Janna Jihad


Janna Tamimi, more commonly known as Janna Jihad or Janna Jihad Ayyad, is a Palestinian youth activist and amateur journalist.

Biography

Tamimi is from Nabi Salih, a village on the West Bank in Palestine. Her mother, Nawal Tamimi, is the director of Women's Affairs in the Palestinian Ministry of Development. She is the niece of activist Bassem al-Tamimi and cousin of activist Ahed Tamimi. She began reporting on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict when she was seven years old after two of her family members were killed, inspired to document the conflict in a way that media outlets and news corporations had not. She has been called “The Youngest Journalist in Palestine” and is referred to as one of the youngest journalists in the world. Tamimi, who believes she is living in the Third Intifada, supports Palestinian resistance. She began reporting to present the perspective of Palestinian youth growing up amid violence, originally using her mother's iPhone to capture videos of protests near her home and uploading them to Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube. Eventually she began covering events and marches in Jerusalem and Jordan. She reports in Arabic and in English. She has over 270,000 followers on Facebook. In 2017 Tamimi, hosted by the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, went to South Africa to spread awareness about the violence in Palestinian territories as part of the Pals4Peace tour with the Shamsaan Children of Palestine. In March 2017 Tamimi was awarded an International Benevolence Award in Istanbul, Turkey. She was featured in the documentary Radiance of Resistance when she was nine years old. She has been criticized by some as being a propaganda pawn.