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

challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted reflective sad tense fast-paced

5.0

“The endless limitations Isrαel imposes on us are not just about controlling the present, but about robbing us of dreaming and planning our futures. …the IsrαelᎥmilitary robbed all of us, young and old, of a choice. At a very young age, most of us learned the hard way that we weren't any safer inside our homes than we were out on the marches… Being attacked in your own home ignites a strong determination in you to want to defend yourself. You summon a type of courage you didn't know you had, and as you grow, that feeling of courage grows, too. With time, we all stopped letting our fear control us.”

TITLE—They Called Me A Lioness: A PαlesᎿᎥnᎥαn Girl’s Fight for Freedom
AUTHOR—Ahed Tamimi, with Dena Takruri
PUBLISHED—2022
PUBLISHER—One World New York

GENRE—memoir
SETTING—PαlesᎿᎥne
MAIN THEMES/SUBJECTS—the PαlesᎿᎥnᎥαn struggle for freedom, sovereignty, land back & the RᎥghᎿ οf ᎡeᎿυrη, indigenous rights & identity, illegal occupation, settler-colonial & state-sanctioned violence, racist & religious fascism, αpαrᎿheᎥd, international solidarity between freedom fighters, knowing what’s right & doing what’s right, honoring your ancestors, your family, & yourself through the values you choose to defend & how you defend them, video & photography activism, parallels bw South African αpαrᎿheᎥd & IsrαelᎥαpαrᎿheᎥd, zᎥonᎥsm is ᎿerrorᎥsm

Summary:
"In this gripping, painful, and inspiring book, Ahed Tamimi tells the parts of the story that the cameras always miss: the slow and grinding humiliations of the occupation, the heartache of losing loved ones to IsrαelᎥ prisons and guns, the cruelties of imprisonment, the love, laughter, and strength in solidarity that are necessary to keep living, breathing, and fighting against enormous odds. For anyone planning to stay alive on this planet in these perilous times, THEY CALLED ME A LIONESS is urgent and essential reading.” — Ben Ehrenreich

“Read and bear witness.” — Dr. Ibram X. Kendi

My thoughts:
In his forward to Assata Shakur’s Autobioraphy, Lennox S. Hinds stated that “she understates the awfulness of the conditions in which she was incarcerated.” I got much the same sense from Tamimi’s memoir as well. And yet no other book I’ve read has made me cry and made me as furious as this book has. It was so devastating to read about how much Ahed didn’t want to be a revolutionary, didn’t even want to be perceived, she just wanted to live a normal, peaceful life, for her family to be safe, and for them to live and thrive on their indigenous lands.

Thorough yet concise, calm yet firm, very clear & very straightforward, this book recalls specific events in Tamimi’s life and connects them with the greater history of the PαlesᎿᎥnᎥαn struggle including how IsrαelᎥ propaganda and lies have misconstrued much of the situation’s portrayal to the international community—including depictions of American and IsrαelᎥ pro-PαlesᎿᎥnᎥαn liberation activists & allies. We also get personal, heartbreaking and heartwarming looks into Tamimi’s thoughts about her unaskedfor spotlight & fame, as well as intimate details about her family life & her innermost dreams. Between these pages she reveals even more of her infamous strength through her honesty, humility and vulnerability.

One of the parts that really struck me was when she was trying to study for a senior-year English exam that was extremely important to her while IsrαelᎥsoldiers were shooting live rounds at people just outside her bedroom window and she states: “that was too much to ignore” before abandoning her desk to go outside and join the struggle. This is just one of the ways the IsrαelᎥ occupation forces *children* to choose—though really, it’s no choice at all—between their dreams and their families’ lives.

Another moment that really stood out to me was on the night that she expects to be arrested, she prepares for it by sleeping in jeans and socks, and putting her sneakers, coat, and keffiyeh nearby. She wipes her phone so her friends and family can’t be incriminated. And *then* she *sets her alarm* to wake up at *3am* so she has time to study for her English exam a little more before going to school on the off chance she isn’t actually arrested. Who can even imagine what that feels like?

“We each had a part to play in our generation's uprising against the αpαrᎿheᎥd and injustice that had deprived us of even a single day of freedom in our lives. We hadn't inherited any victories in the fight against Israel, only the defeats our parents and their parents had suffered. Our role was to challenge those defeats, like the ones incurred trying to pursue a two-state solution. We wouldn't accept settling for a mere fraction of our own land, and we refused to keep our anger bottled up.”

The chapter about her experiences while imprisoned was one of the heaviest things I’ve ever read, and while mostly that was because of how sick and abusive the soldiers were to these literal children and all the disgusting ways they thought up to torture her, I was also undone by the part where she and her fellow inmates, who were trying to prepare for the very exams she had been unable to take due to her arrest, were studying the third and fourth Geneva conventions and writing their papers on interpreting and analyzing their *own experiences* according to how Isrαel and its soldiers had violated international law in subjecting them to illegal occupation, imprisonment, detainment, and torture—and the *torture* convention was the section for which they had the most experience. It’s too evil and dystopian for words.

I also loved the part about the séance prank as it was a beautiful moment of lightheartedness and friendship in the darkness of the girls’ time in prison, even though it was also devastating because in that moment you’re once again reminded of just how young and innocent these girls are.

“I had always known the occupation had no humanity or mercy, and still they managed to surprise me with the depths of their callousness.”

I would recommend this book to everyone. This book is as necessary to read as Assata’s memoir is, which, of course, I am also constantly demanding that everyone read. This book is best read immediately—& perseveringly. It’s heavy but it’s vitally, crucially important.

Final note: If you’re a US citizen like me, and you’re not **furious** that more of your tax dollars are being used annually to literally fund genocide and torture children and innocent civilians in PαlesᎿᎥne and other countries across the world than are being spent, than have *ever* been spent, on addressing houselessness, poverty, universal healthcare, infrastructure, climate crisis solutions, and education here in the US then I am unspeakably ashamed of you and your deplorable, indefensible cowardice.

“I told the press that I wanted to take some of their questions, with the exception of the IsrαelᎥ media, which I said I was bογcοπing because they consistently defamed my family and our struggle. But really, deep down, I wanted to thank them sarcastically. I wanted to thank them because if it hadn't been for their stupidity—or, perhaps it was their hatred—the world wouldn't know who I was. IsrαelᎥ media had repeatedly aired the clip of my hitting the soldier, a short excerpt from a long Facebook Live stream, and in so doing, they had made me internationally famous. Whatever their agenda was had totally backfired on them. They had embarrassed their country, not thinking that the whole world would turn against them and stand in solidarity with the PαlesᎿᎥnᎥαn people. They had tried to make an example out of me, but really, they had only exposed their country as the brutal human rights violator it so unabashedly is.”

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Season: Year-round

CW // juvenile imprisonment, torture, martyrdom, graphic settler & state-sanctioned violence & child abuse (Please feel free to DM me for more specifics!)

Further Reading—
  • ASSATA AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY by Assata Shakur
  • PAᏓESᎢ1N1AN WALKS by Raja Shehadeh
  • LIGHT IN GΛΖΛ edited by Jehad Abusalim
  • PAᏓESᎢ1NE +100 edited by Basma Ghalayini
  • BITTER by Akwaeke Emezi
  • FREEDOM IS A CONSTANT STRUGGLE by Angela Davis—TBR
  • AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY by Angela Davis—TBR

Favorite Quotes—
Chapter 1–Childhood.
“I grew up in a tiny village in the West Bank called Nabi Saleh. …small and simple. We have a school, a mosque, a little market, and a gas station. Most important, we have each other. The six hundred residents of my village are all related by blood or marriage, part of the extended Tamimi family. My classmates and friends were also my cousins. It's a tight-knit community where everyone looks out for one another. And it's been that way for hundreds of years.”

“But we Palestinians have never accepted this life on our knees. Patriotism and activism course through the veins of the Palestinian people, particularly the ones from my village. We fought against the British when they occupied Palestine. We fought in the 1948 war. And when Israel's illegal settlement construction made its way to our village, the people of Nabi Saleh resisted that, too.”

“Every Palestinian knows that there can never be peace in the absence of justice—so this false concept of "peace" wasn't just elusive; it was farcical.”

“[My grandmother, Tata Farha,] was also the best storyteller I'd ever met. Living with her meant my brothers and I got treated to nightly bedtime stories. But they weren't the kind involving fairy tales or magical far-off lands or anything remotely soothing. Tata Farha's bedtime tales were all real-life stories that taught us the history of our family, of the village, and of Palestine. Many reflected the hell and heartbreak she and our people had lived through. All of her stories were educational. They not only shaped my imagination, but also revealed to me the generational trauma that's embedded in our DNA.”

“They wanted to send a message to the occupier that we didn't accept their presence in any way. They wanted to send an even bigger message to the world: that the Palestinian people wouldn't accept life under Israeli occupation. And finally, they wanted to send a message to the Palestinian people that the natural reaction to life under occupation was resistance and that it was their responsibility and their duty to stand up to our oppressors.”

“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. Detractors have pointed to our youth throwing stones as a contradiction of this principle, accusing us of being violent. Our response has always been that… …a stone is not a weapon. It has long been a symbol of defense in Palestinian consciousness and mythology. If a Palestinian walking around his land encounters a wild boar or a snake, he instinctually reaches for a stone to defend himself against the creature, but not to preemptively attack it. …consider …the armed and violent nature of the Israeli soldier who is intruding upon our land. Given the bulletproof uniform he's wearing and the armored vehicle he's riding in, a stone is highly unlikely to cause him any serious bodily harm. A stone, for us, is a symbol. It represents our rejection of the enemy who has come to attack us… To practice nonviolence doesn't mean we'll lie down and surrender to our fate submissively. We still have an active role to play in defending our land. Stones help us act as if we're not victims but freedom fighters. This mindset helps motivate us in the fight to reclaim our rights, dignity, and land.”

Chapter 2–The Marches Begin.
“It didn't take long for violence to become a completely normalized aspect of our lives.”

“A couple of days after her arrest, my mom appeared before a judge in an Israeli military court. My dad attended the hearing, shouting out words of support to her from the back of the courtroom. "Be strong!" he said. "You're strong, and we want you to remain that way! We love you, and we're all very proud of you!" Comforted by his encouragement, my mother smiled back at him and nodded reassuringly to let him know she'd be okay. I wasn't there, but my father reported back the details of the day, and I was relieved to hear that she was doing well. His words boosted not just her morale but ours as well. This was the first of many instances where I learned that courage can be contagious. It is both observed and transferred. I never saw my parents cower or crumble in the face of the Israeli military's intimidation and abuse, and this taught me that I, too, could withstand anything.”

“The collective nature of the movement inspired everyone and made us feel we were in the midst of a revolution.”

“But more dangerous than that is how Zionism has occupied the minds and the humanity of far too many Israelis. That occupation is truly more frightening and intractable. I see that occupation in the thirteen-year-old armed settler who carries a rifle slung over his shoulder everywhere he goes. I see it in the twenty-year-old Israeli soldier who aims his weapon right at us and shoots, undeterred by the presence of children or by basic morality. But our Israeli activist friends showed me that there are good people on the other side, people with whom we can build together. They showed me that there's hope.”

“It's hard to describe the putrid stench of skunk water in words—because it's unlike anything I've smelled before or since. But I'lI try anyway. Imagine the odor of a pair of socks pulled from the feet of a rotting corpse and drenched in sewage for days. That's skunk water… 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." The Israeli military has praised skunk water's efficacy as a nonlethal riot-dispersal method, and the Israeli police have called it a "humane option." But there's nothing humane about how the military deliberately targets our homes with the skunk truck, shattering windows and punishing even those who seek refuge indoors; nor how it can injure anyone in its path.”

“Expecting our oppressors somehow to deliver us justice was a fool's errand. The outcome would always be consistent with what the Palestinian people had experienced for decades: Israel can murder us, displace us, ethnically cleanse us, and usurp our land and resources—all with impunity.”

Chapter 3–Forbidden Lands.
“When speaking of the villages and cities stolen from us in 1948, most Palestinians will hardly ever refer to them as “Israel.” Instead they use ad-daakhil, which means “inside,” “the 1948 lands”; or, more simply, “1948” or just “‘48.” It's an affirmation of our continued claim to the land and a constant reminder of the tremendous losses we suffered just decades ago—a still-fresh wound.”

“There, in Akka's Old City, I felt transported to the past, but also to an alternative present, a realm of what was and what could have been had Israel not conquered our land and exiled us from it. I also caught a glimpse of a possible future when we could return to this land. I felt a sense of nostalgia, loss, and hope all at once.”

“The privilege of being unrecognizable is one that I continue to mourn intensely now that I'm well-known in Israel and easily identifiable.”

“Jerusalem is and always will be the most important city for the Palestinian people. If we give it up, it means giving up the Palestinian cause. And that's something we'll never do.”

Chapter 4–Breaking the Barrier.
“No seven-year-old should ever feel she has to shoulder the burden of documenting the human rights abuses taking place in her own backyard. We shouldn't have to grow up seeing our parents arrested and fearing they could be shot or killed at any moment. Nor should we children be able to know instinctively whether the blasts outside our doors are from tear gas, sound grenades, rubber bullets, or live ammunition. And yet, we all acquired this skill even before we hit puberty.”

“So, to return to the question our parents are always asked, about why they allow their children to protest: It is the occupation that forces the children to go out into the streets. Of course our parents worry about us, but they raised us to be strong and not to cower in the face of oppression. They also taught us that while it's important to resist, we must never hate, because hatred will eat us up from inside. We resist to live because, ultimately, we truly love life. The occupation seeks to defeat our spirits and rob us of any semblance of a normal or safe childhood, but we refuse to let it. Just as we refuse to let ourselves be controlled by fear.”

“I tried to reach the spot where they were standing, but each time I took a few steps forward, the soldiers fired more live rounds in my direction. I felt the bullets whiz past the sides of my head and between my legs. They narrowly missed me, instead hitting the rocks around my feet, which exploded and sent fragments flying into the air that hit my and others' faces. This was the moment I completely broke the fear barrier. I thought if I could survive being this close to death, I could survive anything. Or, maybe I simply stopped caring.”

“Knowing that in order to win back our rightful land, we would be bound to incur losses and forced to make sacrifices, I joined all the subsequent demonstrations. I was prepared to make sacrifices, too. I changed my lifelong dream of becoming a professional soccer player to becoming a lawyer, so I could fight for the justice we were so regularly being denied. I wanted justice for Khalo Rushdie, for Mustafa, for my father in his many arrests, and for us in being banned from visiting him. Soccer was great and all, but it wouldn't benefit us the way the law would. In this one life I was given, I knew I had to do something to help my people. If I didn't, I'd have to answer to God for it.”

Chapter 5–The Spotlight.
“Because I refused to remain quiet or feel defeated, my conscience was at ease. Going out and expressing myself by telling the soldiers they were not welcome on my land somehow filled me with optimism and hope. It made me love life even more. Aside from fulfilling my patriotic duty and serving the Palestinian cause, I felt I was defying the entire occupation by staring down a soldier who wore the same uniform as the one who had killed my uncle.”

“Even though I was a child, I understood that my life had to be devoted to a cause greater than myself. My parents instilled the notion in me and my brothers that if we didn't do anything to benefit our homeland, then we didn't do anything to benefit ourselves. If I was successful in life but my success didn't help Palestine, then it wasn't truly a success.”

“I was standing at the bottom of the hill when I saw the soldiers grabbing Miko's arms and trying to drag him down to the street to arrest him. As soon as he stepped down from the hill on to the street level, where I was, I wrapped my arms around his torso and hugged him as tightly as I could. He had already been arrested, during one of our previous marches, and I wanted to protect him from meeting that fate again. My mother and aunt also rushed over to try to help, but more soldiers surrounded us. A giant brawl erupted.
"Get rid of the girl!" a soldier barked at Miko in Hebrew.
"If you touch the girl, I will find you and kill you!" Miko shouted back… The soldiers eventually succeeded in arresting Miko. I felt bad that I wasn't able to save him and had gotten a proper beating by them instead... Still, I know Miko was touched by my attempt at helping him—he says it was one of the most moving moments of his life. 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.”

“Other times, during the demonstrations in Nabi Saleh, the soldiers would shout my name and say, "Look! It's Ahed Tamimi! Shoot her!" I was afraid, of course, but glad that all of our protests were filmed. The camera was our weapon and our shield—the most powerful way we could educate the world about the barbarity of Israel's occupation. So long as their immoral army continued firing its weapons at us, we'd continue aiming ours right back at them.”

[In a speech in South Africa:] “‘…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. After all, they knew more than anyone the critical role global boycotts had played in ultimately ending apartheid in their own country.”

Chapter 6–The Slap.
“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.”

“What helped me withstand my interrogation, and the ones that followed, was dissociating from my body in the interrogation room, switching myself to autopilot. My body might be physically in the same room as my interrogator, but my mind would drift off to a faraway space inhabited only by me. Once I was there, I no longer had to see what was in front of me. Sure, I might have been looking right at my interrogator, but I wasn't actually seeing him. I was in a totally different world, one that my mind had created as an escape, and I made sure it was a world I loved. And in that world, as a survival strategy, my imagination would kick into overdrive.
     “Here's how it worked: I'd pick a patriotic song about Palestine, one we used to sing in the marches, and I'd sing it in my head. It might be a song about sumood, or "steadfastness,” and our love for the land. Such songs always gave me the courage to march on and to face off with the soldiers, and now they were similarly giving me the strength to withstand this interrogation and defy my interrogator. One by one, I mentally sang all the songs I had memorized. Once each song ended, I'd make up a story related to it—a little drama with an elaborate plot and heroic characters inspired by the lyrics. Then I'd move on to another song. When I finished all the songs I knew by heart and created all the corresponding stories I could think of I moved on to poems. I'd mentally recite every poem I ever had to memorize in school, analyzing each stanza with newfound curiosity. When the poems ran out, I reminisced about my favorite people.”

Chapter 7–Prison.
“It didn't take me long to realize that I was being tried in a kangaroo court and that, like other Palestinians caught up in the Israeli military court system, I never had a real shot at justice.”

“…my mother and I had been arrested only after the footage of my hitting the soldier had started to spread around the world—an admission that Israel was concerned mainly with getting revenge for a humiliating viral video, rather than an actual assault.”

“Shortly after I was arrested, a prominent Israeli journalist named Ben Caspit wrote, "We should exact a price at some other opportunity, in the dark, without witnesses and cameras." It still gives me chills to wonder what price Caspit had in mind, but more than that, I pondered the kind of hatred these grown men must have had in their hearts to write such repugnant things and wish such harm on a young girl. Meanwhile, Israeli settlers from Halamish sneaked into Nabi Saleh in the middle of the night and graffitied the walls of our village: DEATH TO AHED TAMIMI and THERE'S NO PLACE IN THE WORLD FOR AHED TAMIMI.”

“Once the plea deal was presented to the judge and the hearing was concluding, I addressed the courtroom. I decided to speak the only words that needed to be uttered in that setting: ‘There is no justice under occupation, and this court is illegal.’”

“Everything about the debacle was absurd, from their seeing our education as a form of rebellion, to their paranoia about the classroom, to this last bizarre stipulation. But as Palestinians living under Israeli rule, the arbitrary cruelty of their decisions, which didn't seem informed by any sort of moral or even practical logic, was something to which we were all accustomed.”

“By educating ourselves about our rights and protections under international law and persevering despite every attempt to thwart us and derail our studies, we were practicing the most powerful form of resistance.”

“Flagrantly and in an astonishing number of circumstances, Israel was failing to meet its obligations under international law. The question that everyone in the course inevitably always came back to was: Why was the international community letting Israel get away with it? Khalida explained to us that while it was very important for us to use international law and international humanitarian law as a mechanism to advance our cause for self-determination and equality, we had to understand that our fate ultimately depended on politics. Many politicians around the world were willing to sacrifice the rights of people and turn a blind eye to violations, especially when it came to Israel's occupation. She reminded us that international law had been created by colonial powers and was disproportionately applied to serve their interests. It frustrated me to realize the limitations of international law we faced as Palestinians seeking justice. I now understood that it would never serve as a silver bullet for our cause, given how countries like the United States shielded Israel from any sort of punitive measures. Holding Israel accountable via international law would have to be accompanied by other strategies, like boycotts and divestment.”

“At the same time, as Palestinians, we have to be honest with ourselves and acknowledge that our problems won't be instantly resolved once we end the occupation. That's why we have to tie our national struggle for liberation to our societal struggle for equality. We must ensure that when we finally do achieve liberation, we're not left with a society that's full of corruption and inequity. It's imperative that we fight for women's rights, to ensure that we have full equality between women and men. We need to get rid of traditional mentalities that judge girls and women through the lens of shame.
We also need to fight for better employment opportunities for our youth and find ways to get them involved in the political process. Why should those holding political office be predominantly old men? They've consistently proven themselves incapable and irrelevant. It's time they stepped aside and handed over the reins to a new generation of Palestinian leaders.”

“This larger vision and strategy for our society was a major lesson I took away from studying under Khalida. My time in her classroom is one of many reasons I've never viewed this chapter of my life as a loss. In prison, I grew in ways that wouldn't have been possible otherwise. In prison, I learned the virtue of patience, something I had always struggled with before. And in prison, instead of putting my own comfort and desires first, I learned how to be in a group and always fight for the interest of the collective.”

Chapter 8–Homecoming.
“We wanted to prove to our jailers that not even prison would stop us from achieving our dreams or prevent our success. Education, as always, would continue to be one of our most formidable weapons.”

“As the hour of my release approached, I grew extremely anxious… I stressed out over how I'd speak to my family and friends. We had been essentially estranged for nearly eight months, with no mode of communication. I'd become an entirely different person during that time, and I worried they wouldn't understand me or connect with me in the same way. ‘We'll have to get to know each other from scratch,’ I thought, which felt daunting.”

“By their examples, Khalida and Khalto Yasmeen had taught me how to be a strong woman who advocated for herself and spoke truth to power. They had helped me understand the critical role women play in our society and in our struggle for liberation. Women make up half our society, and they raise the whole of it. We have to ensure that they're strong and empowered with education and political awareness in order to raise the next generation, who will liberate Palestine.”

“Despite the memories and the scars that plot of land will forever bear, it has always been my favorite spot in the world.”

“I think about the teenage Israeli girls my age serving in Israel's army, and I'm overcome with sadness. Despite the fact that they got to grow up with privileges and freedoms Palestinian children have never known, I truly feel sorry for them. The occupation has brainwashed them, both the men and the women. It threatens to rob them of their humanity and their conscience, and once you've lost those two things, you've lost everything that matters in life.”

Chapter 9–Postscript.
“Nothing built on injustice and might lasts forever. Eventually, the oppressed find a way to liberate themselves. May we all one day break free from our oppression and imprisonment. Until then, the struggle continues.”
Expand filter menu Content Warnings