Everything you need to know about the Giro d'Italia 2018, part 4

(We borrowed this picture from the blog Mondoweiss. Hope that's OK!)

This is the Palestinian woman Ahed Tamimi. She's famous mainly because she has, since the age of 11, been standing up to Israeli soldiers coming to her home town, in occupied Palestine. You might have seen video footage of a young Palestinian girl shouting at the Israeli troops, in their face, and waving her fist at them. That's her.

Most recently, however, she got media coverage because she was slapping, kicking and shouting at two Israeli soldiers, an incident which led to her being convicted to eight months inprisonment. And might I just remind you here, that the Israeli settler who put his foot on an eleven years old Palestinian boy's head and then clubbed him to death, with his rifle butt was convicted to six months in jail? Ahed Tamimi has never killed anyone. That's called injustice. Another word for it is apartheid.

Tamimi got "fame" for the incident. Some see her as a hero, for the fight for Palestine indepence. Other see her as a tool for propaganda. They say that her acts are staged, aimed at discrediting the Israeli state. They also say that the real heroes are the Israeli soldiers who don't strike back. (Well, they didn't need to - she was convicted later, wasn't she?)

Anyway, lesser known is that just minutes before the incident with Ahed Tamimi slapping, kicking and shouting at the Israeli soldiers, her cousin Mohammed Tamimi was shot in the head with a rubber coated steel bullet, a "non-lethal" type of ammunition that the Israeli army uses against Palestine civilians. This is how Mohammed Tamimi looked after being hit by that bullet:

(We borrowed this picture from the blog Middle East Eye. Hope that's OK!)

And let me ask you, how would you react if your cousin was shot in the head?

This is the "normal Israel" that Sylvan Adams is talking about. This is one of the reasons the Giro d'Italia should not have three stages in Israel. This is one of the reasons I am boycotting the Giro d'Italia 2018.

Free Palestine and ride safe!