They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl’s Fight for Freedom
By Ahed Tamimi and Dena Takruri
One World, UK
ISBN: 978-0593134580
288pp.

On Dec 15, 2017, when a video appeared of her slapping an armed — and much larger than her — Israeli soldier in the occupied Palestinian territories, Palestinian teenager Ahed Tamimi showed the world what it meant to stand up to oppression.

The video went viral and Tamimi’s principled defiance has since been witnessed all over the world, sparking the question: what goes into the making of an Ahed Tamimi? And how is it that her courage identifies closely with a growing generation of fiercely independent Palestinian teenagers?

Enter Tamimi’s book They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl’s Fight for Freedom, written alongside award-winning Al Jazeera journalist Dena Takruri, that invites readers to look through the three-dimensional lens of a child, teenager and accomplished Palestinian activist.

In the book, Tamimi can be seen navigating a seemingly endless trail of intimidation, threat and torture by Israeli occupation forces — circumstances that come to define her empowerment and contribution to the Palestinian resistance.

From memories of Tamimi’s humble West Bank village, to the birth of a heroic resistance movement from the same village, readers get an inside look at the community roots that render this Palestinian resistance fearless. In the process of Tamimi’s making, there arises a new meaning to empowerment in the modern age: a young child learns to defy the limits of time and age, and trust her conscience in the face of the occupation.

An excellent new book about the defiant teenager Ahed Tamimi illuminates Palestinian children’s experiences under Israeli occupation and what they have come to represent

What a spectacular sight.

The story begins with Tamimi’s childhood in the Palestinian village of Nabi Saleh. An immediate takeaway is how the expansion of forced Israeli settlements on sacred Palestinian soil plays out as a deeply unsettling reality in the youngster’s eyes. Critical developments, such as Nabi Saleh being just a “microcosm” of Palestine, help enrich reader knowledge and deliver the inside story behind the growth in colonies.

“It’s one of hundreds of Israeli settlements built on Palestinian land in violation of international law,” states the book’s opening chapter ‘Childhood’. “These settlements are essentially Jewish Israeli colonies, and they continue to multiply at the expense of the indigenous Palestinian population.”

Given Israel’s desire to turn global attention away from its occupation, the book does a remarkable job of refocusing attention on Palestinian grassroots, particularly on the making of an unarmed resistance movement. This happens in Nabi Saleh with the support of Tamimi’s own father and relatives, and is held together by a noble view characteristic of Palestinian resolve: to struggle and resist “without hurting or killing anyone.”

Tamimi can be seen adding a personal touch to these realities. She alludes to her treasured ties in a tightly knit village community, and makes it known to readers that the road to enduring peace demands justice.

Such a view is vital in informing how we think, talk and perceive Palestinian-Israeli ‘peace talks’ today. One cannot draw any symmetry between the actions of an illegal military occupation and the legitimate interests and rights of a people under occupation. Therefore, simply mentioning ‘peace’ in talks won’t guarantee it. And a truly independent state is one that is guaranteed on Palestine’s own terms. That is precisely the outcome that the United States-mediated peace process — in motion for decades — has ignored to this day.

“We cursed these so-called peace talks because they served only to legitimise Israel’s theft of our land and oppression of our people,” writes Tamimi. “Every Palestinian knows that there can never be peace in the absence of justice.”

Author duo Takruri and Tamimi do a remarkable job of communicating the lived experiences of children under occupation. The Israeli settlers’ seizure of the Ayn Al Qaws — a freshwater spring long treasured by Tamimi and her cousins — is glaring evidence that Israeli theft and provocations are at the heart of major Palestinian reactions.

The dangers of children getting harassed and intimidated by Israeli soldiers proved enough to raise parental sensitivities in the village, eventually preventing Tamimi and others from wandering to the spring. The beauty lies in what followed: the beginning of Nabi Saleh’s heroic, unarmed, grassroots resistance movement.

The book gives us a rare look into the popular “resistance committee” formed in the village and what it represented. The mission was not just to effectively protest the settlers’ confiscation of Palestinian lands and resources, but also protest “the entire occupation and the countless injustices it regularly inflicted” on Palestinians.

For readers, activists and staunch proponents of a just and equal world, these are moving lessons in principled resistance. It is a from-the-ground-up product that enjoyed traction with men, women and children alike. After all, each has been a witness to Israeli settler theft in plain sight. It is thus inevitable for the community to stand united and protest the occupation that enables such confiscation.

I was blown away by the book’s detailing of these village demonstrations. Tamimi tells us it was “imperative for everyone to be on the same page in terms of the rules” of demonstrations. More deeply, that determination is backed by familiar moral ground — one that has kept the Palestinian resistance in a league of its own: to struggle and resist without hurting or killing anyone.

For those who are witness to oppression and hard-fought freedoms, there is almost always a price to pay for meaningful change. In Tamimi’s case — a child forced to make mature decisions too soon — she has been willing to pay that price in full, from day one. Knowing that principled protest will evoke a brutal occupation reaction doesn’t keep her from showing her fight.

As early as 2010, she recalls that her house was among the 13 ordered by the Israeli military to be demolished. And yet, she knows this was just the occupation retaliating against her village’s “burgeoning protest movement.”

Any occupying force will put a premium on stamping out any form of resistance, liberation and armed struggle — all guaranteed under international law — so that the aggressor is under no compulsion to end its occupation. But, as Tamimi’s book demonstrates, it doesn’t work that way and the undiminishing Palestinian resistance removes all doubt.

As for Ahed Tamimi, she is not your average character. Her dynamic personality mirrors the ambition of a teenager, the determination of a warrior and the temperament of a born activist. The slapping incident — incited by Israeli soldiers who shot Tamimi’s younger cousin in the head at close range with a rubber-coated metal bullet — is just one of the many stands Tamimi has taken in her absolute defiance to Israel’s brutal military occupation. The message she is sending is loud and clear: enough is enough.

On the process that constitutes her inner strength, the book puts the spotlight on Tamimi’s time in prison. She was handcuffed by the Israeli military without reason — a violation of international law — and a sitting member of the Israeli Knesset [parliament] confessed that the arrest was the result of her slap going viral worldwide. It was, as Tamimi affirms in her book, “An admission that Israel was concerned mainly with getting revenge for a humiliating viral video, rather than an actual assault.”

It is incredible to learn how, when thrown behind bars, the teenager managed to convince herself that this was the life she would have to live for a while. Tamimi prioritised gratitude, took comfort in striving for a noble cause and fed her determination with doses of moving Palestinian poetry, with celebrated poet Mahmoud Darwish occupying centre stage:

Nothing pleases me, the traveller on the bus says — Not the radio or the morning newspaper, nor the citadels on the hills Tamimi’s resolve is emblematic of the current generation of Palestinians who are committed to claim what was always theirs. Her stand against the soldier saw the handcuffs drop on her mother, too — a woman who never cowered before the Israeli military and taught Tamimi the art of resisting occupation in the first place. Expect a wealth of personal stories to shine throughout the book.

The book also has a very serious message on the right to education in prison — a must for populations living under occupation. This very right became a vehicle for the locked-up Tamimi, helping her expand her political consciousness and illuminating major rights protections under international law. She earned her high school certification during her eight months’ incarceration and even came to a point when she could count every major rights violation committed by Israel.

These ranged from her arrest without reason (violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights), banning her parents and lawyer from being with her, her imprisonment in Israel (Article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention) and the interrogators’ approach to coercing a confession (in breach of the Convention Against Torture).

It is now more important than ever to deliver that very sense of self-empowerment to populations under occupation. In Tamimi’s own words, Israeli jailers “tried to deny us our right to an education and prevent us from understanding our own oppression.” Thus, support for education on legal rights is a must, and long-standing military occupations can’t be trusted to comply.

They Called Me a Lioness combines Dena Takruri’s powers of investigative journalism with Ahed Tamimi’s first-hand experiences, to deliver a vital lesson in resisting occupation. In riveting detail, readers are educated on what constitutes an Ahed Tamimi, the process that goes into her making and what she and her contemporaries have come to represent.

The reviewer is a researcher, columnist and author

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, December 18th, 2022