24-Dec-17: Nabi Saleh, the media and a Tamimi child's journey

Ahed Tamimi in court last week
[Image Source]

A depressingly large number of people posting in various social media channels are hammering away right now at a campaign that tries to characterize the Palestinian Arab teen Ahed Tamimi as a victim of Israeli oppression, as a human rights activist, as a freedom fighter.

She's the young woman many know as Shirley Temper, a photogenic and compliant performer who for at least eight years now has been the central child figure in a long-running propaganda performance orchestrated by her father, the full-time propagandist Bassem Tamimi and his publicity business he operates, Tamimi Press.

What others say about this is very much on our minds. What Bassem Tamimi himself says is a matter of record. Child abuse? Manipulation? Ha! The ugly manipulation in which he and his fellow villagers engage chronically is dismissed in masterful fashion: "Our children are doing their duty and must be strong." It's an appalling message of which the directors of the Hitlerjugend would have been proud. 

We keep running into people who think they know the story of the Tamimi clan. But it's clear to us that in reality few understand the rich and ugly detail of their hatefulness. It's expressed not as mere protest and words but the kind of physical violence that has ended dozens of lives on the Tamimi side and among their many victims.

FBI Most Wanted Terrorist: The Arabic version is here

Regular readers of this blog know our oldest daughter Malki was murdered at the age of 15 in a massacre engineered by Bassem Tamimi's niece, Ahlam Tamimi. 

Since March 2017, that Tamimi woman has been a fugitive from US justice, wanted by the FBI to face federal charges in Washington arising from the bombing/massacre of the Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem 16 years ago.

She has confessed often and in great detail about her role as the mastermind of the slaughter.

Meanwhile Bassem Tamimi has been crowned a hero of and by Amnesty International. In a shockingly cynical move that in large measure backfired on them, Amnesty's agitprop specialists sent him on a coast-to-coast roadshow in 2015.

We tried to get some straight answers from him and from his generous sponsors at the time to some straightforward, related questions... but all we got was ignored: see "04-Sep-15: Mr. Human Rights Defender, a question if we may".

But Ahlam Tamimi, the confessed murderer, along with her uncle and aunt and cousin Nariman, Bassem and Ahed, are simply part of a long list of Tamimis associated with Arab-on-Israeli terror. Some of the details have been deliberately obscured or hidden. We have been doing what we can to publicize them.

We revisited some of the barely-known details just a few days ago - see "19-Dec-17: Uncovering some of Nabi Saleh's hideous buried secrets".

On any objective view, enthusiasm for the "bravery" of Ahed (sometimes written Ah'd and Aahd) Tamimi is a strange thing because of how it ignores the trajectory of her emergence as a media figure and the center of a multimedia "Free Ahed Now" project.

How old is she? 

Depends whom you ask. She was 12 in September 2011 [quoted by Israellycool from an Arab source]; 8 in August 2012 [Source: +972, a far-left Israeli site]; 13 in December 2012 [Source: TimeTurk News and other Turkish sources]; 10 in December 2012 [Source: World Bulletin]; 13 in June 2013 [Source: Your Middle East]; 12 in February 2014 [Source; The Guardian]; 14 in September 2015 [Source: NBC News]; 16 in February 2017 [a South African source]. Thus she was born (in the same order as those links) in 1999, 2004, 1999, 2002, 2000, 2002, 2001, 2001. It's hard to be precise. And to be clear, it's fair to assume all this vagueness is intentional.

[UPDATE January 1, 2018: The answer is - she will turn 17 on January 31, 2018, having been in 2001. Much if not most of what has been written and published in past years about her age has been wrong, and almost certainly deliberately fudged. See what we wrote here.]

We have pulled together some images (below) from public sources that chart the process by which her family and her village - but most of all her parents - cultivated a media-ready provocateur. It's a dismaying chronicle not only because it shows how there are loathsome people who, even though they are parents, would do this to a child. But also because of the individuals, a distressing number of them progressive Jews, who have embraced this distressing and very obvious child-abuse while giving no sign they see the malice, the hate, the bigotry and the overt and calculated manipulation that has accompanied it from the outset until today.

▲ July 2, 2010: Screaming on demand for her father's cameras and just 9 years old, Ahed Tamimi is confident enough to walk up to a fully armed soldier and shriek into his face. It's very likely someone told her not to worry, everything will be OK, just show fierce little-girl anger while the cameras roll. And so a career is launched. See more in this video from which the photo above was screen-captured. And here: "06-Sep-15: The making of a pigtailed provocateur". Watch carefully and you can see the child's mother in the same video clip. Mostly - since she has much less to offer than her child does - she stays out of camera range.

▲ June 16, 2012: With live-action TV news cameras everywhere, this is Ahed Tamimi on stage, age 11, in Amman, Jordan, gazing longingly at her role-model cousin and Nabi Saleh's pride and joy, the boastful and confessed murderer-who-got-away-with-it Ahlam Tamimi, our daughter Malki's killer. The occasion is the wedding of the Tamimi woman with another Nabi Saleh murderer (who happens also to be a Tamimi, the bride's cousin and little Ahed's cousin), Nizar Tamimi, the male in the photo. Everyone in the picture, along wih many of the wedding guests, is a blood-relative of everyone else. (The Tamimi's are deeply committed to marrying within their tribe.) As the published videos and photos attest, many members of the Nabi Saleh Tamimis traveled to Jordan to be present. Background: "22-Jun-12: A wedding and what came before it"

▲ September 2012: Here she's eleven years old. The CAMERA caption reads: "Mahmoud Abbas congratulates A'hd (right) and her cousin Marah for their "bravery" (From the Nabi Sabeh Solidarity blog)" 

▲ November 2, 2012: Still not quite 12, and captured on video by the cameras of Tamimi Press while stage managed by Bassem Tamimi, her deeply-cynical father, Ahed screams "I spit in your face". [Image Source]

▲ December 24, 2012: Recognizing the power of a little blonde tyke, aged almost 12 and who teaches the Israelis a lesson, Mevlüt Uysal, then mayor of the Istanbul district of Başakşehir (and currently mayor of Istanbul) awards the always-willinng Tamimi girl the Başakşehir Hanzala Courage Award trophy [Image Source]

▲ December 31, 2012: The Tamimi handlers manage to set up an encounter for the sub-teen child with Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan [Image Source]

▲ December 31, 2012: Next thing you know, he gives her breakfast [Image Source]

▲ A widely-published portrait of Ahed with the proud parents (father on the left) in February 2013 [Image Source]. She's aged 12.

▲ March 17, 2013: That's twelve-year-old Ahed in the bottom row among the other eager "peace-makers" of Nabi Saleh. Her father and chief manipulator Bassem Tamimi is at top left; her mother Nariman Tamimi in the bottom left corner. Everyone's a relative of everyone else here - a major promotion for bigotry-rich terrorism from the editors of one of the world's major sources of news. Some people read this and may think the Tamimis are talking about some future activity of a peaceful nature. A reminder that in the so-called second Intifada, the death toll among Israelis was huge; among Arabs, substantially larger. We urge you to absorb some of the background: "17-Mar-13: A little village in the hills, and the monsters it spawns". And this follow-up: "29-Aug-15: Revisiting a Palestinian Arab village and its monsters". And another: "01-Sep-15: A tale of two villages: one devoted to non-violence, another that actually exists".

▲ November 21, 2014: AlwatanVoice publishes one of the many Tamimi Press snapshots of the Tamimi village children boldly marching to another entirely-artificial and contrived weekly "clash" with Israeli soldiers. As always, Ahed Tamimi, not quite 14, is placed by her father (she's always being placed by one of her parents) in the most photographed position. Right behind her is Naji Tamimi, a full-time paid Fatah "activist" and cousin or brother (according to different sources) of Bassem Tamimi

▲ March 13, 2015 Ahed Tamimi is 14 here. The weekly Nabi Saleh media-focused confrontation with remarkably restrained and patient Israeli soldiers [Image Source]

▲ March 13, 2015: Ahed, 14, playing the customary featured role she's been bred to fill, in the weekly performance-for-the-media outside Nabi Saleh. Once again, she's screaming on cue [Image Source]

▲ August 28, 2015: With her father Bassem moving into the camera's view for a brief moment (green shirt), but doing nothing to protect his daughter, Ahed Tamimi, 14, photogenically writhes and struggles with an embarrassed, lone Israeli serviceman who could have theoretically used his gun to get out of a difficult situation but naturally did not. It's as viral an image as Bassem Tamimi can ever have planned. [Image Source: CNN]

▲ September 2, 2015: Bassem, Nariman, Ahed (14) and other members of the family are again honored by a personal audience with the president-for-life of the Palestinian Authority [Image Source]

▲ September 3, 2015: Not to be outdone by his boss, Sabri Saidam, the Palestinian Authority's minister of education visits the little town of Nabi Saleh to get a grip on developments there. Background: "10-Sep-15: It takes a village: The passion for violence of the peace-loving Tamimis". No such visit would be complete without an Ahed pose. She's 14.

▲ November 2015: Bassem Tamimi, Ahed's father, is paraded around the US by Amnesty International, In Ithaca, NY, where this photo is taken, he addresses an audience of school-children from Grade 3. There's outrage in the city ["School District: Ithaca 3rd graders exposed to anti-Israel rhetoric in the classroom" and "Judge sends Ithaca schools a message over pro-Palestinian speaker"]. Shortly afterwards, his visa to enter the United States was permanently revoked by the Obama administration.

▲ November 2015: An invaluable examination by Petra Marquardt-Bigman of the Ahed Tamimi phenomenon, the horror of the messages emanating from her parents and cousins, and the context in which all this has been happening [The Tower] 

▲ Some months ago, Ahed Tamimi, not yet 17 and following the instructions of the event planners, addressed in Arabic a committee in the European Parliament.

▲ From the Jewish Voices for Peace Twitter feed

The idea of referring to Nariman Tamimi, Ahed's mother, as a person with a "voice full of love and tenderness" is delusional. Don't believe us? Check out "02-Oct-15: Truth, honesty, love, murder... and useful idiots".

But if the subject of "butchered childhoods" is mentioned, we happen to know something about how that actually works. Our daughter Malki, who never once thrust a fist into the face of anyone let alone a soldier, was just fifteen years old when she became an unwilling participant in the explosive moment which the murderous Tamimi clan celebrate yearly with such huge enthusiasm. 

The photo of Malki (above) stands for the absolute opposite of what the Tamimi propaganda machine is marketing: goodness, kindness, concern for others, embracing the different and the weak and the damaged, always optimistic.

It's tragic how many people fail to understand that simple truth.