Your report “Imprisoned Palestinian girl draws student protest in D.C.” (February 2) omitted key information about Ahed Tamimi who was arrested after being filmed attacking Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Ahed has not, as your article claims, “confronted Israeli soldiers.” Rather, Ahed—who is by both Palestinian Authority and Israeli law an adult—has been the witting propaganda tool of her family, who for years have encouraged their children to attack soldiers for film and staged photographs as part of the “Pallywood” industry.
That family includes her father, Bassem Tamimi who has expressed his support for a “one-state solution” and, in an act condemned by the Anti-Defamation League, promoted claims that Jews “detain Palestinian children to steal their organs”—echoing the age-old antisemitic blood libel. As the Israeli writer Petra Marquardt-Bigman noted in a Jan. 5, 2018 Ha’aretz Op-Ed, Ahed’s mother has expressed her “awe/reverence” for the teenage Palestinian terrorist who murdered the 13-year-old Hallel Yaffa Ariel in her sleep. Another relative, Ahlam Tamimi, planned the 2001 Sbarro pizzeria bombing in Jerusalem, which murdered 15 people and injured 130.
It’s unsurprising than, that shortly after her arrest, Ahed herself praised stabbings and “martyrdom-seeking operations” in her “Message to the World” that her proudly posted on Facebook after her arrest. The Tamimis message is clear: They seek Israel’s destruction and are more than happy to promote anti-Jewish violence, antisemitism and child abuse, to achieve it. Groups like IfNotNow and others who support the Tamimis are not only encouraging Palestinian families to endanger their children for propaganda purposes, they are also incentivizing the vile, rejectionist agenda that the family espouses.
Absent this essential background, reports on the Tamimis are more of an advertorial.
Sean Durns
The writer is a Senior Research Analyst for CAMERA, the 65,000-member, Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America