Last January, an indictment was filed against the Arab teen Ahed Tamimi from the village of Nabi Salih by the military court in Judea, for assaulting an IDF soldier and officer and for five additional incidents in which she attacked security personnel, threw stones at them, threatened them, interfered with their carrying out their duties, participated in disturbances and incited others to participate as well. Her mother, Nariman Tamimi, was also indicted, for her involvement in the attack and in another incident in which she participated with her daughter last December, and for incitement to violence on Facebook.
According to Tamimi, she was responding to her cousin being shot in the head with a rubber bullet by n IDF soldier, stating: “I saw the same soldiers who hit my cousin, this time in front of my house. I could not keep quiet and I responded as I did.”
Her cousin, Muhammad Tamimi, 15, was put in a medically induced coma in mid-December at the Istishari Arab Hospital in Ramallah, to treat his head injury, and regained consciousness a few days later. A report by head of ICU Dr. Imad Tayem, and the treating physician Dr. Khaldoun Amro clearly describes a procedure whereby a bullet was removed from the patient’s skull.
But on Monday night, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, Maj. Gen. Yoav (Poli) Mordechai, posted on his Arabic-language Facebook page that the skull injury suffered by Ahed Tamimi’s cousin, Muhammad Tamimi, last December, was not caused by IDF gunfire, as the Arabs claimed:
“Amazingly, today, the boy Mohammed al-Tamimi himself confessed to the police and COGAT that in December he was injured in his skull while riding his bicycle, as a result of falling and hitting his head against the handlebar. The culture of lies and Palestinian incitement never ceases among the young and the old in the Tamimi family,” Mordechai wrote.
MK Ayman Odeh, head of the Joint Arab List, as well as List MK Dov Kenin, attacked Mordechai for his claim that the boy’s disfigurement was not the result of a rubber bullet but of a bike accident. The family meanwhile provided a copy, allegedly, of the report from the Ramallah hospital, which would suggest that if Maj. Gen. Mordechai is to be believed, then the entire bullet removal treatment described in the medical report is false.
Incidentally, Ha’aretz on Tuesday reported that residents of Nabi Saleh said Tamimi had told police that he had been hurt in a bike accident and not shot by the IDF, so that he would be released after being detained. They said he was scared and worried that if he said he had been shot, there would be evidence against him and his detention would be extended.