I know that they could kill me at any time.
I know this very well.
I'm going to die one day anyway.
So it's better to die standing up for my beliefs and cause, than to die naturally.
For the last few years, I've been writing a book.
I wrote it with Ahed Tamimi,
who I met back in 2018, right after she was released from Israeli prison.
Ahed was only 16 when she was arrested
for slapping an Israeli soldier at the entrance of her home.
Around the world, people hailed her small act of resistance.
Born under Israeli occupation in the tiny village of Nabi Saleh,
Ahed has seen her parents and siblings arrested, her relatives shot and her uncle killed.
Since I was young, my parents raised me to never be silent in the face of wrongdoing.
Just before the book's publication,
I caught up with Ahed to hear what she's learned about the struggle since her release.
I think even today prison has an effect on my life,
on me, my personality, on a lot of things I go through.
Up to 700 Palestinian children are arrested by the Israeli army every year.
Many, like Ahed, are taken during home raids in the middle of the night.
Israel is the only country in the world that tries children in military courts.
Do you feel like you, like other Palestinian children, lost your childhood?
Living under occupation, even without going to prison, we lose our childhood,
we lose our youth. We lose our entire lives.
It's not just those who go to prison or get injured that suffer.
Let me tell you something: If I had every blessing on earth but still lived here under occupation,
I would have still lost out on my childhood, my life, my youth.
Because the occupation itself isn't a normal thing to live under.
Your generation is one that, the only thing you’ve known in your lives
is a wall
and checkpoints
and no freedom of movement and apartheid.
What's it like to grow up with this reality?
To live under occupation is to wake up in the morning and see a settlement on your land.
It's to feel the summer heat but never be allowed to reach the beach,
which is only half an hour away.
To live under occupation is to have all your dreams threatened since childhood.
You want to be a footballer for example, or an athlete,
but you get shot in the foot and lose that dream.
The occupation destroys everything, it gets in the way of everything.
For example, there are two checkpoints on my way to university.
If one of them is closed, I can’t go to school.
These are just some details of how our daily lives are impacted,
but people don't really notice or comprehend it.
I just want to point out: Your university should be like a 10-minute drive,
15-minute drive,
it's very close.
And there's two checkpoints to get there.
Yeah, it's only 15 minutes away and has two checkpoints.
So imagine if you want to travel to a whole other town or country.
Imagine how many checkpoints or settlements or dangerous areas you'll have to cross.
And you're not just threatened by the soldier who's armed to the teeth.
There's also the settler that the West sees as an ordinary civilian.
This so-called civilian can go down to the street and start beating up children.
These people that you call civilians,
they're licensed to carry guns and they can shoot Palestinians with no consequences.
They won't be prosecuted,
as if they didn't just kill a human being, a person with hopes and dream and ambitions.
Israel built a settlement on land belonging to Ahed’s village in the 1970s,
in violation of international law.
That, and the theft of the village’s water source by Israeli settlers,
led Nabi Saleh’s residents to hold weekly protests against the occupation from 2009–2016.
The settlement is so close to you. What do you think about when you look at it?
First of all, when I look at it, I feel angry. Because it's on my land.
I could have a house there. There could be a lot of different things there, instead of this settlement.
Often when we come out here, when there's a bunch of us standing out here,
we start imagining if the settlers are forced out, what would we find inside their houses?
If the settlers leave and Palestine is liberated, what would we find there?
How are you treated by Israelis today?
More than once, they've recognized me and targeted me.
Last time, on [Land] Day I was in Bil’in,
we were protesting by the wall, and they called out to me,
“Tamimi go back, we know you, go back Tamimi.”
So when he said, “Tamimi, go back,”
-The soldier said this?
Yeah. He said, "Tamimi go back," and I said, "I don't want to, what are you going to do?"
Half an hour later, after I'd run away from the tear gas and come back,
he started shooting at me, directly, so I ran, and my cousin was there.
He got between me and the soldier, and he was hit and fell on the ground.
He’d been shot in the arm and leg [by live ammunition].
He basically got shot instead of me. He put his body on the line to protect me.
Ahed and her cousins have always been close.
In fact, the day she slapped that soldier,
she'd just heard that a different cousin had been shot in the head with a rubber bullet.
Miraculously, he survived,
but was shot in the head again by an Israeli soldier a few months ago.
He's still struggling to recover.
Violence against the people of Nabi Saleh is an ongoing reality.
I've seen recent videos
of the settlers coming up the hill right behind your house,
and I always ask you this question
because we know what kind of violence they're capable of:
Aren't you scared? Aren't you scared for your life?
Death doesn’t scare me, ever.
As long as we’re under occupation,
Ahed and everyone else are going to suffer and be targeted.
Every Palestinian is a target, every one of us could be killed, imprisoned, injured.
We wrote this book together,
"They Called Me A Lioness."
It's your story but it's also
the story of Palestine.
Why do you think people should read this book?
The goal is that anyone who reads this book is able to put themselves in the shoes of a Palestinian,
if only for a moment.
And once they see what we go through and what our lives are actually like,
to think about what they would do in the same situation.
I hope the American people learn from us how to resist and how to struggle,
and to resist their government, which supports the occupation of our land.
In fact, it's one of the main reasons that the occupation of our land has continued until today.
Ahed is now studying law at Birzeit University.
In all the years I've known her, she's always insisted
that she's no different than other people her age.
I love action movies and shows.
And I love vampires. I watch that stuff a lot.
So people don't think that all Ahed does is slap soldiers and cause problems.
That's not true! I've got my own life.
I've got my friends, we go out together.
I go to university, even though I don't like it.
Actually, it's not that I don't like university. I just don't like studying.
I’m just a normal girl.
I believe in something and fight for it, but I’ve still got a life!
Do you still have hope that the occupation will end
and that Palestine will be free?
Throughout history, any state that was built on might and oppression eventually collapsed.
And that gives us hope.
I get hope from my desire to see the next generation avoid what we went through.
I don’t want a girl my age to wake up one day and find herself in jail
and forced to talk about her suffering. It’s not easy.
That’s why I resist and keep resisting,
and it’s why my generation, we all have that hope,
because we don’t want the next generation to suffer the way we did.
Hey guys, it's Dena in Nabi Saleh.
Thank you for watching this video.
Let me know what you thought in the comments,
and also check out my previous coverage
from this village.
We'll link to those videos in the comments,
and be sure to also check out the book
that Ahed Tamimi and I wrote together:
"They Called Me A Lioness:
A Palestinian Girl's Fight For Freedom."