Amazing interview with Amira Hass on Democracy Now. Hass is here to accept a lifetime achievement award from a women’s journalism organization.
Amy Goodman: Those are the words [in the New York Times] of Robert Bernstein, criticizing his own group, Human Rights Watch. Your response, Amira Hass?
AMIRA HASS: It’s very Orwellian, very Orwellian. It’s Israel which attacks the Palestinians. I mean, I read the article. The word “occupation” does not appear there even one time. He says that Israel is a democracy of seven-million-point-something Israeli citizens. He forgets four million Palestinians, who have to be registered in the Israeli population registry in order to exist. All the Palestinians are registered. He forgot the four million. So what kind of democracy it is, where four million who are in the Israeli Ministry of Interior have to be registered and Israel decides if they are—if they exist? How can you call it a democracy, when half of—when one-third, not to mention the one million Israeli Palestinians, don’t have rights, the same rights? What kind of democracy it is? It is really twisting all facts around. I was surprised to read this article, because it very much sounded—much of it sounded like propaganda of Israeli officials. Parts of it, not all.
… We know that attacks on democracy cannot—and on rights, do not only happen in the closed societies, in the unopen societies. And we also have learned that we should come with more demands to societies which claim to be democratic.
Every American Jew has more rights in Israel, potentially has more rights in Israel, than any Palestinian who was born there, who lives there, or who was born to Palestinians who were expelled. Every American Jew. I mean, this gives—this gives an obligation to Human Rights Watch to monitor Israel. I mean, there are no Americans who have a potential right to become automatically Saudi citizens or Chinese, or I don’t know what. Only Israel. So you have an obligation to monitor in what—to what extent it protects or abides by internationally accepted obligations and human rights. So these things are completely forgotten, and many more. I mean, it’s—factually, I mean, there are many things to argue with him, I think, and also value-wise many things to argue. And maybe—I’m sure that people will answer.
… this discrepancy, this Israeli control over every step of Palestinian life, still goes on, and it’s even worse. And the world doesn’t know. People do not associate now the Israeli regime with the terrible restrictions on freedom of movement, like it was in South Africa. Everybody knew during South Africa, during apartheid, that there is pass system. Now people do not know about. I was asked by a very nice Jewish woman, close to Peace Now—she asked me, “Are there any Palestinian journalists doing like what you are doing, living in Israel and reporting about Israel?” I said, “They wish they could, but Israel would not allow them even to go and cover a press conference in Jerusalem, let alone live in Israel.” We mean Palestinians who are residents of the West Bank or Gaza. She was surprised. So people do not grasp the extent of the restrictions of movement, which is the worst of all. I mean, it completely shrinks people’s life, not to mention how Gaza is a huge, how would I say, detention camp for one million and a half people who could not move more than thirty kilometers or forty kilometers in the past ten years or twelve years.
