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.

Then certain Knesset members and the more chauvinistic flank of the right wing entered the picture, replacing the restraint and prudence of the soldiers with a different spirit. Their statements twisted the level-headedness and restraint of the soldiers into “spinelessness.”

Education Minister Naftali Bennett remarked, “The pictures are harsh,” and argued that the young Palestinian girls involved “should finish their lives in prison.” Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman ruled that Ahed, 16, and the rest of the Tamimi family should be dealt with severely and subject to punishment as a deterrence. Liberman ordered that restrictions be placed on the entire clan; in fact, permits to enter Israel were canceled for 20 family members.