JERUSALEM: When Israel locked up Ahed Tamimi for slapping a soldier last year, it hoped to finally silence the teenage Palestinian activist. Instead, it created an international celebrity.
Less than three months after walking out of prison, Tamimi is on a victory tour, crisscrossing Europe and the Middle East as a superstar of the campaign against Israeli occupation. She has spoken to throngs of adoring fans, met world leaders and was even welcomed by the Real Madrid soccer club.
The VIP reception has dismayed Israeli officials and is prompting some to ask if Israel mishandled the case.
“We could have been smarter,” said Yoaz Hendel, a media commentator and former spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Tamimi gained international attention last year when she confronted an Israeli soldier in front of her home in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh. She kicked and slapped him, and then took a swing at a second soldier in a videotaped incident that spread quickly on social media.
Tamimi’s extended family has long been on Israel’s radar screen. Nabi Saleh is home to some 600 people and for years, they have held weekly protests against the expansion of a nearby Israeli settlement, gatherings that sometimes turn to stone-throwing, prompting Israeli troops to respond with tear gas, rubber bullets or live fire.
For Israelis, the Tamimis are a group of provocateurs but among Palestinians, they are seen as brave heroes standing up to Israel.
But neither side anticipated the fallout from last December’s standoff, which occurred during one of the weekly protests.
The military said it moved in after villagers began throwing stones at troops. In the video, Tamimi and her cousin, Nour, walk toward the two soldiers. Tamimi tells the soldiers to leave, pushes and kicks them and slaps one of them.
As the cousin films the scene on her mobile phone, Tamimi’s mother, Nariman, arrives. At one point, she steps between Ahed and the soldiers, but then also tries to push back the soldiers, who do not respond. Ahed Tamimi later said that she was upset because a cousin had been shot in the face by a rubber bullet fired by Israeli troops.
As the video spread, Palestinians celebrated Ahed as a hero. Cartoons, posters and murals portrayed her as a Joan of Arc-like character, confronting the Israeli military with her mane of long, dirty-blond curls flowing in the breeze.
In Israel, the incident set off its own uproar. While the army praised the soldiers for showing restraint, politicians felt the army had been humiliated and called for tough action against the young firebrand. Days later, in an overnight raid, troops entered Tamimi’s house and took her and her mother away. Both were given eight-month prison sentences.
Israel has traditionally been obsessive about defending its image — making the term “hasbara,” which roughly translates as public relations, part of its national lexicon. But as the country has moved toward the right under the decade-long rule of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, charm has been replaced increasingly with confrontation.
Under his watch, Israel has tried to weaken liberal advocacy groups critical of his policies, detained Jewish American critics at the airport for questioning and banned people who boycott the Jewish state from entering. It attempted to expel an American woman who will be studying at an Israeli university, accusing her of being a boycott activist. She was held in detention for two weeks until Israel’s Supreme Court overturned the expulsion order.
While widely supported at home, these policies risk backfiring on the international stage.
Weeks after her release from prison, Tamimi began a tour that has taken her to France, Spain, Greece, Tunisia and Jordan. At nearly every stop, she has been welcomed by cheering crowds.
“I don’t like living as a celebrity. It’s not an easy life to live. I’m exhausted,” she said in a telephone interview from the Jordanian capital, Amman. “But what I like more is delivering the message of my people. That makes me feel proud.”
She kicked off her tour on Sept. 14 in Paris, where she participated in the Communist Party’s “Humanity” rally. The popular weekend festival attracts rockers, rappers and other entertainers and celebrities. On the festival’s last day, she spoke to thousands of cheering supporters. She traveled to other cities around France at the invitation of the France Palestine Solidarity Association.
In Greece, she was a headliner for the 100th-anniversary celebration of the country’s Communist party, KKE. Addressing a crowd of thousands, she was interrupted by several long ovations and chants of “Freedom for Palestine.”
“Your support means a lot to me. It gives me a big push to return to my homeland and continue my struggle vigorously against the occupation,” she told the crowd. “Free people unite to face capitalism, imperialism and colonization ... We are not victims. We are freedom fighters.”
Her family was invited as official guests of Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi to mark the 33rd anniversary of the Israeli bombing of what was then the Palestine Liberation Organization’s headquarters. At the ceremony, Essebsi gave her a statue of a silver dove with an olive branch.
Meetings with Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan are in the works, said her father, Bassem Tamimi, who has been accompanying her.
“On the Champs-Elysees in Paris, we were surrounded by hundreds of people who wanted to talk to Ahed and take pictures with her,” her father said. “The same thing happened in every other city we visited.”
In a sign of her mainstream appeal, Tamimi recently wrote a first-person account of her time in prison for Vogue Arabia, a Middle Eastern edition of the popular fashion magazine.
“I want to be a regular 17-year-old. I like clothes, I like makeup. I get up in the morning, check my Instagram, have breakfast and walk in the hills around the village,” she wrote. “But I am not a normal teenager.”
Israeli officials have remained silent throughout her tour — with one exception. Tamimi’s reception at Real Madrid, where she met the legendary striker Emilio Butragueno and received a team jersey with her name on it, was too much to bear.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon called the team’s embrace of Tamimi “shameful” in a Twitter post. “It would be morally wrong to stay silent while a person inciting to hatred and violence goes on a victory tour as if she is some kind of rock star,” he said.
Israel faces a dilemma — wanting to respond but fearing criticism will attract even more attention.
Michael Oren, Israel’s deputy minister for public diplomacy and a former ambassador to the United States, learned a bitter lesson when he acknowledged earlier this year leading a secret investigation into whether the Tamimis were “real” Palestinians.
He said their light features, Western clothes and long history of run-ins with Israeli forces suggested that they were actually paid provocateurs out to hurt the country’s image. The investigation concluded that the family was indeed real — prompting mockery and racism accusations from the Tamimis.
Tamimi is reflective of changing Palestinian sentiment. Where an older generation of political leaders sought either armed struggle or a two-state solution with Israel, many younger Palestinians have given up on the long-stalled peace process and instead favor a single state in which Jews and Arabs live equally. Israel objects to a binational state, saying it is merely an attempt to destroy the country through a nonviolent disguise.
“Israel is unhappy because she highlights to the world both how unjust the occupation is and how absurd their legal system is,” said Diana Buttu, a former legal adviser to the Palestinian Authority. “Israel instead wants subservient Palestinians who simply stay quiet in the face of the denial of freedom. Ahed shows that won’t happen — including not with this generation.”
Hendel, the former Israeli government spokesman, said he initially supported Israel’s tough response to the slapping incident but now thinks it was an error. He said issuing a fine or punishing her parents for their daughter’s actions might have generated less attention.
He acknowledged there is a broader problem for which Israel does not seem to have a good answer.
“She’s powerful, part of a sophisticated machine that tries to delegitimize Israel by using photos and creating scenarios that portray Israel as Goliath and the other side as David,” he said. “It is much easier to fight terrorism than to fight civilians motivated by terrorist leaders. I think Tamimi in this story is a kind of a front line for a much bigger organization, or even a process.”
Tamimi could continue to frustrate the Israelis for many years to come. She completed her high school studies in prison and now hopes to study international law in Britain. She dreams of one day representing the Palestinians in institutions like the International Criminal Court.
“International law is a strong tool to defend my people,” she said. “We are under occupation and we have to rely on international law to get the world behind us.”
Palestinian protest Ahed Tamimi icon goes from jail cell to VIP suite
Palestinian protest Ahed Tamimi icon goes from jail cell to VIP suite
- Tamimi is on a victory tour, crisscrossing Europe and the Middle East as a superstar of the campaign against Israeli occupation
- She gained international attention last year when she confronted an Israeli soldier in front of her home in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh
Iran set to show off captured Israeli F-35 pilots
RIYADH: Iran is set to present images of captured Israeli F-35 pilots “soon,” according to the Tehran Times.
The Iranians on Friday said they had captured two Israeli fighter jet pilots, one of them a woman.
The Israelis have not confirm they had lost any of its pilots after carrying out a surprise attack on Iran on Friday morning.
The two countries militaries have been engaged in missile and drone attacks since then, prompting fears the confrontation could spiral out of control and lead to a major regional conflict.
What Israel’s bombing of Iran’s state broadcaster says about its targeting of journalists
- Israeli forces struck Iran’s state broadcaster IRIB on Monday, killing two staff and injuring others during a live broadcast
- Press freedom advocates say the Tehran strike echoes Israel’s pattern of targeting media in Gaza and the West Bank
LONDON: In what press freedom groups say is only the latest in a string of attacks on media workers, the Israeli military on Monday struck the headquarters of the state-owned Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting network in Tehran.
The attack, which interrupted a live broadcast, killed at least two members of staff — news editor Nima Rajabpour and secretariat worker Masoumeh Azimi — and injured several others, according to state-affiliated media.
In footage widely shared online, Sahar Emami, an anchor for the Islamic Republic of Iran News Network, was seen fleeing the studio as the screen behind her filled with smoke. Moments earlier, she had told viewers: “You hear the sound of the aggressor attacking the truth.”
The strike destroyed the building — known as the Glass Building — which burned through the night. Israel immediately claimed responsibility.
Defense Minister Israel Katz had issued a warning less than an hour earlier, calling IRIB a “propaganda and incitement megaphone,” urging up to 330,000 nearby residents to evacuate.
The attack drew swift condemnation from Iranian officials. Esmaeil Baqaei, spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, called it “a wicked act of war crime,” urging the international community to demand justice from Israel for its attack on the media.
NUMBER
70%
Israel is responsible for the majority of journalist killings globally in 2024, the highest number by a single country in one year since the Committee to Protect Journalists began documenting this data in 1992.
Source: CPJ
“The world is watching,” Baqaei wrote on X. “Israeli regime is the biggest enemy of truth and is the No#1 killer of journalists and media people.”
Over the past week, the long-running shadow war between Israel and Iran has escalated dramatically. On Friday, Israel launched a series of airstrikes on Iranian nuclear and military facilities, including the Natanz enrichment site.
With the stated aim of preventing Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon, the strikes caused significant damage to the country’s nuclear infrastructure and military command structure, with multiple high-ranking commanders killed.
Iran has retaliated with missile barrages targeting Israeli cities and military bases. Civilian casualties have mounted on both sides, and major cities like Tehran and Tel Aviv have experienced widespread panic and disruption.
The Israeli attack on IRIB shows media workers are not exempt from the violence.
Sara Qudah, regional director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said she was “appalled by Israel’s attack on Iran’s state television channel,” noting that the lack of international censure “has emboldened it to target media elsewhere in the region.”
Loreley Hahn Herrera, lecturer in global media and digital cultures at SOAS University of London, echoed this view.
“The exceptional status through which Western powers have historically shielded Israel has allowed it to systematically commit international law and human rights violations without ever being held accountable or suffer any legal, financial, military or diplomatic repercussions,” she told Arab News.
“This has indeed emboldened Israel to attack not only Palestine and Iran. In the last months, Israel has broken the ceasefire in Lebanon, bombed Yemen, and Syria as well.”
Israel’s treatment of media workers in combat zones has long been documented by press freedom organizations. Despite repeated calls for accountability, Israel has consistently evaded consequences.
“Israel has a sophisticated political communication strategy which rests on its hasbara (propaganda) that has worked hand in hand with its material strategies to control the public spaces in the West through repeating narratives about victimhood and its right to defend itself,” Dina Matar, professor of political communication and Arab media at SOAS, told Arab News.
Monday’s strike in Tehran closely mirrors Israel’s record in Gaza and the West Bank since Oct. 7, 2023. Under the banner of “eliminating terrorists,” Israel has killed at least 183 journalists in Palestine and Lebanon, according to CPJ. Others put the figure closer to 220.
A separate report published in April by the Costs of War project at Brown University described the Gaza conflict as “the worst ever for journalists.”
Titled “News Graveyards: How Dangers to War Reporters Endanger the World,” the study concluded that more journalists have been killed in Gaza than in all major US wars combined.
The report was swiftly attacked by Israeli nationalists, who dismissed it as “garbage” and factually flawed for not linking the journalists killed to militant activity.
“There is no policy of targeting journalists,” a senior Israeli officer said last year, attributing the deaths to the scale and intensity of the bombardment.
But Herrera disagrees.
“Israel is not only targeting journalists, it is targeting the families of the journalists as a strategy to deter their coverage and punish them for reporting the war crimes Israel commits on a daily basis in occupied Palestine,” she said.
Herrera cited several examples where Israel appeared to punish journalists by targeting their families. One case was that of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief, Wael Dahdouh, who was broadcasting live when he learned that his wife, daughter, son, and grandchild had been killed in an Israeli airstrike in October 2023.
A more recent case involved photojournalist Fatima Hassouna, who was killed alongside several family members. Both attacks, Israel claimed, were aimed at Hamas operatives, but critics say they reflect a broader strategy of silencing coverage through collective punishment.
Yet accusations of Israel’s targeting of journalists precede the last 20 months.
“Israel has a long and documented history of targeting Palestinian journalists,” said Matar, pointing to the 1972 assassination of writer Ghassan Kanafani in Beirut.
A prominent Palestinian author and militant, Kanafani was considered to be a leading novelist of his generation and one of the Arab world’s leading Palestinian writers.
He was killed along with his 17-year-old niece, Lamees, by an explosive device planted in his car by Mossad, in one of the first known extrajudicial killings for which the Israeli spy agency ever claimed responsibility.
More recently, in May 2022, Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was shot dead by an Israeli soldier during a raid in Jenin, despite wearing a press vest. Initial Israeli claims blaming Palestinian fire were quickly disproven by independent investigations and the UN.
A 2025 documentary identified the suspected shooter, but no one has been held accountable.
Foreign media workers have also been killed. In 2014, Italian journalist Simone Camilli and his Palestinian colleague Ali Shehda Abu Afash died when an unexploded Israeli bomb detonated while they were reporting in Gaza.
In 2003, Welsh documentarian James Miller was fatally shot by Israeli forces while filming in Rafah.
A year earlier, Italian photojournalist Raffaele Ciriello — on assignment for Corriere della Sera — was shot dead by Israeli gunfire in Ramallah during the Second Intifada, becoming the first foreign journalist killed in that conflict.
No one has been held accountable in any of these cases.
“The reason behind Israel’s targeting and killing of journalists is to send a clear message and instill fear of reporting Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and the West Bank, as it can carry the consequence of death and/or injury,” said Herrera, who noted Israel’s refusal to allow international media into Gaza as part of a wider strategy to monopolize the narrative.
“This is an attempt to minimize or flat out stop any negative coverage of Israeli actions in Gaza and the rest of the occupied territories,” she said. “Israel does not want international media, and particularly Western media, to cover their genocide campaign and their ongoing and systematic war crimes … and push further the delegitimization of Israel.”
While Israel has so far refused to grant broader media access to the enclave, Western news organizations and human rights groups have attempted to push back against the Israeli narrative, arguing that affiliation with outlets like Al-Aqsa TV or Iran’s state broadcaster IRIB does not justify extrajudicial killings.
“News outlets, even propagandist ones, are not legitimate military targets,” the Freedom of the Press Foundation said in a statement on Monday. “Bombing a studio during a live broadcast will not impede Iran’s nuclear program.”
As the conflict with Iran escalates, incidents like Monday’s bombing are likely to face growing scrutiny. For many observers, Israel’s actions are becoming increasingly indefensible, and international tolerance for such attacks may be nearing its limit.
“The international community has played an important role in allowing Israel to act in this manner,” said Herrera.
“Since its establishment in 1948, and even before that though the Balfour Declaration in 1917, the West has protected Israel in the international relations arena.
“The best example of this is the use of the US veto in the UN Security Council or the ever-present declarations that Israel ‘has a right to defend itself’ by European and American political leadership.
“Until the international community effectively implements sanctions, stops funding and arming Israel, we will only continue to witness Israel’s brazen violations of international and human rights law.
“We cannot expect Israel to self-regulate because Israel is not a democracy. Its political and legal systems are subservient to the Zionist ideology of colonization and racial supremacy, and will act to satisfy these aims.”
UAE warns against ‘miscalculated actions’ in Israeli-Iranian conflict, calls for immediate ceasefire
UAE warns against ‘miscalculated actions’ in Israeli-Iranian conflict, calls for immediate ceasefire
- Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan says Emirati leadership is dedicated to promotion of stability, prosperity and justice
- He highlights ‘the risks of reckless and miscalculated actions that could extend beyond the borders’ of Israel and Iran
LONDON: As military exchanges between Israel and Iran continued on Tuesday for a fifth consecutive day, the UAE’s minister of foreign affairs, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, warned of the wider threat posed by the continuing conflict and called for an immediate ceasefire.
“There is no alternative to political and diplomatic solutions,” he said, calling on the UN and its Security Council to intervene and halt the escalating violence.
He also highlighted “the risks of reckless and miscalculated actions that could extend beyond the borders” of Israel and Iran, the Emirates News Agency reported.
The UAE believes “a diplomatic approach is urgently required to lead both parties toward deescalation, end hostilities, and prevent the situation from spiraling into grave and far-reaching consequences,” he added.
The goal of international diplomacy, he said, must be to immediately halt hostilities, prevent the conflict from spiraling out of control, and mitigate its effects on global peace and security.
The UAE condemned the Israeli airstrikes on Iran that began on Friday, which have targeted nuclear sites, military leaders, intelligence chiefs and atomic scientists. Iran has responded by firing ballistic missiles at Israeli towns and cities along the Mediterranean, including Tel Aviv, Rishon LeZion and Haifa.
Sheikh Abdullah said the Emirati leadership is dedicated to the promotion of stability, prosperity and justice, and he stressed the urgent need for wisdom in a region long embroiled in conflicts.
“The UAE believes that promoting dialogue, adhering to international law and respecting the sovereignty of states are essential principles for resolving the current crises,” he added.
“The UAE calls on the United Nations and the Security Council to fully uphold their responsibilities by preventing further escalation, and taking urgent and necessary measures to achieve a ceasefire and reinforce international peace and security.”
At least 60 people feared missing in two deadly shipwrecks off Libya, IOM says
- IOM says shipwrecks happened off the Libyan coast
CAIRO: At least 60 people were feared missing at sea after two deadly shipwrecks off the coast of Libya in recent days, the International Organization for Migration said on Tuesday.
Russia says Israel attacks on Iran are illegal, notes Iran’s commitment to NPT
- The statement said Moscow was waiting for the International Atomic Energy Agency to provide “unvarnished” assessments of the damage caused to Iranian nuclear facilities by Israeli attacks
MOSCOW: Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Tuesday denounced continued Israeli attacks on Iran as illegal and said a solution to the conflict over Tehran’s nuclear program could only be found through diplomacy.
A ministry statement posted on Telegram noted Iran’s “clear statements” on its commitment to adhere to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and its willingness to meet with US representatives.
The statement also said Moscow was waiting for the International Atomic Energy Agency to provide “unvarnished” assessments of the damage caused to Iranian nuclear facilities by Israeli attacks.
