This Ongoing War: A Blog: 06-Sep-15: The making of a pigtailed provocateur

Sunday, September 06, 2015

06-Sep-15: The making of a pigtailed provocateur

There's a reason she has such stage presence.

The Tamimi clan child who featured in the staged clash ["02-Sep-15: Lights, action, camera, bite: Scenes from a cognitive war"] in a town a little north of Jerusalem ten days ago brings years of experience and practice to the role. But her determined parents get a large part of the credit, along with the PA education system via which she is acquiring life skills.

She is a mere ten year old moppet in the pictures below. They come from a YouTube video dated July 2, 2010. It was filmed in Nabi Saleh, the Palestinian Arab town which earned itself a New York Times Magazine cover two and a half years ago. We responded to that cover story here: "17-Mar-13: A little village in the hills, and the monsters it spawns".

The child now better known as Shirley Temper, as a 10 year old, playing ball
inches away from a cluster of armed soldiers of the IDF. Experience has given the well-prepared
Nabi Saleh children an uncommon sense of what to fear and what not. Hence their apparent
lack of fear of the Israeli soldiers. [Source: A Nabi Saleh video dated July 2, 2010 (at 7m 01s)

Screaming on demand as the cameras roll to capture the "clash" as the well-armed
IDF servicemen stand by impassively. Syria this certainly isn't, as the children know.
Source: A Nabi Saleh video dated July 2, 2010 (at 2 m 20 s)

Shirley Temper (Ahed Tamimi), ten and as angry as she needs to be,
screaming on demand again. Great YouTube fodder
Source: A Nabi Saleh video dated July 2, 2010 at 2m 40s

Barely ten years old (her right arm is raised) and already "fearless",
and aware of the lengths to which IDF soldiers will go to avoid falling victim to
the provocations engineered by the Palestinian Arab parents of these children.
Source: A Nabi Saleh video dated July 2, 2010 (at 1m 4 s)

Here she is (below) this past Friday, September 3, 2015, now 15 and in the clutches of an important visitor to Nabi Saleh.

The Syrian-born political figure in the dark suit and with a roughly, more-or-less sort-of-fatherly arm over her shoulders is famous in Palestinian Arab circles because he used to be the Fatah Revolutionary Council's Deputy Secretary General.

The PA being what it is, the distance between revolution and school-children is never very great. So now Dr. Sabri Saidam is making a name as His Excellency Minister of Education and Higher Education in the Abbas regime.

It's not difficult to figure why the person responsible for Palestinian Arab education would want to be at the center of a photo opp in that particular village at this particular time. The sympathetic media coverage in certain quarters must be a huge temptation to someone with his hands-on approach to the emerging generation of activist Palestinian Arab boys and girls.

Shirley Temper and the PA Minister of Education
Source: Facebook image from Nabi Saleh, September 3, 2015

Below, His Excellency the minister, with the Tamimi girl and her brother (see the boy with the plaster cast), alongside Bassem Tamimi, proud father and performance director:

Tamimis with the Minister | Source: Facebook image from Nabi Saleh, September 3, 2015

Additional background:

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