Tuesday, 30 January
5:30 pm – 7:00 pm
Penn Station
New York City
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/322529338236967/
Join the days of action to free Ahed Tamimi and an international day of action marking both her 17th birthday and the start of her Israeli military trial.
Gather by the Amtrak information booth on the upper level, closest to the entrance on 7th Avenue at West 32nd Street.
On January 31, Palestinian teen activist Ahed Tamimi will mark her 17th birthday behind bars as the next Israeli military court hearing is convened against her. Ahed is one of 360 Palestinian children in Israeli prison and nearly 6,200 total Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails. As her birthday approaches, take action to stand with Ahed and demand her freedom and that of her fellow imprisoned Palestinians!
Ahed is imprisoned – along with her mother Nariman – in an attempt to suppress Palestinian organizing and resistance to occupation. The Tamimis are leaders in the indigenous anti-colonial land defense and popular resistance in the village of Nabi Saleh, a Palestinian village of 600 people that has been targeted for land theft and even the confiscation of their spring by the illegal Zionist settlement of Halamish.
Ahed and Nariman Tamimi have been imprisoned since December 19 after a video of Ahed slapping an Israeli occupation soldier – who had slapped her while occupying her land and family home while suppressing a village demonstration – went viral on social media. For nearly all of her life, Ahed has been in direct confrontation with occupation forces who have repeatedly invaded her home; arrested and imprisoned her father, brothers, cousins and other relatives; killed her cousin and her uncle; attacked the village with tear gas and other weaponry, including the rubber-coated metal bullet shot into the face of her 15-year-old cousin, Mohammed, shortly before the video was filmed.
There has been a global upsurge of outrage at the ongoing imprisonment of Ahed. Protests, letter-writing campaigns, petitions and actions in cities around the world have demanded her freedom and that of her fellow Palestinian prisoners. Her case has also highlighted the ongoing, systematic imprisonment of Palestinian children. Approximately 700 are brought before military courts each year, and Palestinian kids seized by Israeli forces are frequently subject to beatings, abuse, and interrogations without parents or lawyers present in violation of the law.
The resistance of the Palestinian people has never been quelled by arrests or repression, and it must be clear that we, around the world, stand alongside the Palestinian people as they defend their entire land and people. This includes standing with Ahed Tamimi and all detained and jailed Palestinian prisoners in their struggle for liberation for themselves, their people, and their occupied homeland.
