The 13-year-old Palestinian journalist and activist sits down with Street Roots to share her perspective on what’s happening to children in the West Bank
Sounds of explosives reverberate in the background of the video posted to Facebook on April 20, 2018.
A young girl standing outside a Palestinian village as others scurry around her speaks Arabic into the camera before switching to English.
“From here, as you can see, occupation Israeli soldiers were just hiding in the garage,” she states matter-of-factly. “Then, when the children went up a little bit, they shooted a lot of gas canisters on us, as you can hear right now.
“From here, we are sending our message to the world that we will never give up,” she says before signing off: “From Nabi Salih, Janna Jihad, occupied Palestine.”
The video is just one of hundreds 13-year-old activist-journalist Janna Jihad has uploaded to the internet from her home in the occupied West Bank. Her foray into journalism began as she played with her mother’s iPhone as a 7-year-old. She filmed herself talking about her observations at the weekly anti-occupation demonstrations in her village, Nabi Salih. Her mother – Nawal Tamimi, an activist and director of women’s affairs for the Palestinian Ministry of Social Development – found the recordings her daughter had left on her phone and began uploading them to social media.
Now Jihad has her own Facebook page , with more than 300,000 followers from around the world, where she offers a glimpse into what it’s like to be a child growing up under occupation.
Her small village is a hotbed for activism. Sixty percent of Nabi Salih lies within what’s known as “Area C.” Under the 1995 Oslo Accords, this area of the West Bank was supposed to be gradually handed over to the Palestinian Authority, but Israel has retained control of law enforcement and construction within its borders. In her short life, Jihad has witnessed several killings and what she described as near-daily raids.
Since rising in prominence online, Jihad has also begun sharing her story during speaking tours, first to South Africa and now to the United States.
She stopped in Portland to speak to a crowd of nearly 200 on July 29 at the First Unitarian Church downtown. The event was a screening of “Radiance of Resistance,” a documentary about her and her cousin Ahed Tamimi’s activism.
While in town, she sat down with Street Roots to talk about the impact the occupation has on children in the West Bank.
We should note that a Google search of “Janna Jihad” will bring up a slew of harsh criticism, mainly from Israeli-based organizations, that paint her as a tool for Palestinian propaganda. She belongs to the large, activist Tamimi family, and this tie has been used to smear her credibility.
After speaking with several reputable sources familiar with Jihad, her family and Israeli propaganda, Street Roots determined that while Jihad may be a bit hyperbolic – she is, after all, a teenager – her voice is authentic and her experiences are real.
Because she was born in Florida, where her father conducts business, Jihad has U.S. citizenship. It’s a status that may explain why she’s avoided the arrests and persecution other members of her family have faced. Although, she’s not the only young firebrand in the Tamimi family, which makes up the village of about 550 people where she’s lived since she was 3 months old.
The videos she uploads include peaceful demonstrations, children throwing rocks at armored Israeli military vehicles, interviews with visiting dignitaries, her shouting at Israeli soldiers and, in one instance, the aftermath of her friend’s killing, which she said was at the hands of Israeli soldiers. It was the fourth time someone she knew was killed in front of her, she told Street Roots.
“First one was my friend Mustafa, which was when I was only 4 1/2 years old,” she said. “The second was my uncle Rushdie (Tamimi) when I was only 5.”
She also talked about her cousin Muhammad Tamimi, who is her same age. He was shot in the head with a rubber bullet, which caused him to lose a third of his skull and required reconstructive surgery. He’s been arrested and interrogated three times since, she said.
“We are basically trying to raise awareness of what is happening with those children, during arrests, how their rights are getting violated,” she said. “You can get arrested if you are 12 years old and up. And even that illegal law, as I call it, sometimes is broken. For example, last year, my 11-year-old cousin got arrested.”
She said children under interrogation can be subjected to physical and psychological violence rendering them traumatized. Interrogations can last from hours to months. Children can be arrested for throwing rocks, attending demonstrations, or sometimes without charge, she said.
A 2013 report from UNICEF indicated about 700 Palestinian children ages 12 to 17 are arrested, detained and interrogated by Israeli forces each year. The majority are charged with throwing stones. Between 2003 and 2013, about 7,000 Palestinian children were arrested. The most recent available biweekly report from the United Nations shows that during the last two weeks in June of this year, Israeli forces arrested 13 children.
After interviewing Palestinian children and their parents and reviewing evidence the families collected, Human Rights Watch concluded, “Security forces have choked children, thrown stun grenades at them, beaten them in custody, threatened and interrogated them without the presence of parents or lawyers, and failed to let their parents know their whereabouts.”
Since she began uploading videos six years ago, Jihad said, the situation for children has worsened.
“More children are getting killed; more children are getting injured; a lot of people are getting arrested,” she said.
Her cousin’s arrests began when her village saw an increase in Israeli raids following President Donald Trump’s declaration that the U.S. recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, she said. Trump’s announcement broke with longstanding policy on the status of the city, which is claimed by both Israelis and Palestinians.
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According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 2018 saw the highest number of Palestinian casualties since the agency began tracking them, with Israeli forces killing 295 Palestinians – including 57 children – and injuring more than 29,000, including 7,000 children. During the same time period, 14 Israelis were killed and 137 injured by Palestinians.
The U.N. report also found that nearly 70% of people living in Gaza were food insecure in 2018. Meanwhile, humanitarian aid hit an all-time low.
Jihad said she’s been aware that she was living under occupation for as long as she can remember.
“I don’t remember my parents explaining it to me, but I remember soldiers coming on night raids often,” she said. “It would be a normal, casual day, and me and my friends, we would be playing outside and that Israeli jeep would come, and we would run, and just looking at it, it was not normal.”
Living under occupation can pose burdens on everyday life. Jihad said she’s often confronted with three checkpoints on her way to school in the nearby town of Ramallah.
Sometimes a checkpoint erected is an impassable barrier, which means her 25-minute trip can take several hours as she finds an alternative route. Sometimes it means waiting in a long line as vehicles are searched and people are questioned.
“They put checkpoints on our way to school in the time that we have to go to school,” she said. “They don’t want that generation to be educated.”
The checkpoints are also a problem for her grandmother, who needs kidney dialysis three times a week.
“Sometimes, because of the checkpoints, she cannot go to the hospital,” she said. “A lot of women gave birth to their children at those checkpoints in the cars.”
When asked how she has the courage to walk up to Israeli soldiers and scream in their faces, she responded: “First point, to make it clear, I don’t go to them; they come to me. They come to my village right next to my house.” As a small child, she said she lived in constant fear, cowering under a table or in the bathroom when soldiers were nearby. But not anymore.
“After that, I learned that it’s very important to control our fear, and not let our fears control us, because if our fears control us, we’re not going to be able to live or resist or do anything,” she said.
Shamsaan, meaning “2 suns,” sponsored Jihad’s U.S. tour. It’s a South African children’s rights organization, of which Jihad is an ambassador. Amnesty International, Jewish Voice for Peace (Portland and PSU chapters), Rise Up International, KBOO and others sponsored her appearance in Portland.
She spent a week of her time in the U.S. speaking to members of Congress about the occupation, and while she was in Washington, D.C., she also interviewed Rep. Rashida Talib (D-Mich.), the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, and Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), who has introduced a bill to promote human rights for Palestinian children by prohibiting funding for the military detention of children in any country.
McCollum told attendees at last year’s U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights National Conference that she hopes her bill will force policymakers to think about how the $3.8 billion in U.S. aid to Israel “helps to enable, facilitate and enforce the military occupation of Palestinian lands and the repression of Palestinian people.”
We asked Jihad how kids her age in the West Bank think about their future.
“Under the occupation, if you want to dream, you have limits,” she said. “We try to cross those limits, and we try to dream big.”
She said she believes the occupation will come to an end within the next 10 years.
Email Senior Staff Reporter Emily Green at emily@streetroots.org . Follow her on Twitter @greenwrites .
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