“Resist the Normalization of Evil”: Israeli Reporter Amira Hass on Palestine & the Role of Journalism DemocracyNow!, May 17, 2024 https://www.democracynow.org/2024/5/17/amira_hass_israel_palestine_gaza
Our guest is the Haaretz correspondent Amira Hass, the only Israeli Jewish journalist to have spent 30 years living in and reporting from Gaza and the West Bank. She is the recipient of the 2024 Columbia Journalism Award, and on Wednesday she addressed the graduating class of the Columbia Journalism School in New York City. Hass discusses the ongoing Israeli war on Gaza, why journalists should “resist the normalization of evil and injustice,” Israel’s recent censorship of Al Jazeera, its maintenance of a strict apartheid system, its complete rejection of the prospect of Palestinian statehood and more. “Israel took Palestinian life, liberty and freedom as hostage for the past 75 years,” says Hass. “You go to Tel Aviv, you think you are in New York or you are in London — and 40, 50 kilometers away, Palestinians live in cages.” . . . AMY GOODMAN: The International Court of Justice today ordered representatives for Israel to submit more information about humanitarian conditions in its so-called evacuation zones in Gaza. This comes as foreign ministers from 13 countries have signed onto a letter warning Israel to halt its ground operations in Rafah and to get more aid to Palestinians. The letter is signed by all G7 members minus the United States. . . . AMY GOODMAN: ... Columbia students and faculty celebrated an alternative People’s Graduation as they gathered for a ceremony just nearby at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, with many students wearing their blue graduation gowns. ... But among the speakers who addressed the students was the poet Fady Joudah, who read his poem, “Dedication,” about Palestinians killed by Israel; the Palestinian American lawyer and human rights activist Noura Erakat; and the award-winning journalist Mona Chalabi, who has rejected her 2023 Pulitzer Prize and has been highly critical of Gaza coverage by mainstream U.S. media outlets. In her address, she paid tribute to the student journalists in the audience who covered the Gaza encampment, often while facing arrest themselves. MONA CHALABI: ... So, as many of you know, our institutions have failed us these past seven months, and long before that. Writers and editors at some of the most respected newsrooms have told lies about what is happening in Gaza. They have said that death threats falling from the skies are evacuation orders. They have described forced displacement as migration. They have issued warnings to their staff, telling them not to use words like “ethnic cleansing” or “genocide.” In short, they’ve used their reporting to minimize the suffering in Gaza and maintain a status quo. ... . . . MONA CHALABI: ... So I shouldn’t have been surprised when I heard what happened last month. A reporter at The New York Times was told that something seemed to be happening at Columbia University. Students appeared to have claimed a lawn as theirs. So, like any breaking news story, a select channel had been created for the journalists to discuss details and assign stories. This is what they do at The New York Times. When this reporter joined the select channel, they were surprised to find that it had been titled “Antisemitism on Campus.” They had decided what the story was before they even took a train uptown. . . . AMIRA HASS: ... when it comes to the Israeli public, it doesn’t matter if Al Jazeera are inside Israel or not inside Israel. The general Israeli public does not want to know about what’s happening in Gaza. And the Israeli media does not show anything. I mean, they show very, very, very few images of the destruction. They give very little information and footage of the death, of the wounded people. ... . . . AMIRA HASS: ... And the main thing is the refusal, refusal to accept and to acknowledge the national rights of Palestinians for statehood. They were ready for it in the '90s, I know. I know that the Israelis try to switch everything around and say that they sabotaged the Oslo agreement. Not correct. And this is one of the things that I followed very closely, how Israel did everything, from the beginning, under the guise of a peace process, did everything possible to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian side alongside Israel. And there is a — you know, we go back all the time to this, because all the time Israelis say that it's the opposite. But they completely avoid all the evidence. So, Israel did — what Israel did during the last 30 years is to prove to the world and to the Palestinians that the Palestinians were right from the beginning of the '30s and the ’40s, when they said that Israel is a colonial entity or a settler-colonial entity. ... . . . On Fri, May 17, 2024 at 2:57 PM Charles Keener via groups.io <ckeener20005= [email protected]> wrote: > * . . .* > “ > <https://www.democracynow.org/2024/5/17/amira_hass_israel_palestine_gaza>Resist > the Normalization of Evil”: Israeli Reporter Amira Hass on Palestine & the > Role of Journalism | Democracy Now! > <https://www.democracynow.org/2024/5/17/amira_hass_israel_palestine_gaza> > > > > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. 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