Fifteen-year-old Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head in October 2012 by a Taliban gang as she walked home from school in Mingora in the Swat valley in Pakistan. A week later, at death’s door, she was flown to England and admitted to Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital.

Malala made a brilliant recovery and was discharged in January 2013. Bright as a button after her ordeal, she launched into a series of interviews, pledging to continue to campaign for Pakistani girls’ right to education. It had been her public advocacy of this cause which prompted the murderous misogynists to try to kill her.

Her testimony boiled blood and melted hearts all over the world. Former British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, initiated a petition, #I am Malala. The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) launched #StandUpForMalala,” aimed at “empowering women through literacy and secondary education.”

Malala met with President Barack Obama, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the Pope, addressed the UN General Assembly, was listed among Time’s 100 Most Influential People in the World, elected Glamour magazine’s Woman of the Year, and won the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize. The UN designated her birthday, July 12, as Malala Day.

Ahed Tamimi is a couple of years younger than Malala. She is serving eight months in prison for having slapped an Israeli soldier in the face. Her brother had been hit on the head by a rubber bullet fired by an Israeli army unit.

Amnesty has condemned Ahed’s imprisonment. But we see no #IamAhed or #StandUpForAhed campaigns making headlines. No major women’s organisation or mainstream political leader appears to have had a dicky bird to say for or about her. There has been no move to designate January 31 as Ahed’s Day or instigate #StandUpForAhed.

Ahed, like Malala, has a formidable history of standing up to injustice, protesting against the occupation, arbitrary arrest and imprisonment without trial, the theft of land and water by settlers, the denial of the right to travel. She lost an uncle and a cousin in resistance to the occupation. Her mother has been shot in the leg.

Israeli ambassador to Ireland Zeev Boker has told The Irish Times that the Taminis are a bad lot, with a history of violent opposition to Israel, the implication being that it is okay to imprison a teenage girl for the supposed sins of the father, brothers, uncle.

In the main, only what we might call the “hard left” and pro-Palestinian groups have stood up for her.
The difference between the two young women is that the men who tried to murder Malala were, rightly, excoriated by every politician and liberal media outlet across the Western world, whereas soldiers and settlers who kill Palestinians as a matter of routine are held up as models of civilised rectitude facing a rabble of semi-civilised extremists.

We live in a world of moral anomie. No right, no wrong, only geopolitical interests and an overarching cynicism.

Palestinians live under apartheid. When an entire community is forbidden by law to travel on roads reserved for those who wield power over them, that signals apartheid begetting rage and retaliation. The case for a boycott of Israel is just the same as was the case for boycotting South Africa.

On April 3, the fourth day of Passover, a number of Jewish teenagers chained themselves to the door of the Israeli consulate in Boston in protest against the Israeli army killing 15 Palestinians who had taken part in a protest march in Gaza demanding the Right to Return to their homes on the other side of the barbed wire.

They were members of IfNotNow, founded four years ago in response to Operation Cast Lead, in which 1,400 Gazans died. Said IfNotNow spokesperson, Sarah O’Connor, 18: “At the Passover Seder, my family and I talk about our community’s journey toward freedom as part of an ancient ritual done in Jewish households across the world… That is exactly what Palestinians in Gaza want: freedom.”
Shiria Tiffany, 19, added: “Our generation insists that endless occupation and needless loss of life are not the way forward. I don’t want my children growing up seeing more images of Israeli teenage soldiers shooting at Palestinian teenage protesters… We can build a world that promises freedom and dignity for all.”

Six of the Boston activists were arrested, 17 in New York. In all, there were 16 IfNotNow demonstrations across the US. IfNotNow has three demands: Stop the War on Gaza; End the Occupation; Freedom and Dignity for All.

They are not the only US Jewish group to have taken up the Palestinian cause. Two months ago, Israel banned members of Jewish Voice For Peace (JVP) from entering the country. Executive director Rebecca Vilkomerson responded: “We will not be bullied by these attempts to punish us for a principled political stance that increasing numbers of Jews and non-Jews support worldwide.” JVP is the fastest-growing Jewish organisation in the US.

More than 200 US rabbis have publicly supported the Boycott campaign. Many thousands of Israeli Jews strive in circumstances that would daunt the best of us to defend and support their neighbours across the border. To conflate “Israel” with “the Jews” is plain wrong and comes within a hairsbreadth of anti-semitism.

The fact that supporters of Israel use the anti-semitism trope as an all-purpose smear against campaigners for justice for Palestine doesn’t alter this by one inch.