Ahed Tamimi > Quotes

“We’re not citizens of Israel; nor do we have a say or any political rights in the state that controls every aspect of our lives. We’re stuck with the inability to plan for our futures, to travel freely, or even to move about our territories from city to city without having to cross military checkpoints. We need permission to build our homes, to travel, to work—all the basic rights and freedoms you might take for granted living in a civil society simply don’t exist when you’re living under military occupation. It’s not an easy life, and yet, it’s the only one I’ve ever known.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“Laughter sends a powerful message: We’re still alive, we’re still laughing, and we love life.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“Growing up, I’d heard that Israel’s founders said of the Palestinians they forced from their homes to create their state, “The old will die and the young will forget.” But my generation is living proof of the contrary. The resistance of our grandparents lives on through us, and in truth, we perhaps have even more patriotism and energy than our elders.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“Palestinians make up 20 percent of Israel’s population, and despite the fact that they live in their own homeland, Israel relegates them to second- or even third-class status. One of my classmates had discovered that more than fifty laws discriminated against the Palestinian citizens of Israel based solely on their ethnicity. Another discussed how government resources were disproportionately directed to Jews, leaving the Palestinians to suffer the worst living standards in Israeli society, with Palestinian children’s schools receiving only a fraction of the government spending given to Jewish schools. They also talked about how difficult it was for Palestinians to obtain land for a home, business, or agriculture because over 90 percent of the land in Israel was owned either by the state or by quasigovernmental agencies (like the Jewish National Fund) that discriminated against Palestinians. And they lamented the fact that if they or any of their relatives chose to marry a Palestinian from the West Bank or Gaza, they couldn’t pass on their Israeli citizenship to their spouse, thanks to the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law. Their spouse wouldn’t even be able to gain residency status to live with them inside Israel. This meant they’d be forced to leave Israel and separate from their family in order to live with their spouse.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“Janna always says that her camera is her gun. And truly, what she’s able to shoot with it is far more powerful than any weapon.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“Watching television in our cells, we became glued to news of the Great March of Return in Gaza, a series of demonstrations that had begun while we were attending our classes. Beginning on March 30, 2018, which Palestinians commemorate as Land Day, the besieged people of Gaza had protested weekly along the fence separating them from Israel. They were demanding an end to Israel’s crippling air, land, and sea blockade, which had effectively trapped them for over a decade inside the world’s largest open-air prison. And they were demanding the right to return to their homes, which Zionist militias had forcibly removed them from to clear the way for Israel’s creation in 1948. Seventy percent of Gaza’s population are, in fact, refugees.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“I ask also that you remember your humanity, because that’s what will decide what you do when you turn these final pages and close this book. Are you going to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian cause and help in whatever way you can—whether by spreading awareness to others, pressuring your government, or further educating yourself about what’s happening? Or will you ignore what you’ve learned, put this book down, and carry on with your life as usual? The choice is yours.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“There is no justice under occupation, and this court is illegal.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“Thank you for your tears,” I began. “But I don’t want your sadness. Nor do I want your money. Please save that for the people in your own country who need it. My people have dignity and don’t want your pity. We’re not the victims. The brainwashed Israeli soldier who carries his rifle and shoots with no humanity—he’s the real victim. We want you to see us as the freedom fighters we are, so that you can support us the right way.” I went on to explain how important it was for them to show their solidarity by boycotting Israel politically, economically, and culturally.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“We know that Jews suffered terrible, unimaginable crimes at the hands of the Nazis, and all of humanity should stand against such murderous hatred and make sure it’s never repeated. But how does that give Zionists the right to push us off our own land to make a country for Jews alone? Why should Palestinians compensate—lose our homeland, our property, our rights, even our lives—for the Holocaust committed by Europeans? We shouldn’t have to pay for the crimes of the Europeans against Jews. That’s just wrong.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“The main rule was that our grassroots resistance movement had to be unarmed. The aim was to struggle and resist without hurting or killing anyone.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“One of the more surprising things I learned is that as a population living under occupation, we are granted by international law the legal right to resist through armed struggle. It’s protected under the Geneva Conventions, reaffirmed in a 1982 UN General Assembly resolution. The resolution reaffirmed “the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“But whereas previous U.S. administrations at least pretended to possess some degree of neutrality, Trump burst onto the scene fully embracing Israel’s right-wing policies and appointing Zionists to key positions. He tapped his bankruptcy lawyer, David Friedman, as his ambassador to Israel. Friedman threatened the International Criminal Court over a war crimes investigation into Israel and declared that the illegal settlements did not violate international law. Trump’s own son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, was a personal friend of then–Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and even had financial ties to the illegal settlements. And this was the man Trump had tasked with leading the “peace process.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“Eventually, the oppressed find a way to liberate themselves.”
― Ahed Tamimi , They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“If Jaysh o ‘Arab reflected our trauma and goals to liberate Palestine, playing house expressed our dreams of a normal life.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“The Israelis had set us up, placing us together in the same cell and my mom right next to us, within earshot. They were trying to entrap us, thinking we’d be sitting there attempting to get our stories straight, discussing important matters pertaining to our village. I’m sure they assumed we would inadvertently implicate other relatives, who would then also be arrested. We were already being cautious with our words, to avoid falling into any trap they might have set. But after discovering that everything we said was being taped, I wanted to make sure they knew they couldn’t outsmart us. So, I began deliberately saying things to spite them.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“Skunk water was invented by an Israeli company called Ordotec, which hails itself as a “green” company and calls its product “100% safe for people, animals and plants” in addition to being “the most effective, cost-efficient and safest riot control solution available.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“The root problem is Israel’s colonial settler project, which seeks to control us, steal our land, and ethnically cleanse us from it. The problem is the occupation itself. And so, exposing the injustices of the occupation for the world to see was one of the most important goals of our movement.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“She wrote about the apartheid wall, which, in a nonbinding decision, the International Court of Justice had declared illegal in 2004. We all knew firsthand that the wall cut right through Palestinian towns and villages, dividing communities and separating many farmers from their land. Israel contends that the wall is needed for security, to prevent attacks, but it didn’t construct the wall along the pre-1967 Green Line, which is recognized as the boundary between Israel and the West Bank. Rather, the wall was built deep within the West Bank, enabling Israel to annex even more Palestinian land. The same classmate also wrote about how Israel’s many permanent and temporary checkpoints prevent Palestinians from moving around freely and add painful delays to what should be short, direct journeys. She interviewed some of us about our own experiences with checkpoints. I told her about the spontaneous checkpoints the military regularly erect at the entrance to our village and how we’d sometimes sit in the car for hours trying to go to school or work or whatever appointment we had. Another aspect of her research project looked at the identification cards we are forced to carry at all times and present at the checkpoints. She interviewed some of our classmates from the West Bank about how they aren’t allowed to go to Jerusalem or any city inside ’48 without a permit from Israel, which isn’t easy to obtain.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“We learned that its full name was the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and that it was ratified by Israel in 1991. Article 1 of the convention defines torture as “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information, or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity…”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“ENTERED 2021 FEELING a general sense of disenchantment. I was in my second year at Birzeit University, studying law, but the Covid-19 pandemic meant all my classes were online. Even though I was already living at home with my family in Nabi Saleh, a ten-minute drive from Birzeit, I missed the daily buzz and excitement of campus life. I yearned to be learning in an actual classroom, instead of my bedroom. But there was no telling when things would return to normal. At the same time, Israel was receiving global praise for leading the world in vaccinating its population, including settlers like the ones living across the road from our village. But not us. Despite its international obligations as an occupying power, Israel did not initially provide vaccines to the millions of Palestinians living under its occupation, a grotesque display of medical apartheid, and something that only added to my mounting frustration.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“Like the Quran says, martyrs are not dead. They’re alive with God. Mustafa will always be alive because he lives on in all of our hearts and in the hearts of everyone here who loves him.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“I also learned more about the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which says that the imprisonment of children must be used only “as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time,” as Gaby cited in my trial. Despite ratifying that convention in 1991 as well, Israel routinely arrests and detains Palestinian children. In fact, each year, between five hundred and seven hundred Palestinian children are tried in Israel’s military courts. The most common charge brought against them is stone throwing, which is punishable by up to twenty years in prison.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“The BDS movement, which was inspired by South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement, was formally launched in 2005 by 170 Palestinian grassroots and civil society groups. The aim is to put political and economic pressure on Israel to respect Palestinian rights and comply with international law. The three goals of the BDS movement are to end Israel’s military rule over the Palestinian land it occupied in 1967, full equality for the Palestinian citizens of Israel, and the right of return for Palestinian refugees who were driven out of their homes in 1948.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“administrative detention.” Israel uses this designation to imprison Palestinians for up to six months without having to charge them or give them a trial. After six months, the state can renew the detention through a military administrative order. Some Palestinians end up serving years under administrative detention without ever knowing why they’re being held.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“But under international law—and like the West Bank—East Jerusalem, which includes the Old City, is considered occupied Palestinian territory. It has been so ever since it fell under Israeli military rule in 1967.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“Palestinians from the West Bank, like my family, must remain only in the West Bank. The 2.2 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, a tiny enclave that Israel has blockaded by air, land, and sea since 2007, are literally trapped there, in what’s called the world’s largest open-air prison. Those of us in the West Bank and Gaza are disconnected from one another and from our Palestinian brethren who live in occupied East Jerusalem and in the cities within ’48.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“It might strike some as odd for a young Palestinian girl to put her body on the line to defend an Israeli, but that’s not how I see it. Miko is on the right side of history. Even though it means going against his society and the army in which he once served, he puts his body and privilege on the line to support us and fight for justice. His allegiance is not to a particular country or flag, but rather to those who share his values. Miko puts humanity over nationality, and that fact alone makes him one of us.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“And any sort of construction that occurs without a proper government-issued permit gives Israel the pretext for issuing a demolition order—which is precisely what happened to us.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom

“Israel’s civil courts deny bail to Israeli children in only 18 percent of cases. But in cases involving Palestinian children, the military courts deny bail 70 percent of the time.”
― Ahed Tamimi, They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom