Mark LeVine shares the first time he met Ahed Tamimi, the Palestinian teen activist now in an Israeli prison, and gives a first person account of a weekly demonstration against the Occupation, tear gas, thrown rocks, and more.

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Mark LeVine first met Ahed Tamimi, the Palestinian teen activist now in an Israeli prison, five years ago when he was visiting her country. LeVine is professor of history at UC Irvine and is Tikkun'slongest serving Inner Editorial Board member. He recounts the experience in an arresting OpEd, "Ahed Tamimi: The Mandela of Palestine?" published on Jan 5, 2018, a portion of which is excerpted here:

The first time I met Ahed Tamimi ... she was around 11 years old. She wasn't yet famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view); it was before the video of her threatening an Israeli soldier with her tiny fists, fearless and filled with fury, hit the internet. But it was already clear what she would become: a fighter. She was a hero-in-the-making; a star at the early stages of going nova. Not quite exploding yet but only a matter of time and nothing could stop her. Not her parents, not the rest of her family, not the Israelis unless they killed her.

LeVine had come to Nabi Seleh, Ahed's village, to observe the weekly demonstrations against the Occupation:

Nabi Saleh is a small and picturesque village in the central West Bank overlooking a valley with an important spring" most of the West Bank is so stunningly beautiful it could compete with Switzerland for both the vistas and the food.

...Instead of being a tourist center, Nabi Saleh is a resistance center, one of the most important places on the planet, the site of the real Armageddon (Megiddo) for humanity's soul. No, I'm not exaggerating. In a powerful column written after Ahed's arrest Lisa Goldman writesthat Nabi Saleh is where she "lost her Zionism." It's impossible not to lose your Zionism when you've experienced Nabi Saleh. The evil and brutality of the Occupation burn through whatever fantasy of a mythical liberal Zionist dream with which you might have arrived.

LeVine shares the details of the weekly resistance event:

...every Friday dozens of people gather at the center of the village, pick up their hand made signs, begin their chants, and march one and all--old and young, Palestinians and (Diaspora and even Israeli) Jews, locals and "internationals" -- to the patch of hill between the top of the village and the valley road and spring below, which is coveted by the nearby settlement of Halamish (in fact, (last) October, the Israeli government issued orders seizing yet more land from the village to expand the settlement).

Nabi salih demonstration May 2011 2
(Image by (From Wikimedia) טל קינג, Author: טל קינג)   Details   Source   DMCA

But when the marchers approach the top of the hill, the hill itself, which is usually still empty, suddenly fills with Israeli soldiers at the bottom along the road that leads to a nearby military encampment.

And then the performance begins. The soldiers tell the protesters to go back; they refuse. They threaten to fire teargas; the people march forward. Either the tear gas starts or some of the kids start to throw stones (they rarely get close to the heavily armed and fully protected soldiers) but within a few seconds the 'production' is in full swing. I say 'production' because Nabi Saleh is nothing if not theatre; take your pick: theatre of the oppressed, of the absurd--a "dialectical" or "episches Theater" of the type developed by 20^th century luminaries like Piscator and Brecht who desperately wanted to create a political theater that could better represent the intense ferment of inter-war Europe, particularly from below.

If it's a good day, no one gets too badly hurt.

The people protest, kids throw stones and taunt the soldiers well over 100 meters away. The soldiers, if they're not in a bad mood, don't unload dozens of canisters at a time, and sometimes people make it to the bottom of the hill, where they sit and chant a few feet from the road while the internationals and the Tamimi family takes video and pictures. A few will try to cross the road to reach their spring, which rarely happens as the soldiers inevitably grab them and push them back. When someone does get through, it's like scoring the winning touchdown at the Super Bowl.

At some point Ahed or one of the older kids gets up and walks over to the Israeli in charge and uncorks a monologue against the Occupation and his presence on her land that is every bit as eloquent as any Martin Luther King, Jr. unleashed against Jim Crow.

Ahed has no fear--NO FEAR. Her hair alone, the likes of which have not been seen around here since Samson, could hold its own against a squad, if not a platoon of Israeli soldiers.

I think the soldiers actually have a grudging respect for her and her family. They might be enemies, but they know what they're really doing there, and they know Ahed and her family are doing precisely what they'd do in her position, if they had the courage.

...But if the afternoon is getting late and Shabbat and the weekend are beckoning, the soldiers' fuses invariably get short. At some point the commander calls or signals her father or another family elder in some way and lets them know it's time to go home, the play is over. Usually the adults try to disperse the crowd at that point. The international activists and the Israelis as well as the older Palestinians usually begin marching up the hill, more or less out of breath from the tear gas but not too much the worse for wear. One or two might be hunched over or have big welts from being hit by plastic coated steel bullets, but if they weren't shot at too close range, or in the eye, the injury isn't too serious. The kids stick around and throw a few more stones, but it all fizzles out soon enough.

Solidarity and love pervades the air, at least among the Nabi Saleh defenders. If you're predisposed to hope, in these moments of quiet you might catch a glimpse of a post-colonial, post-Apartheid future for Palestine/Israel.

It's the closest to Selma most Americans there could ever hope to get, and in that sense it's truly like reliving history. Because Nabi Saleh is, in a way, Selma.

Last time LeVine was there, he said he "misread the wind and got lost in a cloud and, for the first time there, felt like I was going to die. The gas paralyzed me, I could neither breathe nor move, and I literally sunk to the ground watching my life go by, before a small hand reach into the haze from above, grabbed me, and with a strength I still can't comprehend, literally pulled me up the hill above it. The hand belonged to Ahed's cousin Muhammad, then around 11 or 12. The same Muhammad shot in the head earlier in the day when Ahed confronted Israeli soliders responsible for his injuries for which she is now being detained."

RT @AlTamimiAhed: My name is Mohammad Al Tamimi, I'm 15, I was shot in the head, and My head is Shattered by IDF Bullet Just before Palest… at

— Yasin Çetiner (@CetineryYasin) February 2, 2018

LeVine continues to share his witnessing:

"Most everyone in the family (of Tamimis) has been beaten, arrested, and even shot. Ahed and her young kin as well as the women of her village are usually left to fight the Israeli soldiers because if an adult man were to go anywhere near a soldier he'll be shot dead without a second thought.

"If you scroll through the videos on the Nabi Saleh YouTube channel you'll find innumerable videos of midnight raids by Israeli soldiers, of attacks with "sh*t water" that is sprayed for no reason all over the village and even inside their home, of family members being dragged away into custody for no reason.

...Believe me when I tell you that you have no idea what life is like for the people of Nabi Saleh, even when you've spent many Fridays with them. Or for the people of Bil'in, or the Jordan Valley, or Jenin, or the Hebron Hills. Never mind Gaza.

Simply put, we get to leave. They are fighting for their futures, for their lives.

...I can understand why Bassem watches with pride through the tears as his daughter becomes a leader of the Palestinian struggle before the world's eyes. What I can't imagine is how Israelis can watch as their children arrest, beat, shoot, and otherwise humiliate and oppress Ahed's family and the entire Palestinian people.

...Let me be clear: I don't want my kids anywhere near the violence and hatred I've witnessed in Israel/Palestine, but if I were forced to choose, I'd send my kid to fight against a brutal occupation a lot sooner than I'd send her or him to enforce it.

...As Michael Lerner warned two decades ago, their "settler Judaism" is among the gravest threat to Judaism since the Holocaust.

Read the entire article here.

Mark LeVine is professor of history at UC Irvine and Tikkun's longest serving Inner Editorial Board member. He is presently completing a collaboratively written history of the Occupation to be published by the University of California Press. @culturejamming.

Tikkun, founded by Rabbi Michael Lerner, is a magazine showcasing spiritual progressive ideas, and is dedicated to healing and transforming the world. "We build bridges between religious and secular progressives by delivering a forceful critique of all forms of exploitation, oppression, and domination while nurturing an interfaith vision of a caring society -- one whose institutions are reconstructed on the basis of love, generosity, nonviolence, social justice, caring for nature, and awe and wonder at the grandeur of the universe. To learn more, read our Core Vision statement. Our founding editor, Rabbi Michael Lerner, also leads Beyt Tikkun, a Jewish Renewal synagogue in the San Francisco Bay Area. Tikkun brings together progressive Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Wiccan, secular humanist, and agnostic/atheist voices to talk about social transformation and strategies for political and economic democratization."

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Meryl Ann Butler is an artist, author, educator and OpedNews Managing Editor who has been actively engaged in utilizing the arts as stepping-stones toward joy-filled wellbeing since she was a hippie. She began writing for OpEdNews in Feb, 2004. She became a Senior Editor in August 2012 and Managing Editor in January, 2013. In June, 2015, the combined views on her articles, diaries and quick link contributions topped one million. She was particularly happy that her article about Bree Newsome removing the Confederate flag was the one that put her past the million mark.

Her art in a wide variety of media can be seen on her YouTube video, "Visionary Artist Meryl Ann Butler on Creativity and Joy" at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcGs2r_66QE

A NYC native, her response to 9-11 was to pen an invitation to healing through creativity, entitled, "90-Minute Quilts: 15+ Projects You Can Stitch in an Afternoon" (Krause 2006), which is a bestseller in the craft field. The sequel, MORE 90-Minute Quilts: 20+ Quick and Easy Projects With Triangles and Squares was released in April, 2011. Her popular video, How to Stitch a Quilt in 90 Minutes with Meryl Ann Butler can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrShGOQaJQ8

She has been active in a number of international, arts-related projects as a citizen diplomat, and was arts advisor to Baltimore's CIUSSR (Center for Improving US-Soviet Relations), 1987-89. She made two trips to the former USSR in 1987 and 1988 to speak to artists, craftpeople and fashion designers on the topic of utilizing the arts as a tool for global wellbeing. She created the historical "First US-Soviet Children's Peace Quilt Exchange Project" in 1987-88, which was the first time a reciprocal quilt was given to the US from the former USSR.

Her artwork is in collections across the globe.

Meryl Ann is a founding member of The Labyrinth Society and has been building labyrinths since 1992. She publishes an annual article about the topic on OpEdNews on World Labyrinth Day, the first Saturday in May.

OpEdNews Senior Editor Joan Brunwasser interviewed Meryl Ann in "Beyond Surviving: How to Thrive in Challenging Times" at https://www.opednews.com/articles/Beyond-Surviving--How-to-by-Joan-Brunwasser-Anxiety_Appreciation_Coronavirus_Creativity-200318-988.html

Find out more about Meryl Ann's artistic life in "OEN Managing Ed, Meryl Ann Butler, Featured on the Other Side of the Byline" at https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/OEN-Managing-Ed-Meryl-Ann-in-Life_Arts-Artistic_Artists_Quilt-170917-615.html

On Feb 11, 2017, Senior Editor Joan Brunwasser interviewed Meryl Ann in Pink Power: Sister March, Norfolk, VA at http://www.opednews.com/articles/Pink-Power-Sister-March--by-Joan-Brunwasser-Pussy-Hats-170212-681.html

"Creativity and Healing: The Work of Meryl Ann Butler" by Burl Hall is at
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Creativity-and-Healing--T-by-Burl-Hall-130414-18.html

Burl and Merry Hall interviewed Meryl Ann on their BlogTalk radio show, "Envision This," at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/envision-this/2013/04/11/meryl-ann-butler-art-as-a-medicine-for-the-soul

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