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Loading... They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedomby Ahed Tamimi
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"What would you do if you grew up repeatedly seeing your home raided? Your parents arrested? Your mother shot? Your uncle killed? Try, if just for a moment, to imagine this was your life. How would you want the world to react?" Ahed Tamimi's father was born in 1967, the year that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank began, and every aspect of their family's life has been touched by it. One of Ahed's earliest memories is visiting her father in prison, poking her three-year-old fingers through the fence to touch his hand. The ubiquitous security checkpoints and armed guards even found their way into her childhood fairytales and playdates. Her grandmother regaled her not with nursery rhymes, but with the sage of her family and its tragedies. Instead of cops and robbers, there was Jaysh o 'Arab, or "Army and Arabs," where children roleplayed as Israeli soldiers opposing a community of Palestinians. She recounts all of this and more in her vivid and riveting memoir, one of the first to deal directly with what life in occupation actually means for the people in it, beyond geography or policy. It brings readers into the daily life of the young woman seen as a freedom-fighting hero by some and a naďve agitator by others. Beyond recounting her well-publicized interactions with Israeli soldiers, there is her unwavering commitment to family and her fearless command of her own voice, despite threats, intimidation, and even incarceration"-- No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)956.94History and Geography Asia Middle East The Levant Israel and PalestineLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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Tamimi grew up in the village of Nabi Saleh in the West Bank, where her family organized weekly marches to protest Israel’s illegal seizure of a local water source. She grew up terrified by the Israeli army’s brutal tactics, which included nighttime raids, home demolitions, attacks with pepper spray, and murder. As a child, the author “dreaded” the weekly demonstrations until an Israeli soldier shot her in the hand with a rubber-coated bullet while she was trying to escape tear gas that soldiers had launched into her home. At this moment, she writes, she experienced a “numbness” that motivated her to sooth her accumulated trauma through protesting. Unwittingly, Tamimi rose to international fame when she pushed an Israeli soldier after his army shot at a group of children in her village, critically injuring her cousin. At the time, her mother streamed Tamimi’s confrontation on Facebook Live, a decision that later led to Tamimi’s arrest, interrogation, and detention at Hasharon Prison in Israel. The video went viral, launching Tamimi into the international spotlight, a phenomenon the author partly attributes to her light-skinned privilege. Although the attention plunged her into fatigue and depression, she writes, “as worn down as I began to feel, I knew that staying silent wasn’t an option. I had been given a rare platform to advocate for Palestine and its prisoners, and I intended to use it….If educating the world about our nation’s struggle was my mission in this life, I vowed to carry it out as honorably and as effectively as posÂsible.” Writing with journalist Takruri, Tamimi delivers a passionately argued, profoundly empathetic, and deeply informed examination of her country’s occupation. Her circumspection and clarity of thought are matched only by her vulnerability.
An expertly crafted, trenchant memoir from a formidable activist.
-Kirkus Review