Ahed Tamimi, the Palestinian teenager who served time in prison after being convicted of attacking an IDF soldier, is now taking a victory lap around Europe and receiving the enthusiastic welcome reserved for cultural heroes.
The honor she is receiving may turn many Israeli stomachs, but there is something to the argument that the conduct of the Israeli government and the army played a big part in turning her into the poster girl of the "struggle against the occupation." An officer vs. a teenager, an armed military vs. a civilian population – this was a lost cause for Israel from the start.
The Tamimi family, and Ahed in particular, are well-known among those "fighting the occupation" in Israel and abroad, even before she was arrested. Pictures of her as a young child confronting IDF soldiers are a familiar symbol, for obvious reasons.
So I'm going to say it. Among other reasons, it's because she is fair-skinned and blonde. Her Western appearance makes her stand out. She is not just another dark-skinned Palestinian with a covered head who screams and waves her hands; she is a young, European-looking woman who flashes her white teeth at the camera. Unlike the rest of the Palestinians, who are seen as deserving of Judeo-Christian pity, Europeans can identify with Tamimi. With her jeans and her keffiyeh, she looks like a British or Dutch girl on her way to school.
That makes Tamimi not only the successful face of the "fight against the occupation," but also a much more useful tool with which to demonize Israel. We might even wager that Tamimi's imprisonment caused at least as much outrage in Europe as the shooting of Muhammad al-Dura. Not because his death was less "despicable," but because he was less "one of theirs" than she is. When the European conscience embraces young Tamimi, it adopts her as a lost daughter who was saved from the jaws of absolute evil.
The absolute evil here is Israel and its "stormtroopers," whose blood-soaked hands sullied the innocent Tamimi. This narrative piggybacks on a hefty load of anti-Semitic mythology, and leads us to draw one clear conclusion: Tamimi gives the European conscience another opportunity to hate the dirty Jews, and maybe kill them. If on the fringes of Israeli society, the sector that likes to pride itself on its Western and universal values, there are those who compare her to Anne Frank or Joan of Arc, then the same associations are natural for Europeans as well.
Tamimi is now the new symbol of hatred for Israel, and maybe more – she embodies the "blonde washing" of Palestinian terrorism and support for it. Plenty of people in the pro-Palestinian galaxy, even in Israel, see her not only as a national hero, but as a symbol of "non-violent resistance." Unlike bloodthirsty terrorists, she never raises a hand against anyone (except to give a little punch to the face) and represents "civil disobedience."
But these concepts aren't opposites, as they would have us believe. They are complementary. There is no terrorism without distilled hatred, and there is no support for terrorism without people identifying with the "helpless" victims who perpetrate it. Tamimi allows people with a "conscience" to identify with a "brave" girl and forget what hides behind her. Even in Israel there are some who have fallen into the same propaganda trap.
Luckily, most of the public here is not blinded by the golden curls of the darling of those who loathe Israel.
