kabuki, in which, cute as a button, she walks right up to them and “defies” those big bad soldiers by cursing them, while they never react, and this little scene is captured, by prearrangement, on her mother’s video camera. She’s performed this scene on at least six occasions in recent times. Eight months ago she did it again, but this time, at the age of 16, she went further, by kicking and slapping and cursing an Israeli soldier who stood there, stolidly taking it, not moving, as this supposed act of brave defiance of the “occupier” was again recorded by Ahed’s mother Nariman. When I first heard about this December 2017 encounter, I assumed that the soldier must have done something in response, at the very least have grabbed her by her hands so she could not keep hitting him. I suspect that many others who have not seen the video thought the same, but no, he took her blows impassively, thereby disappointing Ahed and her mother, who as always was right there with her video camera (those impoverished “Palestinians” do manage to have a few luxuries, though not as many as Mahmoud Abbas and his sons have, with their hard-earned $400 million, or Hanan Ashrawi enjoys with her reported $187 million), filming the event for propaganda purposes.
Ahed Tamimi has two things going for her: she’s 17, and she’s an attractive frizzy-haired blond, possibly the result of some Crusaders in her ancestry. She’s a pretty face. She’s unhijabbed. She looks Western. She knows how to turn her head for the camera. The media go for that. What helps her image, too, is the fact that the international media don’t bother to have what she says translated from the Arabic, so that the world remains largely unaware of the venom spewing from her sweet mouth. How many people know that at the time of her attack on the Israeli soldier last December, after the Israelis left, and at the urging of her mother, Ahed made a statement, a “message to the world,” calling for “stabbings, martyrdom-seeking operations [i.e. suicide bombings], throwing stones – everyone must do something”?
But there’s much more to Ahed Tamimi, and she cannot be understood except in the larger context of her family, and especially her worship of her aunt, Ahlam Tamimi. This is the story the media owe their audience, it’s what the world ought to know about, before making these ludicrous comparisons of Ahed to Joan of Arc or La Pasionaria or Malala Yousafzai.
There is first of all her mother, Nariman, who arranges and films these “confrontations” between Ahed and Israeli soldiers. She has long been an ardent supporter of terrorism. When the “stabbing intifada” began in autumn 2015, and Israelis were being killed every day, according to historian Petra Marquardt-Bigman “Nariman Tamimi eagerly shared a Facebook post with graphic instructions on where to aim a knife to achieve a lethal outcome. Whenever there was a terror attack targeting Israelis, Nariman Tamimi would again take to Facebook and praise the perpetrator as a hero. No act of murder was too gruesome: in June 2016, after a teenaged Palestinian terrorist broke into a home and killed a 13-year-old sleeping Israeli girl [Hallel Yaffa Ariel] in her bedroom, Ahed’s mother shared a Facebook post from another Tamimi family member that praised this savage act for “return[ing] to the homeland its awe/reverence. Nariman Tamimi also ensured everyone knew that her admiration for Palestinian terrorists extended to those who had perpetrated attacks before there was Facebook. She shared a post that praised several notorious female Palestinian terrorists as admirable ‘rebels;’ these terrorists had murdered 55 Israelis, including 21 children, and wounded more than 300 people.”
But just as important a figure in Ahed Tamimi’s life is her aunt Ahlam Tamimi, of whom she is so proud. And Ahlam Tamimi, living and thriving comfortably in Jordan, must now be just as proud of her. Before there was Ahed, Ahlam Tamimi was — and remains — a heroine of the “Palestinian” cause. But you don’t hear anything from reporters covering the Ahed Tamimi story about Ahlam Tamimi, do you? Perhaps you remember the suicide bombing of the Sbarro Pizzeria in Jerusalem, on August 11, 2001, exactly one month before the 9/11 bombing. The target was chosen because it was a favorite of families with children. And the suicide bomber detonated himself at the moment when the pizzeria was full. Fifteen people were murdered, including 8 children, and 130 were wounded, many of them very seriously. One survives in a permanent vegetative state. Perhaps the media could take some time from their attention to Ahed Tamimi and spend a little time investigating Ahlam Tamimi, who planned the attack on the Sbarro Pizzeria, chose the bomber, and led him to the pizzeria at the moment when it would be at its busiest serving families with children.
Arnold Roth remembers one of the victims: “My sweet-natured daughter Malki, brimming with empathy and generosity toward others, always with a smile on her face, was 15 when she was murdered in the Sbarro pizzeria massacre 17 years ago this week.” He notes that “as it happens, the person who selected the Sbarro pizzeria, and led the suicide bomber to his target, was Ahlam Tamimi. We know who plotted the Sbarro barbarism. It was not Ahed Tamimi. But when her clan, the Tamimis of Nabi Saleh, get together to celebrate it, as we know they do, she is an enthusiastic participant.”
Ahlam Tamimi was eventually found, brought to trial and — since Israel doesn’t have capital punishment, even for the worst Arab mass-murderers — she was sentenced to 16 consecutive life terms. But she was then freed as part of that appalling exchange in 2011, whereby 1000 “Palestinian” prisoners were released in order to get back one Israeli, Gilad Shalit, a most regrettable act by the Rabin government.
Ahlam was deported to Jordan.