April 1, 2022
Palestinian activist Tamimi grew up in the occupied West Bank with checkpoints and home raids, her father imprisoned, her mother shot, and her uncle killed by the Israeli army. She herself gained fame as a child for confronting Israeli soldiers during weekly demonstrations and was jailed at age 16. To many, she's a freedom fighter, to some a gullible agitator. Here she joins forces with award-winning Palestinian American journalist Takruri of Al Jazeera Media Network to share her viewpoint.
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Starred review from July 1, 2022
A Palestinian activist recounts her arrest and detention in an Israeli prison when she was just 16. Tamimi grew up in the village of Nabi Saleh in the West Bank, where her family organized weekly marches to protest Israel's illegal seizure of a local water source. She grew up terrified by the Israeli army's brutal tactics, which included nighttime raids, home demolitions, attacks with pepper spray, and murder. As a child, the author "dreaded" the weekly demonstrations until an Israeli soldier shot her in the hand with a rubber-coated bullet while she was trying to escape tear gas that soldiers had launched into her home. At this moment, she writes, she experienced a "numbness" that motivated her to sooth her accumulated trauma through protesting. Unwittingly, Tamimi rose to international fame when she pushed an Israeli soldier after his army shot at a group of children in her village, critically injuring her cousin. At the time, her mother streamed Tamimi's confrontation on Facebook Live, a decision that later led to Tamimi's arrest, interrogation, and detention at Hasharon Prison in Israel. The video went viral, launching Tamimi into the international spotlight, a phenomenon the author partly attributes to her light-skinned privilege. Although the attention plunged her into fatigue and depression, she writes, "as worn down as I began to feel, I knew that staying silent wasn't an option. I had been given a rare platform to advocate for Palestine and its prisoners, and I intended to use it....If educating the world about our nation's struggle was my mission in this life, I vowed to carry it out as honorably and as effectively as pos-sible." Writing with journalist Takruri, Tamimi delivers a passionately argued, profoundly empathetic, and deeply informed examination of her country's occupation. Her circumspection and clarity of thought are matched only by her vulnerability. An expertly crafted, trenchant memoir from a formidable activist.
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