When it comes to her coverage of Palestinians,
Israeli journalist Amira Hass is one of a kind. Yet she blends right in at the
Canadian bus station where I pick her up. Vancouver is the second stop on the
nationwide speaking tour organized for her by the advocacy group Canadians for
Justice and Peace in the Middle East. She greets me with a warm smile and lifts
her small but heavy bags into the trunk of the car. Hass is used to taking care
of herself while traveling, doing it weekly as she navigates through Israeli
military checkpoints while tracking a story or simply trying to visit a friend.
Before I can help her with her bag, in fact, she helps me with mine. When she
sees me struggling with my bag outside her lecture venue, she takes it from my
shoulder, laughing, “I know. I do it too.”
Hass has worked for the Israeli daily newspaper
Haaretz since 1989. She left her academic roots during the First Intifada and
started her media career there as a copyeditor. A few months later, she
convinced the paper to send her to Europe to cover the Romanian revolution. In
Romania she proved her skills as a writer, and in 1993 her editors assigned her
to Gaza. She had become familiar with the area while volunteering with a group
that had her visiting Gazans to deliver money they were owed from Israeli
employers who’d withheld their pay. It was during this time that her “romance”
with Gaza began.
No one encouraged Hass to live in Gaza; in fact, she
was specifically told not to. But determined to learn about the occupation from
the inside, she moved there in 1993 and made a permanent home in the West Bank
in 1997. This initiative made her the only Israeli journalist to live and work
among Palestinians full-time.
For the past seventeen years Hass has reported
extensively on Israel’s policies in the occupied territories, exposing their
devastating effects on Palestinians. But the divided
Palestinian leadership has not escaped her scrutiny either, and both governments
have tried to impede her reporting using various intimidation tactics. But
the unrelenting Hass has continued regular critiques, which she has collected
in two books. She is regarded internationally as one of Israel’s most prominent
journalists, and in 2009 she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the
International Women’s Media Foundation.
Hass was invited to Canada to lecture about
Israel-Palestine. But unlike others who speak on the subject, she gives a
different talk in each city and resists flashy rhetoric in favor of hard
reporting. Prior to the lecture, while searching for a restaurant, she tells me
she will not talk about the region’s basic history because the audience will
likely be informed. So for forty-five minutes she speaks about the Israeli
policy of “closure,” the ongoing fragmentation of Palestinian territory and the
severing of Palestinian control of governing activities such as changing
addresses or registering newborns. “It’s not like killing, but it affects
everybody,” explains Hass. “If a baby is born in Gaza and is not registered
with the Israeli Ministry of the Interior, that baby does not exist, it does
not count,” she tells the audience. “I get very annoyed when my Palestinian
friends complain, ‘Why didn’t they give me a permit, I am not a terrorist,’
because it is not about the person, it is about a policy that people can’t
articulate because there is no discourse to explain the political intention
behind it.”
Hass doesn’t write with shock appeal in mind; her
lectures lack the heart-wrenching photographs that Palestine-focused speakers
use during talks. Instead, she offers audiences pieces from a written record
she has been producing for almost two decades. During questions, a young
Palestinian man angrily criticizes her lecture’s focus, telling her that the
real issue for Palestinians isn’t about freedom of movement, but about getting
their dignity and their country back. Another woman takes issue with Hass’s
urging of Canadians to examine their own colonial history. “Are you suggesting
Canada did the same thing that Israel is doing to the Palestinians?” the woman
asks. There is only a hint of annoyance in Hass’s response: “Are you suggesting
that I am defending Israel?”
No wonder Hass responds this way; she grew up absorbing
her parent’s memories of the Holocaust as her own. In Drinking the Sea at Gaza:
Days and Nights in a Land Under Siege, she describes her mother’s memory of
people watching her being herded with others to the notorious Bergen-Belsen
concentration camp: “She saw a group of German women, some on foot, some on
bicycles, slow down as the strange procession went by and watch with
indifferent curiosity on their faces. For me, these women became a loathsome
symbol of watching from the sidelines, and from an early age I decided that my
place was not with the bystanders.”
— Jasmin Ramsey for Guernica
1.
Guernica: Why do you live in the West Bank?
2.
Amira Hass: If I were asked to cover Canada,
would I live in Mexico?
3.
Guernica: But you’re very different—
4.
Amira Hass: Why?
5.
Guernica: Because no other Israeli journalist
lives there.
6.
Amira Hass: So ask them why they don’t live
there. Why ask me?
7.
Guernica: [Laughs.]
8.
Amira Hass: Okay, this is one answer. I have
different ones of course because I am often asked about it. When I moved to
Gaza in ’93 I was there for two years, going a lot, staying with friends,
staying in refugee camps, and I had an urge to stay longer and really feel this
military occupation. What is it to wake up and have a curfew? What is it to
walk in the street and stand in front of a soldier who aims a gun? I had this
need to experience occupation first hand. And to know the society. Of course,
it’s not the same as being Palestinian. But it brought me closer. The notion that I
am so privileged is disgusting. But this is what it means to live in a white
society. You are white, so you are privileged.
9.
Guernica: You’ve been there now for seventeen
years, and have made a life there.
10.
Amira Hass: Yes.
11.
Guernica: How often do you go to Israel to visit
family?
12.
Amira Hass: It’s not about [real] distances. The
distance is psychological. It’s social. The distance is not in kilometers. I
can go to Jerusalem, I have my privileges. That’s one thing you have to
understand. When I lived in Gaza it was more difficult because of the closure
policy, because of this restriction of movement so you had to be checked. But I
have the privilege that I am not restricted. As a Jew and a journalist I have
my privileges, and if one doesn’t work I use the other one. Israelis are not
allowed to be in Palestinian cities. But I am allowed as a journalist. I never
asked permission to live there. I just moved there. Now after seventeen years
nobody can tell me it’s forbidden. I have privileges even in comparison to a
Palestinian Israeli because Palestinian Israelis who live permanently in
Ramallah risk their status, not as citizens but as residents. They might lose
their social rights if they move to Ramallah. But I won’t, so I live with
privileges. That notion is very difficult for me as a child who was raised in a
left-wing family, a family of people who suffered discrimination as Jews
abroad. The notion that I am so privileged is disgusting. But this is what it
means to live in a white society. You are white, so you are privileged. Guernica:
You have spent much of your life living amidst war and occupation, and your
devotion to your profession has left you with little time for anything else. If
you could go back to the beginning, would you have changed anything?
13.
Amira Hass: I think very seriously that I would
have liked to have become a fashion writer.
14.
Guernica: [Laughter.]
15.
Amira Hass: But no, of course not. I wouldn’t
have changed it.
16.
Guernica: When did you begin to question the
official Israeli narrative about the country’s founding and its development?
17.
Amira Hass: Luckily I was not born in Eastern
Europe, because I might have been born into the communist establishment and I’m
glad I was not. But in Israel, communists were dissidents. So you grow up in an
environment which is very critical of Israeli policies. So of course you had
the Communist Party and it had its closed mind. But as a child, I remember
asking my parents when I was five years old, “How come if you are not Zionists,
you came to the country?” I was surprised at myself that I asked this question.
It means that it was always in the air. Then years later I understood it was
because of the Holocaust, because they were refugees. They did not come as
immigrants and, because of the illusions of the ’50s and the late ’40s, my
mother said, “The world must be better.” She could not imagine that it wouldn’t
be different. They came separately. They didn’t know each other and they were
sure that within five years there would be a socialist revolution in all of the
area. Today we know this is as silly as [anything] one could think. But that
was not the mood. And then they came and started to learn about ’48 and Nabka,
though not immediately. But what I am very proud of is that both of them, like
many others, were offered flats of Palestinian refugees and both of them
refused to live there. They said, “We are refugees; how could we live in the
homes of refugees?” So I am very relieved that they refused the beautiful Arab
houses that many people would love to live in. In the end there is a choice.
And my choice is to be against the occupation, and not only the occupation but
the whole system of discrimination and dispossession.
18.
Guernica: And it was your upbringing, the fact
that your mother was a communist—
19.
Amira Hass: My father was too.
20.
Guernica: Your father was as well. This was what
compelled you to start asking questions?
21.
Amira Hass: It’s not so much questioning. You
grew up in a different environment. I grew up in this. I thought most people
were communist. But then I went to kindergarten and I was singing songs against
the prime minister, which I had heard at home and at the Party, and the
kindergarten had to convince my parents to tell me to stop inciting the
children against Ben-Gurion. So it was there. You just grew up in it.
22.
Guernica: So there were many Jewish communists
who went to Israel after the Holocaust. But what happened to that critical way
of thinking? Did many of them come to accept the official Israeli narrative in
the end?
23.
Amira Hass: Yes, I mean some still, many have,
yeah. But of course there is the choice. In the end, there is a choice. It’s
not just because I grew up in such a family that I became so and so. In the end
there is a choice. And my choice is to be against the occupation, and not only
the occupation but the whole system of discrimination and dispossession. I am
lucky that I can write about it and that I can live in a way within the two
communities. So sometimes it’s not really a gift, sometimes it’s more
navigating, it’s more lonely; sometimes it’s more reassuring that I can be in
the morning with Palestinians from a village that fights against the wall and
some Israeli activists as well, the anarchists. And then in the evening I go
and spend it with Israeli women who are in the Machsom, the grassroots movement
against the checkpoints.
24.
Guernica: You have a large following among
Palestinian activists and those critical of Israeli policies in the occupied
territories. How do average Israelis react to your work? Do you feel that you
connect to them?
25.
Amira Hass: I had a lecture at Middlebury called
“Translating Occupation to the Occupier.” I think it says it all. I think most Israelis prefer not to know. So for them, texts
about the occupation are like something that’s been written in a foreign
language that they can’t understand. If they want, you can translate it to
them. But it is their choice. In general, though, I think Israelis don’t want
to know. Very few do. Basically, I write to the converted.
26.
Guernica: In Gaza, how did Hamas treat you when
you lived there?
27.
Amira Hass: When I lived in Gaza between 1993
and 1997 Hamas was not yet in power, and I used to meet quite a few Hamas
activists and people, just members or supporters, and it was no problem. Then
Israel stopped allowing Israeli journalists to enter Gaza after December 2006.
At first there were reasons; there was a wave of kidnappings in Gaza. But these
were mostly sponsored by people who were close to Fatah. That was the year the
Israeli soldier Gilad Shilat had been kidnapped, so we were not allowed in. The
first month after the Hamas victory I was allowed in. I had some interviews,
and it was normal, and they knew me. But then after it was forbidden I came by
boat to Gaza in November 2008, and after three weeks Hamas kicked me out.
28.
Guernica: November 2008 was just before—
29.
Amira Hass: One month before the onslaught, the
Israeli attack. I had intended to be there until January 2009, so if they
hadn’t kicked me out I would have been there. Imagine.
30.
Guernica: Why did Hamas kick you out?
31.
Amira Hass: They cannot stand free media. They
said it was a danger to my life, but Arafat used the same protest when his
people tried to kick me out of Gaza and then Ramallah. But with Arafat I had
Fatah people who came and told him, “You are nuts, you cannot kick her out.”
But with Hamas it didn’t work. There were some Hamas people, friends of mine
who tried to dissuade them from this decision, and it didn’t work.
32.
Guernica: Hamas was acting just like the Israeli
government in trying to keep you out of Gaza.
33.
Amira Hass: There was one prominent former Hamas
member who fell out of grace because he was critical of the military trend
within Hamas. But in the early ’90s he was a leader. He told them, “You just
kicked her out because you don’t want your shameful things to be known,” or
something like that. I cannot forgive them for this. They knew I wanted to stay
until January. Of course no one knew about the Israeli attack, and I’m sure I
would have been frightened to death if I was there during it. But it was very
important for me to be there. Really, I cannot forgive them.
34.
Guernica: Mads Gilbert,
the Norwegian doctor who was one of only two non-Arab doctors there during the
attack, had footage and horror stories of his experiences working with
Palestinian doctors in Al-Shifa Hospital. He had not seen it personally. But
the issue around the use of white phosphorous by the Israelis during the attack
made it into a leading medical journal.
35.
Amira Hass: The phosphorus was used after [Mads
Gilbert and his colleague] left. The white phosphorous was used after they
started the land invasion. I remember because I was talking to my friends and
they were fleeing from their homes and were saying, “We don’t understand, there
is some strange fire, some strange chemical clouds that ignite and then you
pour water to quiet the fire and the opposite happens.” I remember very well
that it was on the 4th or 5th of January, so it was after they left. There is a
decision not to be exposed. People can live like five minutes away from it all.
36.
Guernica: Do you think your parents would have
stayed in Israel if they were alive today?
37.
Amira Hass: They were too old to leave. But,
actually, my mother tried to undo her immigration. She lived ten years on her
own in France when she was around seventy. But it was too difficult. She was
too alone. She was not healthy. I think she had to admit that it’s easier to be
near her daughter.
38.
Guernica: And you were very close with your
parents?
39.
Amira Hass: With the children of Holocaust
survivors, there is always a very close relationship. You grow with the sense
that you are parenting your parents and—with this kind of responsibility to
protect them. That’s what makes the children of Holocaust survivors strange.
40.
Guernica: Do you find the Israeli press are
critical on the Palestinian issue?
41.
Amira Hass: No, it’s not critical. There is
Haaretz, but other papers will not provide a clear picture of the issues.
42.
Guernica: Do other Israeli journalists go into
the occupied territories?
43.
Amira Hass: Yes, that’s not the question. Many
Israelis can get to know what’s really happening. I mean, you have soldiers who
go and see things. It’s not like France and Algiers or, I don’t know, England
and Kenya or Belgium and Kenya. It’s in your backyard. It’s much more about
willingness, indecision, the inability, or exposure. There is a decision not to
be exposed. People can live like five minutes away from it all.
44.
Guernica: For people who don’t live there, the
short distances between those who live with occupation and dispossession and
those who don’t can be easily overlooked.
45.
Amira Hass: But tell me, how many people beyond
the activist community think about the aboriginals here in Canada? Many people
just won’t connect the social problems with the history of dispossession of the
aboriginals. There is one problem with pro-Palestinian activists in Europe and
the U.S. with the way they portray Israel as though it were an island of evil
in an ocean of goodwill. Unfortunately we are not. This world is not made of
benign, progressive states with Israel as the one exception.
46.
Guernica: You had expressed prior to this
interview that you don’t want to talk about how you think things are going to
play out.
47.
Amira Hass: I am a very conservative journalist
and prefer to write about what happened, and not what will happen. I think
these questions about what will happen are questions for activists and about
the agency of people in the course of events. This is not a question for a
journalist, but for activists. And we’ve seen it with the Arab Spring that
people have a say. People have shown that they intend to have a say.
Palestinians have done this several times, they’re just not listened to.
48.
Guernica: But from your constant monitoring of
events on the ground, can you tell me what direction things seem to be going
in?
49.
Amira Hass: The ingredients for another
Palestinian uprising are always there because as long as there is so much
violence it is bound to explode. How, I cannot tell. But people will not accept
it forever. Will Hamas use it in one way? Will Fatah use it in another way? Will
there be a new generation that demands no Fatah, no Hamas? I cannot tell. Also,
you had in the summer a very interesting and in some ways inspiring social
movement for change. I know there is a lot of cynicism about this movement. But
in a very short time tens of thousands of young people focused their criticism
not on marginal issues, but on neoliberalism, on super-capitalism, on the
privatization of the state. Matters of principle. Of course, I say that they
did not develop the understanding that occupation is a huge wrong that is
connected to Israel and its regime. But on the other hand, I know that Israelis
profit from the occupation. So why would they see that occupation is wrong?
Still, things happen in a way that surprises. That’s why I’m reluctant to
predict. You cannot predict. We are seeing that some patterns of the past
twenty, thirty years are being broken. Now what is our way to deepen the
cracks? I always talk about the cracks. The cracks are very healthy.
50.
Guernica: Do you plan on writing about
Israel-Palestine for the rest of your life?
51.
Amira Hass: Not much remains of it, I’m
fifty-five.
52.
Guernica: You have at least another forty
years!
53.
Amira Hass: Sure! I don’t know. The sense of
failure is very strong.
54.
Guernica: Your own sense of failure?
55.
Amira Hass: Not
personal, but what are you writing for? I mean, when you write about these
things, it’s not about career, or about the salary; you want to have an impact.
And you see how futile the writing is. I envy lawyers. There is always the
sense of what am I doing this for. And then you know, I cannot leave it. I
cannot allow myself to stop writing about it.
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