How Israel created a Palestinian heroine

Thirty-nine days have passed since Nariman Tamimi uploaded a video documenting her daughter Ahed and a relative slapping Israeli soldiers in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh on Dec. 18. The footage went viral on social networks and was broadcast by TV stations around the world. The video's life span was expected to be short, like that of many other videos in the past. The soldiers who were hit did not allow themselves to be dragged into provocative countermeasures, so the event remained a small news item even though the incident was well-covered.

“If we would have arrested them, the results would have been worse, and who knows how it would have ended,” explained one of the soldiers, whose name was not divulged, during an investigation of the episode. The soldiers didn't lose any sleep over the incident, and they didn't feel humiliated or ridiculed by the brief confrontation.