Ahed Tamimi, Joan of Arc, and the Stupidity of the Israelis

Saturday 6 January 2018

Ahed Tamimi, Joan of Arc, and the Stupidity of the Israelis

Posted on January 3, 2018

Ahed Tamimi (left), and Joan of Arc–dressed in armor and holding a sword–from a painting dating to the late 15th century

By Richard Edmondson

A lot of people now seem to be likening Ahed Tamimi to Joan of Arc. I myself first made such a comparison in a post on December 19, the day of Ahed’s arrest–and the latest to draw the analogy is Israeli writer Uri Avnery.

In an article published at Haaretz on January 1, Avnery writes:

She’s 16, from a family of peasants in an isolated village. The foreign occupation outraged her, and she set out to fight it. Her actions excited her oppressed people, whose spirits rose from the depths of despair to renewed hope. She was captured by her occupiers, who imprisoned and prosecuted her. You’re probably thinking I mean 16-year-old Ahed Tamimi, who slapped the face of an Israel Defense Forces officer.

But actually, I’m referring to Joan of Arc, known as “the maid of Orléans.”

Avnery has it almost right. Joan was born in 1412 and was seventeen years old when she joined the battle against the British (who were indeed occupying substantial portions of her country) and gained her first audience with the young Charles VII, the legitimate heir to the French throne. This was during the Hundred Years War. Joan was an uneducated peasant girl, but it was said she had received divine visions instructing her to support Charles VII and to liberate France from English control, and it was also said that she worked miracles during the war.

The war at that time was going very badly for the French. Charles, in what was probably an act of desperation, sent the girl to accompany a contingent of French troops he dispatched to Orléans. The entire city was then under siege by the British. This was in the spring of 1429, and it turned out to be a pivotal turning point in the war, for Joan, though unable to read and write, reportedly dictated letters to be sent to the commanders of the British forces. As Wikipedia puts it:

Joan’s first mission was to join a convoy assembling at Blois, under the command of Marshal Jean de La Brosse, Lord of Boussac bringing supplies to Orléans. It was from Blois that Joan dispatched her famous missives to the English siege commanders, calling herself “the Maiden” (La Pucelle), and ordering them, in the name of God, to “Begone, or I will make you go”.

“Joan of Arc Enters Orléans,” by J.J. Sherer

In the fighting that ensued, the British forces at Orléans suffered nearly 1,000 dead and 600 taken prisoner. Avnery relates a bit of this history, noting that, “Dressed in armor and carrying a flag, Joan of Arc put herself at the helm of the overwhelmed fighters, and so inspired them that they won the critical battle for the city.”

“Joan of Arc in a West Bank Village”–is the headline that appears over Avnery’s piece, accompanied by what is rapidly now becoming a famous photo of Ahed–taken in the Ofer military court just as she was looking over her shoulder with the glimmer of a smile on her face.

As noted above, I mentioned the correlation in an article on December 19, but it wasn’t until after reading Avnery’s piece that I decided to put together the diptych, or two-paneled artwork, you see posted at the top of this page.

The right panel, depicting Joan with sword and armor, is a painting dating to the latter half of the 15th century. The artist is unknown, but according to Wikipedia, “the face has certain characteristic features known from her contemporaries’ descriptions, and the artist may have worked from indications by someone who had known her.”

If this is true, then there would seem to be a rather striking physical resemblance between the two women born roughly 600 years apart.

The general thrust of Avnery’s article is to compare the stupidity of the Israelis in regard to Ahed’s case with that exercised by the British, who in 1430 captured Joan of Arc. After a farcical trial in front of a kangaroo court similar to what you’d expect to find in an apartheid judicial system, Joan was convicted and finally burned at the stake, on May 30, 1431, at the age of 19.

The result of all this? The young girl was elevated to the status of martyr and heroine, and later was elevated to sainthood by the Catholic Church. The French ended up winning the Hundred Years War, while the British went home with their tails tucked between their legs.

The one-hundred year occupation was over.

Avnery doubts the Israelis will go so far as to burn Ahed at the stake. But he notes that the execution of Joan of Arc is “considered one of the worst blunders in British history,” and he believes the officials of his country are every bit stupid as the British were in the same situation.

Why did the oppressors in that case “act so stupidly”? he asks–and then offers his theory on the matter:

Actually, they had no choice. Hundreds of years later, Britain’s Lord Acton would say, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

I would paraphrase this by saying, “Ruling power tends to make one stupid, absolute ruling power makes one totally stupid.”

And there is no stupider ruling power than an occupation regime.

Avnery also maintains that the soldier–the dude in the video who, after being slapped…and while clearly recognizing that video cameras were rolling on him…refrained from raising his gun and putting a bullet into Tamimi’s head–“is the only smart Israeli in this whole story.”

The rest have acted like ignoramuses.

This applies to the officials who made the decision to go to her home in the middle of the night, kidnap her and toss her into the stockade, and I would argue that it also appertains to the frenzied masses who’ve demanded the infliction of punishment and purgatory, including one bonehead who publicly called upon the 21st century heroine’s captors to “exact a price at some other opportunity, in the dark, without witnesses and cameras.”

It applies as well to the judges and the legal system. On Monday, January 1, the Ofer military court formally indicted Ahed on 12 counts, including a charge of assaulting a soldier, as well as two counts of stone throwing. The stone throwing had nothing to do with the slap of the soldier, allegedly dating to earlier incidents–yet the charges are especially ominous given that under a law passed in 2015, the throwing of stones at Israeli soldiers can carry a prison sentence of up to 20 years.

A 40-year prison sentence (20 years on each count) would pretty much be the modern-day equivalent of burning at the stake.

The Times of Israel, in a report on the indictments that was published Monday the 1st, notes that also among the 12 counts is a charge of “incitement,” this supposedly stemming from comments made by Ahed and live streamed by her mother over Facebook on December 15. The 15th, keep in mind, was the same day Ahed slapped the soldier. It was also the day on which her 14-year-old cousin was shot in the face by another soldier, and the same day soldiers had fired teargas canisters at locals during weekly protests in Nabi Saleh. Anyone’s inner peace surely would be put to the test under such conditions. No surprise, then, the day was capped off by the famous slap…with the livestream allegedly being uploaded sometime shortly thereafter.

And allegedly it included–again according to the Times of Israel article–a segment in which Nariman Tamimi asked her daughter what kind of message she wanted to convey to viewers. The news site furnishes no video evidence of this, apparently relying instead on words simply attributed to Ahed during the court hearing by the Military Advocate General. However, the attributed content isquoted, on faith and unquestionably, in two paragraphs within the story:

“I hope that everyone will take part in the demonstrations as this is the only means to achieve the result,” she said. “Our strength is in our stones, and I hope that the world will unite to liberate Palestine, because [Donald] Trump made his declaration and [the Americans] need to take responsibility for any response that comes from us,” Ahed added, apparently referring to the US president’s decision last month to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

“Whether it is stabbings or suicide bombings or throwing stones, everyone must do his part and we must unite in order for our message to be heard that we want to liberate Palestine,” she concluded.

Again, the article includes no video evidence. Whether such evidence exists or not is unknown. But let’s suppose for a moment the quote is accurate.

Since we’re all about making comparisons here, it behooves us perhaps to go back to Joan of Arc and draw the analogy a bit further. Let’s compare Ahed’s words, as quoted by the Military Advocate General, to the words written by the Maid of Orléans and sent to the British siege commanders.

An archive of Joan of Arc’s letters can be found here, and you can go here to view a translation of the letter sent on March 22, 1429. In that letter Joan of Arc refers to herself in the third person, as “the Maiden,” and in addition to the siege commanders, she also addresses the King of England:

King of England, do right by the King of Heaven concerning His Royal line; had over to the Maiden the keys to all the towns which you have taken. She has come on behalf of God to support the Royal family, and is quite ready to make peace, if you are willing to do right, so long as you give up France, and make amends for occupying it. King of England, if you do not do so, I am a commander: wherever I come across your troops in France, if they are not willing to obey I shall make them leave, willing or not. And if they are willing to obey, I will have mercy upon them. Know that if they will not obey, the Maiden is coming to wipe them out.

History does not portray Joan of Arc as a terrorist. It in fact portrays her in a very heroic light. Yet there are Israelis now trying their utmost to paint Ahed Tamimi as a terrorist–all for the “crime” of slapping an Israeli soldier.

After her 14-year-old cousin was shot in the face.

Shot in the face by a rubber coated steel bullet.

A wound that necessitated the 14-year-old boy’s being placed in a medically-induced coma during which the projectile was surgically extracted from his skull.

“Tamimi is becoming the Palestinian Joan of Arc before our eyes,” Avnery asserts.

And he also expresses the view that: “In the end, this stupidity will bring us down.”

The village of Nabi Saleh, where Ahed and her family live, is in the West Bank–an area that has been under Israeli occupation for 50 years. Land theft, illegal settlements, home demolitions, skunk water spraying, checkpoint closures, arrests, detentions, walls that cut off farmers from their lands, killings, the cruel, mentally unhinged practice of withholding dead bodies from grieving families, and the infamous cemeteries of numbers–such things as these have not left the Palestinians, particularly their children, with visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads.

All of it is mass stupidity, of course–neurosis and dementia on the part of the occupiers, who have lost the ability to think clearly, assuming they ever had such in the first place. And while it’s true, Israelis have managed to convince much of the world they are serious about wanting peace with the Palestinians, I think those days–of being able to prop up their charades through the power of the Zionist media–are rapidly coming to a close.

As news came out Monday of the military court’s indictments, social media erupted in response.

A Facebook post–which I didn’t see myself but heard about from a friend–quoted a passage from the Old Testament Book of Micah promising doom for “Zion” and the “rulers of Israel.” The passage begins in chapter 3 verse 9 and reads:

Hear this, you leaders of Jacob, you rulers of Israel, who despise justice and distort all that is right; who build Zion with bloodshed, and Jerusalem with wickedness. Her leaders judge for a bribe, her priests teach for a price, and her prophets tell fortunes for money. Yet they look for the Lord’s support and say, “Is not the Lord among us? No disaster will come upon us.”

Therefore because of you, Zion will be plowed like a field, Jerusalem will become a heap of rubble, the temple hill a mound overgrown with thickets.

It’s perhaps understandable if the Book of Micah is less popular with Zionists than the Talmud.

In the video above we see an artist painting a portrait of Ahed with the sound of explosions and a track from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony playing in the background. I’m not sure exactly what point the artist is trying to make, though it might have something to do with the fact that Beethoven’s Fifth has also been referred to as “the victory symphony.” In either event, the artist seems quite taken with Ahed Tamimi.

History’s favorable treatment of Joan of Arc suggests that among humanity there exists a “general consensus” that people have a right to resist occupation, a right to fight for the freedom of their homeland, and that every now and then, as such struggles progress and unfold, a figure such as Gandhi or Joan of Arc will emerge who thoroughly captures the public imagination. This is what’s happening now with Ahed.

Instead of imprisoning the young girl for the rest of her life (as one idiot cabinet minister has called for), the Israelis should not only free her, they should take it a step further and offer her a scholarship to attend the university of her choice. A step of this sort, yes, likely would result in a Dr. Tamimi returning to Palestine at some point in the future to advance the cause of her people, but it would completely defuse the current crisis.

Unfortunately, I doubt the screeching Zionist ignoramuses possess sufficient I.Q. to figure this out.