AMIRA
HASS
Journalistic
Courage, Integrity, and Excellence
Words can become suns
words can become rivers
words can open gates
and built bridges
words can overthrows tyrants
if enough of us
arm ourselves with
words
Speak speak
it is our duty
to those who spoke
while they still
had lips
Helga Henschen
Mid-East
Realities - MER - www.MiddleEast.Org - 3 July
2004:
The
first annual Anna Lindh award has been given to
Ha'aretz journalist/reporter Amira Hass. Ms. Lindh
was
Sweden’s impressive Foreign Affairs Minister assassinated last
year who championned an open and civil society where human rights are
truly respected and everyone is free to express their opinions and be
treated with respect, regardless of their ethnic origin, gender and
religion. Ms. Hass is an extraordinarily courageous Israeli
journalist who has lived with and boldly reported about the
Palestinian people and Israel's increasingly severe repression and
dispossession of them. The above poem by Swedish poet Helga Henschen
was chosen to highlight the award.
Amira
Hass acceptance speech in Stockholm
for first Anna Lindh award
Dear Mr. Bo
Holmberg,
Dear members of the
board,
Dear guests and
friends.
The composition of the
first sentence of any article or a feature is for me the most
difficult, sometimes even agonizing. It's doubly difficult now for me
to locate the most suitable first words in this ceremony. After all,
this ceremony should have never taken place, the memorial fund never
been established, as the life and career and plans of Anna Lindh
should have continued normally, should have not been cut so cruelly
and abruptly by a murderer.
How then can I express my
words of thanks for the encouragement and appreciation your award
represents, while each of you wishes it never had to be announced and
given?
So it's almost needless to
explain why I stand here with mixed feelings.
Moreover, there are three
other reasons for the mixed feelings I have, when I stand here,
accepting with gratitude your generous award.
The irony has not escaped
my attention: here I find myself benefiting from a bloody conflict,
from the reality of an on-going ruthless Israeli occupation and an
apartheid sort of domination that my state, Israel, exercises over the
Palestinians, a domination which robs them of their chances of free
human development, and endangers the normal future of my people, the
Israelis. I benefit from the fact that I report about and from the
midst of a shattered Palestinian society, which became infamous and
marginalized because of the suicide bombers and the cult of death it
has been producing, a society which has so many varied, rich and wise
voices but fails to make them heard and allows for two kinds mainly to
dominate: that of victimhood and that of religious fanaticism. I
benefit, then, from a miserable situation.
Another reason for my
mixed feelings stems from a bitter awareness that my reports and
articles are noticed, widely read and truly comprehended in the
outside world much more than among the Israelis. A colleague of mine,
whose views are closer to the popular and official Israeli version of
the conflict, is candid and cynical. He told me just recently that the
more does the "outside" readership welcome me, the more marginal and
irrelevant I am considered at home. It's not that I am concerned with
popularity or lack thereof. I am troubled that my words - and the
words of quite a few other Israeli reporters, social and political
critics and activists are not reaching their natural address.
A third reason is a
related sense of frustration that I experience especially in the last
few weeks. Again, it's personal frustration and a collective one, at
the same time. A debate within the Israeli community of military
Intelligence has reached the media, especially thanks to my Haaretz
colleague, Akiva Eldar. It's the debate around the truthfulness or
falsehood of the Israeli explanations of the causes of the present
round of bloody conflict, since September 2000.
The official Israeli
version, propagated by the political echelons around the former
Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak of Labour, and adopted by a great
part of the Israeli Jews, ran as follows: Arafat planned, initiated
and orchestrated the armed conflict from the start; Arafat did not
accept the generous offers of Barak at Camp David, Camp David talks
reached a deadlock because of Palestinian insistence to demand the
Right of Return of all Palestinian refugees; Arafat is anyway aiming
at the gradual destruction of the state of Israel; from the start of
the present Intifada Palestinians resorted to using arms against the
Israeli soldiers; Palestinians who were killed were killed in armed
clashes between the two parties.
Each such statement, which
was actually accepted, if not presented, as a purely objective fact,
has been contradicted and challenged by articles and reports published
by Israeli papers. I well remember an article which the Israeli
political scientist, Menahem Klein, published in Haaretz. By the way
he is a religious Jew who teaches at Bar Ilan University, and he
participated in negotiations over Jerusalem. It was a few weeks after
the outbreak of the Intifada. He offered the solidly logical argument,
that had Arafat really secretly plotted to eventually destroy the
State of Israel, he would have accepted Barak's offers at Camp David,
and proceeded from there, gradually, to his final goal. Arafat, wrote
Klein, could not accept Barak's offer as a final deal, because he
genuinely clung to the two states’ solution, along the borders of June
the 4th, 1967.
An exceptionally poignant
writer is Bet Michael - another observant Jew, who has a weekly column
in Yediot Aharonot, which enjoys the largest circulation in Israel.
What he derives from Judaism and Jewish thought is a deeply moral
logic. Sometime during the first year of the current bloodshed he
commented about the military and the intelligence boasting that their
assessments about Arafat and Arafat's plan to escalate the bloodshed
had proven correct. If I am not mistaken, he referred directly to the
present Chief of Staff, Moshe Yaalon. He wrote the unforgettable
sentence: "He (Yaalon) did not foresee the future. He created this
future". Danny Rubinstein, also of Haaretz, who has been reporting
about Palestinians and the occupied territories since the early
seventies, added his impression, analysis and information about the
spontaneous character of the uprising, about Arafat's wish to resume
negotiations and lack of control over the street. Tireless Eldar kept
bringing information - from highly positioned Israeli and diplomatic
sources - that refuted the official presentation, or should I say now
- myths.
Palestinian activists were
interviewed by several Israeli writers. Marwan Barghouti, now in
prison, was interviewed, among others, by Gideon Levy of Haaretz and
Yigal Sarna of Yediot Aharonot. He - and others - reiterated their
support of the two states’ solution, he insisted the Intifada started
spontaneously. He reminded the Israelis that during the previous years
Palestinians had warned over and over again that by failing to
progress with withdrawals, by the continuous construction of
settlements etc. Israel was pushing the Palestinians to a new revolt.
Ben Kaspit, of Maariv - maybe the Israeli Hebrew daily most loyalist
to the government - published a year after the outbreak of the
uprising a huge article, where he analysed the military conduct. Among
other issues, political and military, he studied the conduct of the
army from day one. He referred to the astronomical number of bullets
that the Israeli soldiers used from the start, in no proportion to the
quantity and quality of arms that the Palestinian had. In other words
- one could conclude that the escalation was triggered by an excessive
Israeli use of power.
This list is long. I was
part of it. I reported from the field: from the first demonstrations
in Ramallah and Gaza, where hundreds or thousands of people marched to
Israeli military positions: some tens of youngsters threw stones, many
stood near by - chanting slogans, chatting, discussing the corruption
and ineffectiveness of the Palestinian Authority. And from distant
positions, the Israeli soldiers were shooting live bullets, wounding
and killing. The soldiers obeyed their officers' orders, who in their
turn acted upon the clear political directive and assurance from above
- at the time, of the Labour rule.
From the third day,
Palestinian and Israeli human rights health organizations commented
that the number of injuries in the upper parts of the body was proof
that the order was to kill. They also claimed that the army was
targeting children. I published their commentary in one of my early
reports. An interview I held with an Israeli sharpshooter confirmed
these claims. Amnesty International made a very good and urgent study
about the events: it commented that the clashes started when
Palestinian civilians marched in protest towards "symbolic sites" of
the Israeli occupation - military positions, mostly near the Israeli
colonies. I published a summary of their report, which concluded that
the army inflamed the atmosphere by using excessive use of deadly
power.
It would take days to cite
the reports from the field - by me and others - that refuted the
Israeli official military presentation of events. If you check the
archives, you'll find them. True, all the papers, including Haaretz,
and more so the radio and TV channels, didn't give many reports the
prominence that the official versions received. But whoever wanted to
get a broad picture and more facts - could have done so. Yet people
comment today to the debate and its content as if they were exposed
now to totally new facts. My frustration could sound vain: so early on
did I offer facts that now, three and two and almost four years after
are taken as common knowledge, proven by important officials and
commentators. Well, I AM vain, - I don't shy at saying that I
published those facts very early.
But my frustration is
about the wasted lives, the blood that might have not been shed, the
destruction that followed. If only people concluded early enough that
their army and politicians added tons of fuel to the flames, that they
treated a tiny match-fire as fire in a forest.
So you understand my mixed
feelings.
My frustration did not
start in September 2000. Long before then I used my advantage, living
among Palestinians, and offered facts which contradicted the common
assumption that a peace process was going on and that every one was
and should be happy. I referred to Israel's policies on the ground,
which were in stark contrast with concepts of peace: such as
settlements, such as the developing policy of closure, which is the
Israeli version of the apartheid pass system. I had interviews with
Palestinians intellectuals who warned that the situation was volatile,
at the brink of an explosion. I made sure to publish it. I could not
guarantee that it would be read. Even less could I guarantee for the
logical conclusions to be drawn. For example, that Israel was not
working in order to make peace, but in order to win the Peace: that
is, to use the negotiations period as an opportunity to expand the
settlements and guarantee an enfeebled, nonviable Palestinian State.
My experience and
frustration allowed me to consolidate my concepts about Journalism.
Journalism's main task is to monitor Power, to locate Domination and
to follow its characteristics and effects on the people, to observe
the relations developing between Power and the Subjugated. Even
between these two ends there is always a dialogue, an exchange of
behaviours, opinions, emotions, habits, influences. Power is never a
one-track, one direction action. In schools, teachers and the
education system as a whole are the centre of Power, but aren't
students playing with them a game of shifting places? Still, men hold
the positions of Power in our societies, but aren't they required to
permanently alter their forms of domination because of women's
conscious demand or implicit aspiration for equality and permanent
sense of dissatisfaction? In class relations between the employed and
the employer the permanent conversation between the two unequal
parties is being expressed in a thousand forms: not just strikes or
negotiations, raise of salaries or cuts, but by flattery to the boss
and sabotage, laziness and telling of lies or jokes, bringing
psychologists to spy or offering benefits and weekend excursions.
Monitoring Power is a
voluntarily adopted mission of journalism, I believe, in a
centuries-old development of the media and its social contract with
the society in which journalists operate.. It's not the only role -
but it is the most important one. I believe the mission of journalism
is to scrutinize the actions of Power: not to overlook the relations
of dialogue, and yet to question the motives of those in power and
their acts: because they'd do anything possible to retain power and
deepen it, because they hold the means to perpetuate the false
equation between the ruler's good and the public's good, or portray
their Power as God-sent and natural. By monitoring Power, the media is
contributing to the dialogue between the sides. They are not equal,
not symmetrical, and still they converse. The media reports about this
conversation, but it also participates in it, by the very publication.
It mediates information and by doing so it helps develop the dialogue.
And the media should do the impossible: scrutinize itself as to what
extent it silences or not the voice of the disadvantageous party in
the relations of dialogue.
Going back to the
Israeli-Palestinian angle, Israel is the Holder of Power. No doubt
about that. Which does not imply that the Palestinians have lacked or
lack initiative, responsibility, share or influence on the state of
affairs.
Here, the Israeli media is
in a tricky double position: It should monitor Power, that is Israeli
occupation. But as an Israeli foundation, it's part of Power. It's
part of and represents the dominating society, which has an interest
to prolong and eternalise its privileges vis-à-vis the Palestinians:
here are some of these privileges: control over water sources, control
over land, determining demographic processes, containing the pace of
development of the Other in order to secure Jewish hegemony.
But the Israeli media is
indeed free: nobody threatens us - our lives, our jobs - if we follow
the first commandment of journalism at the expense of our objective
position as part of Power. It's not that facts were not presented to
the Israeli public, early enough, by various journalists. Haaretz
especially and for many years was carefully monitoring and
scrutinizing Israeli power. But facts have melted away, evaporated
within the natural process of socialization. By socialization I mean
the imitation of each other, the adoption of beliefs and concepts
which infiltrate from the top and on down, but then circle around as
the independent fruit of autonomous and individual contemplation and
knowledge. By socialization I refer to the thin line between the
fabrication of a consensus and the consensus created naturally between
people of common ethnic origin, or religious.
We, Israeli journalists
who cover the Power relations between Israel and the Palestinians, are
caught then in the interplay between our freedom of expression and our
natural identification with the society, which keeps the centre of
Power. It's not censorship, it's not direct official intimidation that
marginalizes our facts or silences us, at times. It's the deafening
noise that the process of socialization creates.
By socialization I refer
to the need to safeguard ones privileges - be they as miserable as the
privileges of Israelis who live in poor, under-developed cities and
neighbourhoods. The common ethnic and religious origin and the natural
pursuit of comfort explain why 66% of Israeli Jews say they are not
affected by reports on the suffering of Palestinians whose houses were
demolished. A similar rate of Israeli Jews believe that the Separation
fence is inflicting a negligible damage to Palestinians. And they
refer to this dreadful set of fortifications which breaks Palestinian
territory and society into disconnected isolated enclaves; so many
facts were published about it. Facts about these scandalous, merciless
figures and numbers were published in Haaretz.
Ending is difficult too. I
thought of several endings for this presentation, and could not make
up my mind about any. After all, it's a thank you speech. And indeed,
I am grateful for your generosity. It, in its turn, allows to show my
gratitude to some of my friends in Gaza and Rafah. I owe them so much
for my understanding of Palestinian society and the Israeli
occupation, the understanding that you defined as "courageous
journalism".
Amira Hass -
Stockholm
18.06.04
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