Life Under Israeli Occupation, As Told by the Tamimi’s
Tags: Apartheid, Settler Colonialism, Palestine, Israel, Injustice

Janna shows us a video she recorded of IDF soldiers deploying gas bombs to terrorize resisting Palestinian families.

That leads us back into their living room. As Janna’s videos of IDF terror played on, I looked around the room to observe the reactions of my peers. The collective mood was palpably dispirited and bleak. Most were pale, aghast in shock. Many were in tears. One particularly disturbed student, fighting back the tears rapidly streaming down his face, made an impassioned plea on how we must “never go back to normal” once we return to the States, himself vowing to never return to normal, never wanting to return to normal. Little did we know that just two months later, indeed we never would go back to normal, but not the reasons for which my colleague had hoped.

Janna confronting IDF soldiers over the years. Sources: Mondoweiss, Middle East Monitor, Janna Jihad’s Facebook page

This begs the question — how many of those horrified faces I saw that night at the Tamimi’s, even in midst of this “new normal”, have indeed “returned to normal”? How many are now too inconvenienced by the absence of NYC nightlife to fret over Palestinian liberation? How many have since replaced the nightmarish memories of Hebron with daydreams of the next “exotic” location they will travel to once lockdown ends? At the very end of our evening with them, the Tamimi’s had one ask of us: to share their story. Seeing the exhaustion in their faces, it became apparent that they had told their story to countless Westerners before us. I wondered if they thought they were wasting their time.

In just one hour in Hebron, we witnessed a slice of this ‘divine’ mandate firsthand: A Palestinian child withheld by a soldier from following us. A settler brazenly carrying a gun strapped across his chest. A barren street named Al-Shuhada which Arabs were forbidden to enter. A net cast over a souk of Palestinian stores to capture the human waste occasionally thrown down by the settlers living above.

The somber reality is while Americans have been quartered off from the world for seven months, the Tamimi’s and millions of Palestinian families like them have been quartered off from the world for 53 years and counting, since Israel began its occupation of the West Bank in 1967. As we now find ourselves longing to return to the days of normalcy, Palestinians have never had the privilege of experiencing anything close to normal. As we perspired in March over Clorox wipes and toilet paper shortages, Israel demolished a COVID-19 testing clinic in Hebron. As we boast about our “freedom” in our refusal to wear a mask or get a vaccine, Israel conditioned its delivery of ventilators to the Gaza Strip.

The bravery of Janna, Ahed, and countless other Palestinian children speaking truth to power to their occupiers is remarkable yet sobering. No child should have to spend their life fighting for their own freedom, nor should they be left to fight alone. I was heartened to meet many promising students on the trip. These students were able to connect Israel’s human rights atrocities to the United States’ direct complicity in supporting them, recognize America’s own settler-colonial roots, and draw parallels between the ethno-nationalist vision of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel with the ethno-nationalist vision of Narendra Modi’s India. It wasn’t farfetched to believe that these students, many of whom will soon go on to be policymakers, humanitarian aid workers, and journalists, could become critical in the fight for Palestine’s freedom.

It is imperative that we are a part of this fight. The Tamimi’s have faced only heightened violence since the Trump administration moved the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem in 2018. As recent as August 22nd the IDF broke into the Tamimi’s home, released pepper spray, and arrested Hamada Bilal, yet another child in the Tamimi family. A disturbing video of the break-in was posted on Facebook by Janna the same day.

As I think of us weeping in the very same home I now watch being soullessly raided, I know that in life under occupation, the Tamimis don’t have the luxury to weep — they have no choice but to resist.

Disclaimer: This article has been published in American Kahani.