“Resist the Normalization of Evil”: Israeli Reporter Amira Hass on Palestine and Journalism

this news is funded by viewers like you, please support our work at democracynow.org this is democracy now democracynow.org The War and Peace report I'm Amy Goodman Israel is intensifying its bombing of the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, destroying dozens of homes, buildings and heavy airstrikes overnight and pushing residents to flee to other parts of the city. This comes as Israel vows to intensify its ground attack on the southernmost city of Rafa. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant said on Thursday that additional troops would enter Rafa and that military operations would intensify in the city.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also said on Thursday that the battle in Rafa is critical, that 1 .4 million Palestinians - more than half of Gaza's population - had been displaced to Rafa seeking refuge, now more than 600,000 have fled Rafa over the past week and a half. Since Israel launched its ground offensive there, no food, fuel or other aid has since entered the two main border crossings in southern Gaza, further exacerbating the humanitarian crisis. According to the UN, around 1.1 million Palestinians are on the brink of famine, while a full-blown famine is taking place in the north, this is confirmed by the world food programme, the developments come as the international court justice has concluded two days of hearings in the ha following South Africa's request last week for emergency measures to stop Israel's attack on Rafa.

It was the third time the U.N. Supreme Court held hearings on Gaza since South Africa brought a case in December accusing Israel of committing genocide on Thursday. South Africa's ambassador to the Netherlands, V Muzi Modella, urged the court to order Israel to fully and unconditionally withdraw from Gaza. strp when we last appeared before this court to carry out this genocidal process to preserve Palestine and its people, instead, Israel's genocide has continued at a pace and has just reached a new and horrible stage. Israel has tried to hide its crimes by using international humanitarian law as a weapon.

It claims that the civilians it ruthlessly kills with its 2,000 bombs, with its selective air strikes, with its artificial intelligence systems and with its executions, are human shields. This cover-up of Israel's genocide overlooks the key and fundamental element: the massive and still growing evidence of Israel's genocidal intent. Israel today presented its defense before the world court and denied having committed genocide in Gaza. This is the head of the Israeli delegation to the court. Gilad no South Africa is back in court for the fourth time in less than five months. With an image completely divorced from the facts and circumstances, Israel is immersed in a difficult and tragic armed conflict.

South Africa ignores this factual context which is essential to understanding the situation and also ignores the applicable legal framework of the international humanitarian law that it formulates. In a mockery of the appalling accusation of genocide, the International Court of Justice today ordered Israel's representatives to present more information about the humanitarian conditions in its so-called evacuation zones in Gaza. This comes as the foreign ministers of 13 countries have signed a letter warning Israel to stop its ground operations in Rafa and get more help for the Palestinians the letter signed by all members of the G7 except the United States for more we are with the Veteran Israeli journalist Samir Hass, born in 1956 in Jerusalem, her parents Holocaust survivors, she is a correspondent for Harat the Occupied Palestinian Territories based in Rala is the only Jewish Israeli journalist who has spent 30 years living and reporting from Gaza and the West Bank his books include drinking the sea in Gaza days and nights in a land under siege airas received the 2024 Columbia Journalism Prize and on Wednesday addressed the graduating class of the Columbia Journalism School here in New York.

She now joins us in our New York studio. Amiro, welcome to democracy. Now congratulations on your award, but the most important thing is for your report. You are so unusual. in Israel, as the only Jewish Israeli journalist lived in the occupied territories for the past 30 years. When you gave your address at the Columbia Journalism School, several of your students were threatened by the NYPD with even leaving the school when they tried to cover the Gaza solidarity camp outside as the police moved in and ultimately , I think the number of arrests on campus was over 200. Can you talk about the coming together of the topics that you cover and what you think is so important for journalists? you should understand your role in society um as I said in my speech to the students uh it is if I want to summarize it not in a professional way or or or uh uh as a teacher is to

resist

the

normalization

of

evil

and uh of injustice because we are so used to it that there is so much injustice in this world, not everywhere, and we have to use our unwritten social contract between ourselves and citizens around the world to scrutinize, monitor and challenge the centers of power. power abusive power any power can be abusive or is abusive only we have the power to at least try to restrict it.

I think this should be the role, not the only one, but it should be the main role of the journalist to restrict power wherever he is uh uh uh uh ever expressed by the journalist at his school address uh J quoted a friend in Gaza and this is particularly important because what happened just a few meters from where the school is, if you can tell us who he is and what he said yes um just a few uh um two weeks before the address I received the WhatsApp from a friend called Basam Naser. I met him in the early 90s when I was still a student and uh, we haven't been in touch for many years.

He is the father of four children. He runs an institution or center in Gaza. He was displaced like so many others from Gaza to Rafa to save his life. His house, I know, is in ruins. Now in Gaza. and now he had to flee again with his family and the RAF institution to D balah in the center and he sent me a very eh, from time to time he writes something on WhatsApp in English and I guess he shares it with some others. uh and he shares his thoughts and feelings and he shared with me something related to the demonstrations and protests on American campuses and of course I thought it was appropriate to bring it up to read so I can read it now sorry.

So and this is from the talk and what I, the quote that I brought to the students on Wednesday. A sadness of hope emerges from university students who demonstrate the enduring presence of humanity. The hypocritical politicians, terrified, quickly resort to force for Quil. The movement that fears its global expansion implements repression to stifle voices that challenge the status quo. Police and national guards are deployed arresting students who were expelled just hours earlier for speaking out against violence in Palestine, from Gaza to New York and other major cities around the world. to express deep gratitude for these voices while you may not be able to save all the children in Gaza or restore our shattered lives and dreams and your efforts will not prevent the next devastating airstrike that will wipe out our entire family in the name of every Palestinian.

I want to express my sincere gratitude for raising awareness about our plight and I know he is not the only one. I mean, I know that if there was any kind of hope in people's lives in people's hell, it's not life in the last moment. the last month are those demonstrations and protests now. I wanted to talk to someone else to talk about those protests. You gave your commencement speech Wednesday at Columbia's

journalism

school. President. Manu Shaik had canceled the main graduation ceremony due to protests but yesterday. The teachers, to say the least, completely exhausted, organized a popular graduation.

Columbia students and faculty celebrated an Alternatives graduation as they gathered for a ceremony near the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, with many students wearing their blue graduation gowns on stage. The teachers were the Reverend Herbert Dy, the New York civil rights leader, who was an early mentor to now-mayor Eric Adams, who claimed that the protest in Colombia was co-opted by outside professional agitators, but among the speakers who were Leading the students was the poet Fadi. Judah, who read her poem dedicated to Palestinians murdered by Isra, Palestinian American lawyer and human rights activist Nura Erot, and award-winning journalist Mona Chalabi, who turned down her 2023 Pulitzer Prize and has been highly critical of Gaza's coverage by In his speech, he paid tribute to the

journalism

students in the audience who often covered the Gaza camp while facing arrest.

Hello, I'm only going to talk to you for two minutes because I have the great honor of recognizing my fellow journalists in the room so that Many of you know that our institutions have failed us these last few months and long before writers and editors, some of the most respected newsrooms have told lies about what is happening in Gaza, have said that the death threats falling from the sky are evacuation orders. They 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 have used their reports to minimize the suffering in Gaza and maintain the status quo, and they have respected those reports. for the criticism that they have tried, they have even tried to discredit or ignore Palestinian journalists like Hind, who face death every day, so I shouldn't have been surprised when I heard what happened last month: a journalist from the New York Times said When they were told that something seemed to be happening at Columbia University, the students seemed to have claimed an an as their own, so, like any breaking news, a select channel had been created for journalists to discuss details and assign stories, this is what they do at the New York Times when this

reporter

joined the Slack channel.

They were shocked to discover that it had been titled Anti-Semitism on Campus. They had decided what the story was before they even took a train into the city. Meanwhile, journalists on campus had a very different perspective than what they had begun to report. Before a single tent was set up, you not only witnessed the incompatibility, you heard the chants, you read the signs and you talked to the organizers, you did the job and you did it so well that journalists like me off campus turned to your words in your Instagram. accounts and we listened to your radio stations if we wanted the truth and you told the truth while the police harassed and assaulted and arrested you and your fellow students and you did it all while trying to graduate and cry, that's true for Jews anti-Zionists. students whose faith is being questioned by those who want them to remain silent, this is true for students whose parents look like the mothers and fathers who are murdered every day and it is especially true for Palestinian students who continued to report that the events They were going through unbearable pain.

I'm very proud to call you my colleagues with the journalists in the room, please stand up, that's award-winning journalist Mona Shalaby, who just won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize, even though she turned it down at the awards ceremony. Calling out her fellow journalists for their unwillingness to say the word Palestine, Mona donated her $115,000 prize to the Palestinian journalists' union to help combat what she described as the information asymmetry that elevates Israeli voices over Palestinian ones in the main media. Yesterday he addressed the town's graduation at St John the Divine. for the Colombia and Barnard students, Amir has while you listen to Mona and you also think about the Palestinian journalists who have died in Gaza, the staggering number of journalists who have died, who have been murdered, who have been murdered, you talk about that then , and you?

I feel like they were directly attacked so often wearing the press vest and helmets. I remember that a Palestinian journalist, when he found out that his dear friend had just been killed, tore off his press and helmet and said: why do we use them? They just make us a Target, yeah, I guess you know part of me wants to think this isn't true. I mean they were killed because they are in places that are dangerous and because they circulate a lot, I mean, moving around at times when people are trying not to move um, I think there is what we call a finger, I think a fingerprint, uh, targeting or profiling because anyone who uses a drone, even to film emergencies, to photograph, is considered by the uh uh the people behind the Israeli assault drones or the dronespredators are someone who is part of the combat units, so they automatically kill them without checking if they just take pictures, so I think there are a variety of excuses or explanation that Israel would give, but certainly, um, in some cases they were connecting journalists with October 7 or with other activities, completely not like journalists and wanting to get revenge on them, but this has to be Reviewed and I think it is being controlled by various places in each case, but certainly when there is so much people, so many journalists murdered, that shows that there is a pattern and our role is to discover the pattern, but there are patterns of other things. there are U patterns of entire families that are being killed, so 40 30 35, so you can say that you are targeting one of the family, which means that you allow the murder of uh, let's say this person is very dangerous to the security of Israel, then it means that you allow yourself to kill 30 people, 40 people, 25 people, including children, including babies, for one person, so this is a pattern that we can learn from From reality, we don't need to have secret documents for it , but that's how it was.

There is a very important investigation conducted by Uval Abraham of uh uh sik of uh 972 who spoke to intelligence uh soldiers. on the intelligence and the proof that Israel is authorized to kill so many so many for one person and we interviewed him on Democracy Now talking about the lavender AI programs and where's dad, yeah, so you have the murder of journalists and then the Ban on journalists and I wanted to go for a moment. I think it was 2 days after World Press Freedom Day that Israel banned Al Jazer within Israel, the country, police officers raiding the Network Office in Jerusalem, confiscating broadcasting equipment for the last seven months.

Al Jazer, one of the only international media outlets with

reporter

s on the ground inside Gaza, some of whom were killed. This is a pre-recorded video message from Al Jazer Imran Khan from East Jerusalem. If you are watching this pre-recorded report, then Al Jazer has been banned in the territory of Israel. On April 1, the Knesset, the Israeli parliament passed a law that allowed the prime minister to ban Al Jazera. Now he enacted that law, let me explain to you some of the definitions within the law, they have banned our website, including anything. that you have the option to enter or access the website, including the passwords that are needed, whether they are paid or unpaid and whether they are stored on Israeli servers or outside of Israel, the website is now inaccessible.

They are also banning any device used to provide content which includes my mobile phone, if I use it for any type of news gathering the Israelis can simply confiscate it. Our Internet access provider, the guy who simply hosts uh al.net uh, is also in danger of being fined if he hosts the Aljazera TV channel website completely banned streaming by any type of content provider and also It is prohibited for the channel to maintain offices or operate them in the territory of Israel. Once again, the Israelis can remove any devices used to provide content for the channel.

It is a wide-ranging ban that we do not know how long it will be in force, but it covers this territory of the state of Israel. Imran Khan aler occupied East Jerusalem and that was the last report of him from occupied East Jerusalem now Al Jazer. Reporters say that when they report, for example, from Amman, we are banned in Israel, but interestingly, Amir AAS, the same is not true for CNN and MSNBC. No, they are not prohibited from reporting in Israel, but Israel does not allow them. go to Gaza and every time they have a report out of Gaza they don't say and we want to remind them that we are not on the ground in Gaza because the Israeli government has prevented that I can't, I don't look at them when I'm in Ramallah or uh, but I want to say that when it comes to the Israeli public it doesn't matter if El Jazer is inside Israel or not, the general Israeli public doesn't want to know what's going on in Gaza and the Israeli media doesn't show anything.

I mean, they show very, very, very few images of the destruction. They give very little information and footage of the deaths of the injured. I mean, there is no relationship between what and what. is happening and what is shown in El Jazer and what the Israeli media shows, but it is not, it is not a dictate from above, it is not a state censorship, unlike Al Jazer, it is a decision of the majority of Israeli places. most Israeli media, ER, especially television, of course, do not show those horrible scenes that might give some Israelis the feeling that this is not moral but logical, it cannot bring about a change in Palestinian attitudes or a change of accepting Israel or accepting Israel's rights to exist, etc., etc., if for eight months he launches such an attack of revenge and supremacy against them, but the Israeli public is not looking for it, is not looking for it in General, I mean.

Of course there are uh uh there are exceptions like the Israeli left-wing activists Israeli uh uh um human rights activist left-wing political activist of course there are exceptions so it's not the whole society and of course there are the Palestinians who are citizens Israelis, but the Al Jazer ban is not the reason why Israelis do not see the reality in Gaza and this is not the reason why this is the option of not knowing, interestingly, the families of hostages, um , the hostages are not even seen in the American media. families that say end this war, you certainly see them talking about the horror of their loved ones being held in Gaza, but the second part for several of these hostage families is ending the war now, yes, not all, but yes, of course, but This is the American media, I mean, no, we know that there are families among the hostages, families of hostages, who speak differently than the chorus.

I want to ask you about the Nakba, about what happened in 1948 and what is happening today. We continue our conversation with a veteran Israeli journalist, Amir, Har's correspondent for the occupied Palestinian territories, now residing in Ramallah, the only Jewish Israeli journalist who has spent 30 years reporting from Gaza and the West Bank, among his books drinking the sea in Days and nights in Gaza in a besieged land and editing Bergen Bellson's Memoirs of his mother from the concentration camp. She is the daughter of Holocaust survivors. He talks about what happened 76 years ago this week, on May 15th.

Look and talk about what is happening today. Let's start from today because I believe that, look, there is a country with two peoples, Palestinians and Jews, and we can have a long historical discussion, historiographical discussion and debate about how it came about that there are two peoples in this country. and why in 1948 a state was established for the Jews while the UN resolution on the state for the Palestinians, the Arabs, as they were called, was not established, does not change the fact that there are two peoples and does not change the The fact that people want to live in their Homeland does not change the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of refugees, Palestinian refugees who were, or pales, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were expelled from the country of their Homeland in 1948 and who for now with their uh uh uh children and grandchildren there are several million and they see this country as their country as their Homeland and that does not change the fact that there are Israeli Jews who see Israel and the country as their country and there is a decision that must take: they want to live, they want their grandchildren to live and live well in that country in Justice or they want to send their grandchildren and children to Wars forever H that will force some people who have the money who have the talents who have the contacts to immigrate and that others stay and live in destitution and in hunger and in ignorance for the rest of their lives and their I don't know until the end of generations or until the world expires, that's why we can feel that we are still living the nakba and the results of the nakba because in Arabic castr means catastrophe because there is no recognition that one cannot live in This in this unbearable injustice that one people has the rights and one people controls and dictates the lives of others on earth .

The point is that we have to recognize that there are two peoples on earth and the peoples have rights and right now. We deprive the Palestinians of their basic rights B, not just the basic right to life, as we see happening in Gaza right now, but in the normal days of occupation we deprive them of water, freedom of movement, land, the right to housing, planning, uh, uh, travel. living with their families H choosing their university H developing their uh their economy uh uh prospering investing all these things we we at any time Israeli soldiers can confiscate millions of dollars from the Palestinians under one pretext or another ER Israeli settlers M um uh carry to carry out political Israeli actions but in much more uh Zeal in and and confiscate lands seize lands I mean people, Palestinians life is never, they are never safe, they never live in security for over 75 years on both sides on both sides of the green line in Israel and the occupied territory in 67, so there must be a decision on the part of the Israeli people: do we want to live what we came for?

Israel was established so that Jews would feel safe and live normally. This is not a normal life. They pretended that this. It is the normal life that we can occupy other people and feel normal, not on October 7 with all the atrocities and the and the and the and the enormous suffering that was that the families and the hand and the casualties and the victims of October 7 October October is experiencing all this suffering and the really trauma, terrible trauma and and and and and uh uh cruelty, but this was a kind of long-awaited response by Hamas and the Palestinians to the atrocities perpetuated for years by by by Israel and uh and perpetrated by Israel and uh the main thing is the refusal to accept and recognize the national rights of the Palestinians to statehood.

They were prepared for it in the 90s. I know that Israel is trying to change everything and to say that they sabotaged the bear deal is 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 uh uh uh uh there's a there's a you know, we come back to this all the time because all the time Israel says it's the opposite, but they avoid completely all the uh uh all the evidence so Israel What Israel did over the last 30 years is prove to the world and to the Palestinians that the Palestinians were right since the early 30s and 40s when they said that Israel is a colonial entity or a settler colonial entity Israel. had the opportunity in 1993 to stop its settler colonial activity in the West Bank in Gaza and say: okay, let's not go back to '48, let's start for now and build a new different phase, a new historical phase, it did the opposite, huh.

He continued his ties in Palestinian construction, in Palestinian development, he disconnected Palestinians from each other, he disconnected Gaza from the West Bank and he began to fragment more and more of the West Bank by roads that are only for Jews and this is in the 90s, This is in the 90s, Rabin said he didn't want, he wasn't opting for a state, so this is the question of Israel, it is settler colonialism, it is Israel that demonstrated that it is settler colonialism and we live with He now with all this abnormality that the Israeli Jews wanted to live normally and happily, you go to Tel Aviv, you think you are in New York or you are in London and 40 or 50 kilometers away, the Palestinians live in California in cages, in cages disconnected from each other and everything is Israel dictates the amount of water in my place in my house in Elbir in summer we have the amount of water rationed because there is not enough water, but when you go to nearby settlements it is lush, it is green to a large extent. water that they have uh uh Israel The Israeli tenants seize power through violence they seize uh hundreds of thousands of or tens of thousands of uh dunams something that building settlements was not done, could not be done and they do it through violence and with the assistance and uh uh uh uh and silence or indifference or encouragement of the Israeli authorities, the police, the army, the prosecutor's office, everyone, so when the Palestinians said that the nakba is ongoing, they don't just mean to Gaza, of course, this is and in For many people, as I know, they feel that the slaughter in Gaza now is much worse than what they experienced in 1948, but it is also that Israel took Palestinian life and freedom. and freedom has been held hostage for the last 70 years, 75 years everywhere, in many ways within Israel, the Palestinians dare not speak because they will be if they just say one word like if they say the word Shahid, which is Marty and they and they mourn the death of so many Palestinians in Gaza they could be arrested they could be arrested for incitement so if they use the word martyr h yes like it on Facebook I don't on Facebook you see that they uh uh uh or martyr or something like that or something like that I mean, it's just an example of how people are afraid to use words that are very normal, even a sentence from the Quran can be taken as proof that they are, that they support Hamas, so.

While you talk about Gaza andWest Bank, let's talk more about the West Bank. Thousands of people have been arrested. Hundreds have been killed since October 7. You talk about what you call the Smotrich plan, uh bezal smotrich, now the Minister. of Finance, since 2022, yes, he is and is a minister also in the ministry of defense and is responsible for the settlements, actually, for the development of the West Bank settlements, both he and Benir are settlers, yes, yes, yes , public. in 2017 something called the decisive plan that actually says that the Palestinians have to accept that they will never have a state that they will never have, they will never be equal citizens in this country, ER, and they will be able to enjoy their individual rights.

If they don't want to, they can go, they can immigrate, which is, of course, the preferable option for him, and then if they reject both and

resist

, sometimes he says I resist violently, sometimes he says I resist, they will, The army will know. or the security apparatus will know how to deal with it and it was in one way or another he interpreted it as okay, they will do it, they will kill them, he rejected when people assumed that he meant they would kill civilians, he rejected this, but of course anyway now we see that what is happening is the implementation of the decisive plan, but it shows that it is like that everywhere the Palestinians are the target of any message that if you want to live in peace I mean normally or appear apparently or almost normal you have to keep silent you shouldn't say anything you certainly shouldn't show it certainly shouldn't you uh uh uh uh uh take up weapons you certainly shouldn't call uh uh do something to show support even defend yourself protect yourself from settler violence uh can get you arrested in emergencies, so this message would send me a smri?

It would not have been so successful if the state had not prepared the ground and had not really been in the same position for at least the last 20 years, so it is not that smotri is a genius who can or so powerful that he can impose his position to the rest of the government the way he does, because I mean, he knows where Netanyahu is vulnerable, he knows how Orthodox Jews also want this government to continue, but the fact that in practice all the Israeli authorities are part of the repression of the Palestinians in so many ways and in a way so similar to small plans that it shows that it has been in the DNA of the system of this deep Please indicate, for so many years, as we conclude this discussion, where do you see what is happening right now, right when we sit down?

Israel ends its defense of South Africa's emergency appeal to prevent a large-scale ground offensive in Rafa Israel. insisting that aid is reaching all entry points easily um and South Africa saying they have to be stopped uh how do you see the end of this now? I hope the judges act because the way Israel has been able to almost for almost six months to play and drag it uh uh uh uh and how the Western countries allow this to continue without exerting the influence that they have over Israel to stop the killing and the famine and famine and deliberate famine.

Our hope now is in the judges, who will see that Israel is lying and what is happening to the United States. I mean, President Biden is now announcing $1 billion in military weapons in the pipeline for Israel, including $700 million for tank ammunition. million in tactical vehicles 60 million in mortar rounds the importance of the position the United States is taking and what Biden is doing he supports Israel to continue the war I mean, that's what I have. I don't see any other explanation for this, I mean all of them. his words that he is worried about ra or whatever so it is such hypocrisy that I feel almost speechless uh uh when you think that on the one hand they are sending uh help or they say they are sending help but it is needed it is long and it is very little and on the other hand they encourage Israel to continue with the war against Gaza where we see that Israel is already defeated, I mean, it is defeated if such a great military power, ER, continues fighting Hamas after eight months.

ER, it doesn't do anything good for Israelis, I mean, except for some groups who want me to continue for five seconds, yes, but for most Israelis it is clear that most Israelis understand even though they support. war, on the one hand, they understand that it is against them. Long-time Israeli journalist and author. Airas AR correspondent for the occupied Palestinian territories. I'm Amy Goodman, thank you for joining us. Democracy is now funded by spectators like you. Please make a donation today at democracynow.org.