“I had barely fallen asleep when I woke to find an armed Israeli soldier hovering over my bed. He told me to get up quickly and put on a jacket. Half asleep, I was handcuffed, thrown into an army jeep, and taken to be interrogated. They had already taken my 16-year-old cousin, Ahed, the night before, and now it was my turn.”
This is how Palestinian journalism student Nour Tamimi, writing in the Washington Post on 13 February, described her arrest by Israeli soldiers in her home village of Nabi Saleh in a night raid on 20 December.
Nour was released on bail two weeks later. Her cousin Ahed and aunt Nariman Tamimi were not so lucky. Nariman was detained just hours after her daughter Ahed, when she travelled to Binyamin detention centre to check on Ahed’s condition. Both remain in Israeli custody.
Ahed’s crime was to slap and kick two Israeli soldiers attempting to invade her home. Her mother’s crime was to film the incident and circulate her video on social media. The Tamimi family is being targeted because of their role in resisting Israeli settlers’ theft of land and water in their occupied West Bank village.
Read the article by Nick Everett is co-convener of Friends of Palestine WA on Red Flag.