Great interview of Israeli journalist Amira Hass by Jasmin Ramsey at Guernica. Read the whole piece for Hass’s analysis of Jewish Communists’ accommodation of Zionism.
Guernica: How often do you go to Israel to visit family?
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?
Amira Hass: I think very seriously that I would have liked to have become a fashion writer.
Guernica: [Laughter.]
Amira Hass: But no, of course not. I wouldn’t have changed it….
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…
Guernica: But from your constant monitoring of events on the ground, can you tell me what direction things seem to be going in?
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?
“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. ”
Thats my beef with all the “Lobby” stuff as well. If only the benevolent US government could be extricated from the evils of this group of pro-israel radicals, we would be just fine……..Nonsense.
Cheers, Amira.
Side-note: Absolutely love the new digs for the site.
“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”
I think of her like Sophie Scholl. They both know/knew the immorality of the systems they belong/belonged to.
They both know/knew how important it is to speak out even if the power they speak against seems so monolithic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM5A4ETW_Io
And that the system is/was headed in the direction of a cliff
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/09/19/1017540/-Tea-Party-Nihilists
An inspiring woman.
I love her point about “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…”
It gives her dissent credibility, that it is principled rather than only partisan (whether by positively stated kneejerk support, say of Hamas or Iran, or by negatively stated kneejerk opposition).
It is so sad of Hass to think she has not much to say. Her last article in Haaretz had that sense, like it doesn’t matter. Like nobody is listening. I would hug her if I met her. She is so important. People like her and Finkelstein and Hedi Epstein will be guides for Jews in the future, to pick a way out of the wreck of Zionism. They all learnt the most important lesson of the Shoah. Fink and Hass from their parents.
Remi Kanazi says it best, about the Zionists
“Never looked at Jewish pain
As something to conquer ”
There is no other way to do it.
Hass is like the anti Danon