A review by virgo_reader
They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom by Dena Takruri, Ahed Tamimi

 It’s so important to listen to the stories of people who grew up in Gaza and the West Bank. Indigenous Palestinians who have lived under the rule of Israel with little to no autonomy or rights. The reality of their daily life - pre the starts of the 2023 “war” on Hamas - is bleak. 

 

It makes me ask, how did I not know about this? How was this never taught in schools, how did it not hit mainstream news in a way that me - someone who thought she was at least <i>slightly</i> politically tuned in, had never heard of the Israel/Palestine conflict? For anyone who, like me, was ignorant to the plight of the Palestinians, this book (and others) should be required reading. 

 

Ahed Tamimi is younger than me. She’s the daughter of peaceful Palestinian’s who spent their lives devoted to activism for Palestine. She’s the second of four children, the only girl. She was jailed at 16 by Israel. 

 

Ahed has a unique point of view - she gives readers the chance to see what it’s like to grow up Palestinian.

 

“My mind flashes back to the inflection points that brought me to this moment. … There I am, a five-year-old, sobbing in the middle of the night because Israeli soldiers have once again barged into our house to arrest my father. I see my mother falling on the concrete road after being shot by a soldier in a jeep; my younger brother pinned to the ground by another soldier, who is squeezing his little neck in a chokehold; my favorite uncle bleeding to death on the rocks behind our home. This was the price my village paid for the unarmed resistance movement we dared to wage against our occupiers, the violent punishment we incurred for holding weekly protests to defend our rights and our land. I see the water cannons, the tear gas, the rubber-coated steel bullets, and the live rounds I grew up constantly having to dodge, sometimes more successfully than others.” 

 

Besides the deluge of violence hanging over them near-constantly, she also talks about how the occupation has caused trauma to children in ways they don’t even realize. She recalls playing a game translated to “Army and Arabs” - basically their version of cowboys and Indians. There were kids who would be the “army” (Israelis) and kids who would be “Arabs” - medical workers, protesters, journalists. The game would show the sides clashing - Palestinians would throw small rocks at the army who would “shoot” them with toy guns or branches. The soldier would inevitably beat them until they were arrested or until they gave up and cried “I’ve been shot!” Medics would then try to treat the wound, pretend to take them away in ambulances. Rules included anyone arrested would be disqualified and anyone who was killed and became a martyr could come back and play a different role. Sometimes they would pretend one of the kids was being released from a long prison sentence and they’d give them a hero’s welcome with singing and chanting. 

 

It’s clear Ahed remembers these games fondly, she calls it “great fun”. But it’s very clear to the reader that the mismatched power balance and violence seen on a regular basis has infiltrated something as simple as a kid’s game. Maybe as a way to work through their trauma.

 

— 

 

“Zionism is a political ideology that says Judaism is not only a religion, but primarily a nationality - and that it needs a country. Not just any country, but our country, and that it needs this country to be for Jews alone. Zionism has taken our country, where Jews, Christians, and Muslims have lived for centuries, and made it a country that is ruled by and for Jews alone.” 

 

Something I’ve had to work through as I’ve learned more about Palestine is the idea that in 1948 these people HAD to leave the land their family and ancestors had lived on for generations - hundreds and hundreds of years. I can’t accept or understand this. And to this day, settlements move into the West Bank and push out the Palestinian people who live there. 

 

“…settlers confiscated more of our land and resources with the full approval of the state of Israel. Not just approval, but facilitation, too. Israel installed a military base right next to the settlement, to protect its residents and to make our lives in the village a living hell.” 

 

This made me confront western colonialism for the first time. Because truly, I’ve been ignorant and privileged to be unaffected. It’s something we saw with the original settlers and what they did to the indigenous Native American people in the United States. What Spain and then the US did to the Philippines. Britain with India, South Africa, and many other countries. Japan with Korea. 

 

People seem to believe until there’s a western body recognizing a country… or until they create things that the west requires to be a country (ex: a flag)… that the place and the people are not “legitimate.” 

 

"The British gave away land that wasn’t theirs, with no regard for the indigenous-majority population living there: the Palestinians.”

 

— 

 

I could spend all day listing the injustices faced by Palestinians. A large one talked about throughout the book - as it opens with Ahed talking about her time imprisoned as a 16 year old - is the legal system. 

 

The ordeals Ahed faced as a minor arrested and imprisoned are horrifying - as was the response of many Israeli politicians who said they wanted to beat her or punish her themselves. (For throwing a rock… after her cousin was shot with a rubber bullet by an Israeli soldier.) When she was arrested, she was not told why. When she was arrested, they took her photo and posted it online - not legal for a minor. She was arrested and tortured (though not physically) and threatened. She was refused parental supervision for interrogations. She was asked to sign documents in Hebrew. She was imprisoned for a time with no end date, before her trial started and she took a plea deal. 

 

Palestinians who lived in Israel are relegated to second or third class citizens. In March 2018 Israeli parliament passed a law to allow revoking of residency rights of any Palestinian in Jerusalem on the basis of a “breach of loyalty” to Israel. 

 

If a Palestinian who lives in Israel falls in love with a Palestinian who lives in the West Bank or Gaza, they cannot pass on their Israeli citizenship to their spouse because of the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law. Their spouse couldn’t gain residency and live with them in Israel. 

 

The Nation-State Law in Israel passed in July 2018 that says “the right to exercise national self-determination” in Israel is “unique to the Jewish people.” 

 

During the Covid pandemic, Israel received global praise for leading the world in vaccinating its people - but they did not initially provide vaccines to the millions of Palestinians living under its occupation. This is medical apartheid. 

 

The one that was perhaps most shocking to me was that most Palestinians under occupation don’t have the option for mail delivery. Most homes and buildings aren’t numbered, so mail is sent to post offices. In post offices, mail is processed and likely inspected by Israel… there’s no guarantee if or when its recipient will get it. This makes sending letters from prison impossible. 

 

— 

 

I will forever have to live with the fact that I was oblivious to the plight of the Palestinian people before October 2023. But once I was aware, I couldn’t go back - I couldn’t stop reading and learning, and everything I read and learned made me more angry, more disgusted, more outraged. 

 

In 2020 I protested the police murder of George Floyd. The racial injustice towards Black people in the US - especially by police - is something I believe exists and is something I feel is a moral stance I have to take. How would I condemn this violence in the US and not in Israel, when the US sends Israel so much money from our tax dollars? 

 

— 

 

Living under these kinds of conditions is something impossible for me to imagine. It’s a scenario, like a movie. 

 

What would I do, if I was raised in a place where I lived under occupation and surveillance, 24/7? Where the land my ancestors lived on for generations was forever out of reach to me? Where I faced discrimination - having to carry identifying cards that distinguish me as Palestinian; drive a car with a license plate identifying me as Palestinian; get permits to leave; be unable to vote; go through numerous checkpoints; forever in fear of settlers or the government taking my land… unable to marry who I want if they live outside of the area I do, to live where I want even within my new hometown? 

 

More importantly… what would I do if my child was exposed to these things? I’m a new mom, my daughter is almost a year old. If I knew she could be imprisoned at any time - for throwing a rock, or just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, even outside our own home… If I knew that if she was imprisoned, I would likely be denied the right to see her as she was interrogated, where I know she is mistreated by the occupation forces. Where I know her future is bleak, and limited - she can’t go anywhere she wants for school, especially if we lived in Gaza, not the West Bank. 

 

What would I do if my child was one of the ones imprisoned under “administrative detention” with no information or end in sight? What would I do if my child was one of the ones abused by Israeli soldiers? What would I do if my child was shot in the face by a rubber bullet, meaning almost certain death? Or shot in the leg - an aim done by Israeli soldiers to paralyze? 

 

What if I was like Khalida Jarrar, a woman Ahed met in prison, who was re-imprisoned after her release and whose daughter died while she was imprisoned? When she could not leave even to bury her daughter? 

 

“Growing up under a foreign military occupation means living under the constant threat of state-sanctioned violence. It also means living with the total absence of freedom, which is the case for more than five million Palestinians in the occupied territories today. 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 around 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.” 

 

The strength of Palestinians to continue - to resist, to love, to live, to support one another - is one I will forever admire.