The only reason that Ahed Tamimi, the 16-year old Palestinian girl currently being held in detention by the Israelis for slapping an Israeli soldier, is not an cause celebre in the West, is precisely because she is a Palestinian.
The human rights of Ahed, of all Palestinians, have been subordinated to supine acquiescence in Israel's illegal occupation, settlements expansion, and siege of Gaza. In other words, for those Western liberals who are never done dictating to other countries and cultures on their failure to mirror Western liberal values, to be Palestinian is to be beyond the pale.
What other conclusion is it possible to draw from the deafening silence over the detention of a 16-year old girl with the prospect of her being sentenced to 10 years in prison for the 'crime' of resisting the illegal — yes illegal — occupation of her land and people. There is no moral equivalence between a colonized people and their colonizer, or at least there shouldn't be.
However, with lamentable hypocrisy, when it comes to the question of Israel-Palestine, not only has such an equivalence been drawn, it has been drawn in such a way as to paint Israel as the victim of Palestinian aggression and extremism rather than the other way round.
Ahed Tamimi reminds us that justice in our world remains a gift to be given by the West instead of the universal and inalienable right of every people on the planet.
Join John and Israeli-American author and activist Miko Peled as they attempt to pick their way through the morass of hypocrisy surrounding the case of a young girl who is being held up as Palestine's Rosa Parks.
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