{from 2017}

Israeli society became incensed this week with the video of 16-year-old Ahed Tamimi and her 20-year-old cousin Nour, who slapped the Israeli soldiers occupying their family yard in Nabi Saleh.

The discussion amongst Israelis became all about the humiliation suffered by heavily armed soldiers, from a fearless 16-year old girl and her bare hands. Culture Minister Miri Regev said: “When I watched that, I felt humiliated, I felt crushed”. She called the incident “damaging to the honor of the military and the state of Israel.” She was echoing her own words from 2015, when Ahed also appeared in a viral video, wrestling a masked Israeli soldier, who was holding her little brother in a headlock and pressing him down on a rock, his broken arm in cast. Then Regev was “shocked to see the video this morning of Palestinians hitting an IDF soldier,” adding that, “It cannot be that our soldiers will be sent on missions with their hands tied behind their backs. It’s simply a disgrace!….We must immediately order that a soldier under attack be able to return fire. Period.”

There was a range of suggestions of what should happen with Ahed and the other girls. Education Minister Naftali Bennett suggested that they “spend the rest of their days in prison”.

But a prominent journalist had a somewhat more cunning suggestion:

“In the case of the girls, we should exact a price at some other opportunity, in the dark, without witnesses and cameras”,

Ben Caspit wrote in his article (Hebrew) on Tuesday.

What might this price exactly be, considering that he is referring specifically to teenage girls? We are left to wonder. Perhaps he wishes to leave it to the imagination of the soldiers who would invade the home at night, ensuring that no cameras are filming.

We are again left to wonder what it is exactly that the creep would do, especially if he thought there were no cameras around. Caspit’s suggestion resembles that of Defense Minister Lieberman, who also said on Tuesday that “whoever goes wild during the day, will be arrested at night”, adding that “everyone involved, not only the girl but also her parents and those around them will not escape from what they deserve”.