Ahed Tamimi on the wall of separation in Bethlehem. Picture by: Richard Gray/EMPICS Entertainment/PA images. All rights reserved. Ahed Tamimi, the new blond icon of Palestinian resistance, who was released on 29 July 2018, after spending eight months in Israeli prison, raises for Israelis the tormenting question: can a Palestinian be (genuinely and legally) blond?
The widely circulated images on social and mainstream media of the defiant Ahed Tamimi, a 16 years old girl with blond hair and blue eyes surrounded by heavily armed big dark-skinned Israelis (Israeli soldiers from the Givati Brigade and later members of the Israeli police force who are usually Mizrahi) is a big blow not only to the Israeli well-oiled propaganda (hasbara) machine but also, and perhaps even more crucially and dangerously, to its self-image or the way it perceives itself and would like to project itself to the so called western public and media.
Are not the Israelis the fair-skinned enlightened westerners and the Palestinians the dark oriental barbarians? How dare the Palestinians have blond ambition? How do they have the chutzpa to invert the light/dark formula so deeply ingrained in the Israeli psyche as well as in the western public imagination?
