Israeli journalist visiting Vancouver has tough words for home country

VANCOUVER -- Amira Hass, a reporter and the daughter of Holocaust survivors, doesn’t pull any punches in her description of Israeli-Palestinian relations in the West Bank.

“You have a policy of ethnic cleansing in vast areas of the West Bank....It’s very open,” she said.

Hass is a reporter and columnist for the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz. She says she is the only Israeli Jewish journalist living and working in the Palestinian territories. Now based in the city of Ramallah, she has lived in the West Bank since 1997 and in Gaza for four years before that. She is giving a lecture on Israel-Palestine relations at the University of B.C. Wednesday.

Her work, which focuses on Palestinian experiences under occupation, has not won her many friends in the Israeli government. While acknowledging that this probably costs her inside scoops from time to time, Hass says she would rather go after the “obvious information” other journalists don’t bother to look for.

Case in point: what she calls ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.

“You just go and count the number of people who are being driven out of their places where they lived for tens of years, if not more. And this goes without notice mostly, on the part of the Israelis,” she said, noting that there are some Israeli groups that are aware and are fighting against this practice.

“But it goes without notice of the general public and of course without the international media noticing. So that’s why I say I don’t need hidden information. I just need to write about what people don’t want to know.

Because the West Bank is a relatively small area, at about 5,700 square kilometres “it’s not difficult to get to know, even if you don’t live there,” Hass said. “It’s just a question of will.”

When Hass first moved to Gaza in 1993, she said she was accepted by the locals because many of the residents had lived in Israel or been prisoners there, and therefore understood the nuances of Israeli society.

“It wasn’t at all difficult for them to accept an Israeli and to know that I don’t represent the regime, I don’t represent the army, I don’t represent the occupier,” she said.

The same was not true of the West Bank, especially among the elite members of Palestinian society in Ramallah, some of whom Hass said were suspicious of an Israeli Jewish reporter living in their midst.

But for Hass, living among the Palestinians is the only way to do the work. She experiences the fear and danger associated with the Israeli military attacks and checkpoints just like everyone else, she explained, and said this makes her more critical as a journalist.

“If I were asked to be a Haaretz correspondent in Canada, I would not live in Mexico,” she explained. “So, just the same, I don’t think that I can write about Israeli occupation ... while I sit in Tel Aviv and enjoy the freedom in Tel Aviv.”

Hass said the recent application by the Palestinians for United Nations membership is an expression of the Palestinian Authority’s frustration with “Israeli tactics and tricks,” dragging out the negotiating process to maintain the status quo, but emphasized that the UN action on its own will not be enough to change anything.

“If it is not assisted by a popular struggle and civil disobedience against Israeli occupation, nothing can work,” she said.

That sense of being fed up with the status quo is also apparent on the streets of Ramallah, Hass said.

“Not that people think that the next morning they’ll wake up and there will be a Palestinian state, not at all. People are not stupid.”

Hass said her parents, who survived the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp before moving to Israel and are now deceased, were “very proud” of her work.

Hass is the author of two books and the recipient of many journalism awards. She speaks at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at UBC’s Hebb Theatre.


http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Is...r+tough+words+home+country/5466852/story.html

 

O rly?

 

In short she doesn't represent anybody but herself and what she says is her own personnal opinion... And you know what they says about opinion...

 

On the contrary, I believe much of what she writes to represent a good deal more people, than just her.

And more power to her pen, it would seem, at least imo.

 

Yah, really...

 

Since this is a discussion forum, any chance we can use words?

 

I can use words.

The Arabs brought this down upon their heads when they refused to accept the UN mandate for the creation of a place just for Jews and Jews alone on soil those Jews find sacred and tried to forcibly evict them with tanks and guns and an army of occupation.

After 60 years of trying, they have turned the Israelis into a mirror image of the hate that they themselves purveyed.

I say let the strongest hate win but I'm rooting for Jewish hate.

 

You're a rooting for hate?

Well, at least, perhaps unwittingly, you admit that Israel and Jewish Zionist are hateful.

Yet the fact that you would 'root' for anything motivated by hate, well that says a great deal about you, and not all of it good - sorry.

The 'Arabs' did not bring this upon themselves, you are one of those who I wish would go live among the Palestinians, both Muslim and Christian, for one year - I assure you, you would come back with a changed outlook.

To keep it very simple, Israel engage in theft of land that is not their land.

This is illegal.

If you support obeying laws domestically, then you must support them internationally, as well, otherwise be a hypocrite.

And few violate more international laws and UN resolutions than Israel.

Why would anyone lend their support to a rogue state like that?

 

Hey, look at that. Israel has liberals too. So what?

 

By 'liberal', do you mean someone that doesn't turn a blind eye to the illegality of Israeli actions?

Yeah, that is what you mean, huh.

 

I think the key thing here is that more and more Jews, and more and more Israeli Jews, are unhappy with Zionism and the elites.

That can only be a good thing, for all concerned, apart from the hard line Zionists, perhaps.

The more men like this speak out, the better..


Auschwitz survivor: ‘Israel acts like Nazis’


One of the last remaining Auschwitz survivors has launched a blistering attack on Israel over its occupation of Palestine as he began a lecture tour of Scotland.


Dr Hajo Meyer, 86, who survived 10 months in the Nazi death camp, spoke out as his 10-day tour of the UK and Ireland – taking in three Scottish venues – got under way. His comments sparked a furious reaction from hardline Jewish lobby groups, with Dr Meyer branded an “anti-Semite” and accused of abusing his position as a Holocaust survivor.

Dr Meyer also attended hearings at Edinburgh Sheriff Court on Thursday, where five pro-Palestine campaigners are accused of racially aggravated conduct after disrupting a concert by the Jerusalem Quartet at the city’s Queen’s Hall.

Speaking as his tour got under way, Dr Meyer said there were parallels between the treatment of Jews by Germans in the Second World War and the current treatment of Palestinians by Israelis.

He said: “The Israelis tried to dehumanise the Palestinians, just like the Nazis tried to dehumanise me. Nobody should dehumanise any other and those who try to dehumanise another are not human.

“It may be that Israel is not the most cruel country in the world … but one thing I know for sure is that Israel is the world champion in pretending to be civilised and cultured.”

Dr Meyer was born in 1924 in Bielefeld, Germany. He was not allowed to attend school there after November 1938. He then fled to the Netherlands, alone. In 1944, after a year in the underground, he was caught by the Gestapo and survived 10 months at Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland.

He now lives in the Netherlands, and is the author of three books on Judaism, the Holocaust and Zionism.

Dr Meyer also insisted the definition of “anti-Semitic” had now changed, saying: “Formerly an anti-Semite was somebody who hated Jews because they were Jews and had a Jewish soul. But nowadays an anti-Semite is somebody who is hated by Jews.”


A spokesman for the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, of which Dr Meyer is a member, said criticising Israel was “not the same” as criticising Jews.

Mick Napier, Scottish Palestine (*)Solidarity Campaign chairman and one of the five demonstrators facing charges when the court case continues in March, said: “Palestinians are happy to have him as an ally in their cause.

“Hajo knows that Israel has a long history of abusing the tragic history of the Holocaust in order to suppress legitimate criticism of its own crimes.

“Especially since Gaza, people are no longer taken in by their claim that anyone that criticises Israel is anti-Semitic.”

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/politics/auschwitz-survivor-israel-acts-like-nazis-1.1000918

 

Ach....when you get people reacting with A New Form of Holocaust Denial: Using Holocaust Survivors to Condemn Israel it broadens the scope of Israeli victimhood to ridiculous levels.

But funnily enough, in Israel, despite the millions the government has received, and I think is still getting, from Germany as recompense for their actions against the Jews during the war...a third of Holocaust survivors in Israel live in poverty.

Now that is Holocaust denying!

 

Indeed they do.

And, of course, that is down to the fact, much like financial aid given to Third World countries in Africa, that much of it is simply stolen, by the Zionists themselves, and usually reinvested into their own projects and agendas.

If could recomment a book


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust_Industry

 

Looks interesting. One for my birthday present list! Thanks!

 

Pleasure.

You can pick it up on Amazon, used copy, for not a lot.

 

Adam Gadahn, Anwar al-Awlaki were both born in the US, few people hate America more than they do.

Amira Hass was born in Israel, few people hate Israel more than she does. Amira Hass badmouthing Israel is passing for news nowadays among Islamo-Nazis? LOL, that's all she does for a living. Wake me up when she has anything good to say about Israel.

 

Interesting.

You only want to hear 'good' things about Israel?

Ah well ... I guess it figures.

 

Have you considered handing over Ohio to foreign refugees and leaving?

 

Applause for Margot.

 

Not really. Nevertheless a rabidly anti-Israel journalist badmouthing Israel is no news given she has been doing it non-stop for years. Your attempt to present it as some kind of a sensation is nothing more than disingenuous and dishonest propaganda.

 

So now you don't mind reading (and thinking about), that which is critical of Israel.

Right?

 

I presented it as no such thing, and to claim so, that's what is dishonest.

Amira Hass is the daughter of holocaust survivors - is critical of Israel.

Finkelstein lost his parents in the camps - critical of Israel.

Dr Hajo Meyer - Jewish, survived ten months in Auschwitz. Critical of Israel.

Do you see a pattern?

 

Millions and millions of holocaust survivors and their descendents - intensely proud of Israel, Israeli democracy and Israel's adherence to freedom of speech that allows the Amira Hasses of the world to run their mouths off and spew their anti-Israel nonsense. Sorry to burst your bubble, no patterns here.

Sure you did. You made it sound like she was an unbiased middle of the road Israeli journalist, not the most vicious 'Israel can do no right' voice in the Israeli media that she is. The correct title of this thread should have been "Rabidly anti-Israel journalist bashes Israel in Vancouver".

 

Millions and millions survived the Nazi holocaust, did they?

Anyway, that doesn't address my previous point.