They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl’s Fight for Freedom by Ahed Tamimi and Dena Takruri: A Must Read
What: They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl’s Fight for Freedom by Ahed Tamimi and Dena Takruri
Who: One World
When: September 6, 2022
How: Borrowed from library.
A Palestinian activist jailed at sixteen after a confrontation with Israeli soldiers illuminates the daily struggles of life under occupation in this moving, deeply personal memoir.
“What would you do if you grew up seeing your home repeatedly raided? Your parents arrested? Your mother shot? Your uncle killed? Try, for just a moment, to imagine that this was your life. How would you want the world to react?”
Ahed Tamimi is a world-renowned Palestinian activist, born and raised in the small West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, which became a center of the resistance to Israeli occupation when an illegal, Jewish-only settlement blocked off its community spring. Tamimi came of age participating in nonviolent demonstrations against this action and the occupation at large. Her global renown reached an apex in December 2017, when, at sixteen years old, she was filmed slapping an Israeli soldier who refused to leave her front yard. The video went viral, and Tamimi was arrested.
But this is not just a story of activism or imprisonment. It is the human-scale story of an occupation that has riveted the world and shaped global politics, from a girl who grew up in the middle of it . Tamimi’s father was born in 1967, the year that Israel began its occupation of the West Bank and he grew up immersed in the resistance movement. One of Tamimi’s earliest memories is visiting him in prison, poking her toddler fingers through the fence to touch his hand. She herself would spend her seventeenth birthday behind bars. Living through this greatest test and heightened attacks on her village, Tamimi felt her resolve only deepen, in tension with her attempts to live the normal life of a daughter, sibling, friend, and student.
An essential addition to an important conversation, They Called Me a Lioness shows us what is at stake in this struggle and offers a fresh vision for resistance. With their unflinching, riveting storytelling, Ahed Tamimi and Dena Takruri shine a light on the humanity not just in occupied Palestine but also in the unsung lives of people struggling for freedom around the world.
They Called Me a Lioness is a co-authored biography of Ahed Tamimi, a young Palestinian woman who was imprisoned at sixteen years of age for slapping a soldier of the zionist entity, who was fully armed and intimidating her family in front of her house, right after her cousin had been shot in the face by the soldier’s team. For this “crime”, Ahed spent eight months in a zionist entity prison, where she endured countless horrors.
They Called Me a Lioness is set in the West Bank, and details a lot of the restrictions and violence perpetrated against Palestinians living there. I found myself shaking my head numerous times throughout reading this book because just when you think you know the dark depths of the zionist entity, there is always something new to learn, a depravity you didn’t know about before. The evil is truly never ending.
However, despite the levels of depravity the zionist entity unleashes upon Palestinians, the steadfastness and hope they have is something I can only admire. The weekly marches described in this book, the sisterhood Ahed found among the other “prisoners”, the familial love and care, the deep roots of community and faith, the hope for a free Palestine, the unwavering belief that it will be seen – it is incredibly moving.
They Called Me a Lioness is told through the eyes of a child who has seen and experienced horrors that no child, no human, should ever experience, and truly opens your own eyes even wider to what is happening in Palestine and why the colonial apartheid zionist entity must be dismantled.
To be honest, I could go on and on about this book. How many more people should be reading it. How it affirms even more that international and humanitarian law are mere tools of colonial empires, not meant to protect anyone but to serve themselves. How it will further fuel your own desire to see a free Palestine. How it exposes more lies and atrocities of the zionist entity. How it will make you want to scream and cry, but that it will also fill you with love. Love for the cause, love for Palestine, and love for the Palestinian people.
© 2025, Chiara @ Books for a Delicate Eternity. All rights reserved.
trigger warning racism, islamophobia, colonisation, genocide, death, torture, child abuse, sexual violence, false imprisonment, murder, apartheid
