عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
Varieties

Jewish Poet Hails Palestine’s Tamimi, Compares her to Anne Frank

Palestinian teenager Ahed al-Tamimi appears before an Israeli court. (Reuters)
Palestinian teenager Ahed al-Tamimi appears before an Israeli court. (Reuters)
TT
TT

Jewish Poet Hails Palestine’s Tamimi, Compares her to Anne Frank

Palestinian teenager Ahed al-Tamimi appears before an Israeli court. (Reuters)
Palestinian teenager Ahed al-Tamimi appears before an Israeli court. (Reuters)

Prominent Israeli writer and poet Jonathan Geffen praised Palestinian teenager Ahed al-Tamimi’s courage against Israeli soldiers, comparing her to Jewish girl Anne Frank, who was killed in the Holocaust.

His post on Instagram drew the ire of Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who on Tuesday instructed army radio to censor Geffen.

Tamimi, 16, was arrested in December for slapping two Israeli soldiers in the occupied West Bank, in an incident caught on video.

She has been charged with 12 counts including assault and ordered kept in custody until the end of the legal proceedings.

Hailed as a hero by Palestinians who see her as bravely standing up to Israel's occupation, Tamimi has also caught the attention of the Israeli left.

"A pretty 17-year-old girl did a terrible thing, and when a proud Israeli officer once again raided her home, she slapped him," Geffen wrote on Monday.

"She was born into that, and in that slap there were 50 years of occupation and humiliation," he wrote.

"On the day the story of this struggle is told, you, Ahed Tamimi, red-haired like David who slapped Goliath, will be on the same page as Joan of Arc, Hannah Szenes and Anne Frank," Geffen said on Instagram.

In posts on his own social media accounts, the outspoken Lieberman lashed out at the writer, whose songs -- for adults and children -- are very popular in Israel.

"I've instructed the commander of army radio to stop playing or interviewing Jonathan Geffen in all the station's broadcasts, and I call on all media in Israel to do the same," the defense minister said.

"The State of Israel won't give a platform to a drunkard comparing a child (Frank) who was killed in the Holocaust and a hero warrior (Szenes) who fought the Nazi regime to Ahed Tamimi, the brat who attacked a soldier," he said.

"Geffen's pursuit of headlines is sickening and infuriating," Lieberman continued, say the Lebanese ‘Hezbollah's’ al-Manar television channel would be a more suitable venue for Geffen's "nonsense".

Other right-wing politicians condemned Geffen, with Minister of Culture and Sport Miriam Regev saying that it was “disgusting” for him to compare Tamimi to Szenes, Frank and King David.

“She is not innocent, but a criminal who supports terrorism and she is now in jail,” she added.

Israel's military radio station is under the command of the army chief and ultimately the defense minister -- but not on matters relating to content of what is broadcast.

The justice ministry issued a statement reiterating that Lieberman "has no legal authority to intervene in the content of the station's broadcasts".

Most Viewed

 
 
Varieties

Rubbish Roads: Nepal Explores Paving with Plastic

This photograph taken on December 26, 2024 shows a worker holding shredded recyclable plastic waste at the Green Road Waste Management processing facility in Pokhara. Cars speeding along a smooth, black-colored street in Nepal's Pokhara are also driving over heaps of discarded plastic, transformed into an ingredient in road construction. (AFP)
This photograph taken on December 26, 2024 shows a worker holding shredded recyclable plastic waste at the Green Road Waste Management processing facility in Pokhara. Cars speeding along a smooth, black-colored street in Nepal's Pokhara are also driving over heaps of discarded plastic, transformed into an ingredient in road construction. (AFP)
TT
TT

Rubbish Roads: Nepal Explores Paving with Plastic

This photograph taken on December 26, 2024 shows a worker holding shredded recyclable plastic waste at the Green Road Waste Management processing facility in Pokhara. Cars speeding along a smooth, black-colored street in Nepal's Pokhara are also driving over heaps of discarded plastic, transformed into an ingredient in road construction. (AFP)
This photograph taken on December 26, 2024 shows a worker holding shredded recyclable plastic waste at the Green Road Waste Management processing facility in Pokhara. Cars speeding along a smooth, black-colored street in Nepal's Pokhara are also driving over heaps of discarded plastic, transformed into an ingredient in road construction. (AFP)

Cars speeding along a smooth, black-colored street in Nepal's Pokhara are also driving over heaps of discarded plastic, transformed into an ingredient in road construction.

Nepal's urban areas generate about 5,000 tons of solid waste per day, according to the World Bank, of which 13 percent is plastic waste dumped in landfills.

While high-value plastics, like bottles, are absorbed by the recycling industry, low-value plastics -- such as multi-layered packaging -- pose a significant challenge because they don't fit into a single recycling category.

For a group of young Nepali entrepreneurs, the vast accumulation of this low-value plastic waste presented an opportunity.

"A plastic road can use even low-value plastics," said Bimal Bastola, founder of Green Road Waste Management, the organization leading the initiative in Nepal.

"We saw scope for such plastics to be utilized as a raw material, partially substituting bitumen in road construction."

Discarded packages of noodles, biscuits and other snacks move along a conveyor belt at their trash-sorting center.

The divided plastic is then put into machines to be shredded into fine pieces.

Since the early 2000s, neighboring India has been leading the world in building a network of plastic roads, even making the usage of plastic waste mandatory in roads near large cities in 2015.

A growing number of countries are experimenting with it, including nearby Bhutan and Bangladesh.

In traditional road construction, bitumen is the binding material, a tarry oil product mixed directly with hot aggregates before paving a road.

The plastic road method, however, first coats the aggregates with shredded plastic before adding bitumen.

"This method reduces the need for fresh raw materials, lowers costs, prevents water infiltration and increases road lifespan," Bastola said.

Studies show that roads paved with plastic waste can be twice as durable as normal roads.

- 'Scale up' -

Globally, only nine percent of plastic waste is recycled, while 19 percent is incinerated, and nearly half ends up in controlled landfills, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Left unchecked, the production of synthetic polymers -- the building blocks of plastics -- is expected to reach about 1.2 billion tons annually by 2060.

The plastic that accumulates in the environment is non-biodegradable, takes hundreds of years to decompose and breaks down into tiny microscopic particles.

And while Nepal banned single-use plastic bags thinner than 40 microns, that ban is not strictly implemented.

For Bastola, increasing plastic road construction is key to making the recycling of low-value plastics economically viable.

His organization says about two tons of shredded plastic is used to build a kilometer of road.

So far, the organization has completed about 10 projects totaling a little over 1.5 kilometers (one mile).

"It is happening at a small scale, we need to scale up," Bastola said. "We have to make government-level projects and we are trying to work closely with the department of roads."

A pilot project is planned this year in the capital Kathmandu at a major intersection.

"Nepal is keen on testing this technology through pilot projects," said Arjun Nepal, an engineer with the Kathmandu road department.

"But to take it forward, we need government-led standards to ensure quality."

The World Bank says life cycle analyses of plastic roads are limited and it is still not clear what environmental impacts -- if any -- recycled plastics may have when used in road construction.

"While initial anecdotes and pilot studies show promise, further research is needed to measure emissions during production, evaluate microplastic release over time and determine how these roads behave once they are decommissioned," said Valerie Hickey, global director of the World Bank's climate change group.

Despite these concerns, environmentalist Bhushan Tuladhar said that plastic roads present an important opportunity for Nepal.

"It is a low-hanging fruit to address two problems simultaneously -- the need for strong roads and the management of plastic waste -- for a developing country like Nepal," he said.