Haaretz deletes Amira Hass article on surging settler violence كاتب فلسطيني يفك الحصار عن كاتبة إسرائيلية
كاتب فلسطيني يفك الحصار عن كاتبة إسرائيلية
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| Amira Hass - الصحفية اليسارية الإسرائيلية محاصررة في يوميتها هآريتس التي تشطب مقالاتها وتتهمها الرقابة العسكرية بالإنحياز للفلسطينيين |
Censorship? Haaretz deletes Amira Hass article on
surging settler violence
Submitted
by Ali Abunimah on
Fri, 07/20/2012 - 17:09
Update:
21 July 2012
As of today, the deleted article has been restored to the Haaretz website, at a new url:http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/the-anti-semitism-that-goes-unreported-1.452594
Original
post
Israel’s Haaretz has mysteriously deleted a powerful article by Amira Hass headlined “The anti-Semitism that goes
unreported,” about an unchecked upsurge in violence against Palestinians by
Israeli settlers.
This is at least the second notable act of apparent censorship
by Haaretz in recent months. In December, as we reported, the newspaper
expunged from its website an article byDavid Sheen on a horrifying anti-African rally in Tel Aviv.
Hass’ article,
originally published on 18 July, likened the alarming increase in settler
attacks to the period leading up to the 1994 settler massacre of Palestinians
in Hebron:
For the human rights organization Al-Haq, the escalation is
reminiscent of what happened in 1993-1994, when they warned that the increasing violence, combined with the authorities’ failure to
take action, would lead to mass casualties. And then Dr. Baruch Goldstein of Kiryat Arba came along and
gunned down 29 Muslim worshipers at the Ibrahim Mosque.
Hass is one of Haaretz’s best known writers, renowned internationally for documenting
Israeli human rights abuses against Palestinians.
Article
disappears
The Hebrew version of Hass’ article still appears on the newspaper’s Hebrew
language website. It is the English version that is gone.
An image of the now
deleted English version can still be seen via Google Cache (above).
However, the original url for the article now redirects to an
unrelated page:http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/the-anti-semitism-that-goes-unreported-1.394279.
A search of Haaretz archive for articles by Amira Hass indicates that as of today, her most recent article was from 16
July. The 18 July article is nowhere to be found.
Ironically the url originally leading to Hass’ article now links
to one by a man subtitled “Women, don’t be suckers; The protest’s female voice
is not being heard.” Hass is one ofHaaretz’s few prominent female writers, and apparently her voice cannot
be heard.
Full
text of censored article
Luckily, The Electronic Intifada captured the text of the
article Haaretz didn’t want you to read. Here it is in full:
Amira Hass: The anti-Semitism that goes
unreported
18 July 2012
By Amira Hass, Haaretz - 18 July 2012
Tens of thousands of people live in the shadow of terror
By Amira Hass, Haaretz - 18 July 2012
Tens of thousands of people live in the shadow of terror
Here’s a statistic that you
won’t see in research on anti-Semitism, no matter how meticulous the study is.
In the first six months of the year, 154 anti-Semitic assaults have been
recorded, 45 of them around one village alone. Some fear that last year’s
record high of 411 attacks - significantly more than the 312 attacks in 2010
and 168 in 2009 - could be broken this year.
Fifty-eight incidents were
recorded in June alone, including stone-throwing targeting farmers and
shepherds, shattered windows, arson, damaged water pipes and water-storage
facilities, uprooted fruit trees and one damaged house of worship. The
assailants are sometimes masked, sometimes not; sometimes they attack
surreptitiously, sometimes in the light of day.
There were two violent
attacks a day, in separate venues, on July 13, 14 and 15. The words “death” and
“revenge” have been scrawled in various areas; a more original message promises
that “We will yet slaughter.”
It’s no accident that the
diligent anti-Semitism researchers have left out this data. That’s because they
don’t see it as relevant, since the Semites who were attacked live in villages
with names like Jalud, Mughayer and At-Tuwani, Yanun and Beitilu. The daily
dose of terrorizing (otherwise known as terrorism ) that is inflicted on these
Semites isn’t compiled into a neat statistical report, nor is it noticed by
most of the Jewish population in Israel and around the world - even though the
incidents resemble the stories told by our grandparents.
The day our grandparents
feared was Sunday, the Christian Sabbath; the Semites, who are not of interest
to the researchers monitoring anti-Semitism, fear Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath.
Our grandparents knew that the order-enforcement authorities wouldn’t intervene
to help a Jewish family under attack; we know that the Israel Defense Forces,
the Israel Police, the Civil Administration, the Border Police and the courts
all stand on the sidelines, closing their eyes, softballing investigations,
ignoring evidence, downplaying the severity of the acts, protecting the
attackers, and giving a boost to those progromtchiks.The hands behind these
attacks belong to Israeli Jews who violate international law by living in the
West Bank. But the aims and goals behind the attacks are the flesh and blood of
the Israeli non-occupation. This systemic violence is part of the existing
order. It complements and facilitates the violence of the regime, and what the
representatives - the brigade commanders, the battalion commanders, the
generals and the Civil Administration officers - are doing while “bearing the
burden” of military service.
They are grabbing as much
land as possible, using pretexts and tricks made kosher by the High Court of
Justice; they are confining the natives to densely populated reservations. That
is the essence of the tremendous success known as Area C: a deliberate thinning
of the Palestinian population in about 62 percent of the West Bank, as
preparation for formal annexation.
Day after day, tens of
thousands of people live in the shadow of terror. Will there be an attack today
on the homes at the edge of the village? Will we be able to get to the well, to
the orchard, to the wheat field? Will our children get to school okay, or make
it to their cousins’ house unharmed? How many olive trees were damaged
overnight?
In exceptional cases, when
there is luck to be had, a video camera operated by B’Tselem volunteers
documents an incident and pierces the armor of willful ignorance donned by the
citizens of the only democracy in the Middle East. When there is no camera, the
matter is of negligible importance, because after all, you can’t believe the
Palestinians. But this routine of escalating violence is very real, even if it
is underreported.
For the human rights
organization Al-Haq, the escalation is reminiscent of what happened in
1993-1994, when they warned that the increasing violence, combined with the
authorities’ failure to take action, would lead to mass casualties. And then
Dr. Baruch Goldstein of Kiryat Arba came along and gunned down 29 Muslim
worshipers at the Ibrahim Mosque. The massacre set the stage for a consistent
Israeli policy of emptying the Old City of Hebron of its Palestinian residents,
with the assistance of Israeli Jewish pogromtchiks. Is there someone among the
country’s decision-makers and decision-implementers who is hoping for a second
round?
The anti-Semitism that goes unreported
The daily dose of terror inflicted on these Semites isn't noticed
by most Jews - even though the incidents resemble stories told by our
grandparents.
Here's a statistic that you
won't see in research on anti-Semitism, no matter how meticulous the study is.
In the first six months of the year, 154 anti-Semitic assaults have been
recorded, 45 of them around one village alone. Some fear that last year's
record high of 411 attacks - significantly more than the 312 attacks in 2010
and 168 in 2009 - could be broken this year.
Fifty-eight incidents were recorded
in June alone, including stone-throwing targeting farmers and shepherds,
shattered windows, arson, damaged water pipes and water-storage facilities,
uprooted fruit trees and one damaged house of worship. The assailants are
sometimes masked, sometimes not; sometimes they attack surreptitiously,
sometimes in the light of day.
There were two violent
attacks a day, in separate venues, on July 13, 14 and 15. The words
"death" and "revenge" have been scrawled in various areas;
a more original message promises that "We will yet slaughter."
It's no accident that the
diligent anti-Semitism researchers have left out this data. That's because they
don't see it as relevant, since the Semites who were attacked live in villages
with names like Jalud, Mughayer and At-Tuwani, Yanun and Beitilu. The daily
dose of terrorizing (otherwise known as terrorism ) that is inflicted on these
Semites isn't compiled into a neat statistical report, nor is it noticed by
most of the Jewish population in Israel and around the world - even though the
incidents resemble the stories told by our grandparents.
The day our grandparents
feared was Sunday, the Christian Sabbath; the Semites, who are not of interest
to the researchers monitoring anti-Semitism, fear Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath.
Our grandparents knew that the order-enforcement authorities wouldn't intervene
to help a Jewish family under attack; we know that the Israel Defense Forces,
the Israel Police, the Civil Administration, the Border Police and the courts
all stand on the sidelines, closing their eyes, softballing investigations,
ignoring evidence, downplaying the severity of the acts, protecting the
attackers, and giving a boost to those progromtchiks. The hands behind these
attacks belong to Israeli Jews who violate international law by living in the
West Bank. But the aims and goals behind the attacks are the flesh and
blood of the Israeli non-occupation. This systemic violence is part of the existing order. It complements
and facilitates the violence of the regime, and what the representatives - the
brigade commanders, the battalion commanders, the generals and the Civil
Administration officers - are doing while "bearing the burden" of
military service.
They are grabbing as much
land as possible, using pretexts and tricks made kosher by the High Court of
Justice; they are confining the natives to densely populated reservations. That
is the essence of the tremendous success known
as Area C: a deliberate
thinning of the Palestinian population in about 62 percent of the West Bank, as
preparation for formal annexation.
Day after day, tens of
thousands of people live in the shadow of terror. Will there be an attack today
on the homes at the edge of the village? Will we be able to get to the well, to
the orchard, to the wheat field? Will our children get to school okay, or make
it to their cousins' house unharmed? How many olive trees were damaged
overnight?
In exceptional cases, when
there is luck to be had, a video camera operated by B'Tselem volunteers
documents an incident and pierces the armor of willful ignorance donned by the
citizens of the only democracy in the Middle East. When there is no camera, the
matter is of negligible importance, because after all, you can't believe the
Palestinians. But this routine of escalating violence is very real, even if it
is underreported.
For the human rights
organization Al-Haq, the escalation is reminiscent of what happened in
1993-1994, when they warned that the increasing violence, combined with the
authorities' failure to take action, would lead to mass casualties. And then
Dr. Baruch Goldstein of Kiryat Arba came along and gunned down 29 Muslim
worshipers at the Ibrahim Mosque. The massacre set the stage for a consistent
Israeli policy of emptying the Old City of Hebron of its Palestinian residents,
with the assistance of Israeli Jewish pogromtchiks. Is there someone among the
country's decision-makers and decision-implementers who is hoping for a second
round?
Editorial, The Guardian, Saturday 24 October 2009
Only Amira Hass could have received the International Women's Media Foundation lifetime achievement award by saying her life as a journalist had been a failure. By her standards maybe, but then she sets them high. If her aim is to stop successive Israeli governments lying about what they do in the occupied territories, then it is true that the language laundromat, as she once put it, keeps on turning.
But make no mistake, the Haaretz columnist fully deserves this award. She is the only Israeli journalist to have lived in and reported from Gaza and Ramallah for much of the last two decades. In describing the effects of the occupation on the lives of Palestinians, she has been pilloried by Israelis and fallen foul of Hamas. Her moral anchor is firmly rooted in painful collective memories. Her mother survived a concentration camp and her father the ghettos of Romania and Ukraine. "What luck my parents are dead," Hass wrote at the height of the Gaza operation in January. Her parents could not stand the noise of Israeli jet fighters flying over the Palestinian refugee camps in 1982, and nor could they have tolerated going about their daily chores in Tel Aviv with the knowledge of what was going on in their name in Gaza:
"They knew what it meant to close people behind barbed-wire fences in a small area." Only a Jew can invert the "never again" logic of the Holocaust that is used to justify Israel's least justifiable actions. It is that very experience, Hass argues, that should teach Israel to behave
differently.
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عميرة هاس في الرصاص المصبوب : أنا محظوظة أن أبي وأمي ماتوا قبل أن يشاهدوا فظائع إسرائيل في غزة (المقالة التي أعاد نشرها الكاتب الفلسطيني تيسير نظمي على موقع حركة إبداع حال قرائته لها عام 2009) |
By Amira Hass 26.1.09.
What luck my parents are dead. Back in 1982 they could not stand the noise of the Israeli jet fighters flying over the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. The shriek of a plane horrified them in their house in Tel Aviv. We don't have to see it to know, they said.
That's how it was then. And what now, when from me they would have learned about 2-year-old Sham, who climbs nimbly onto the table to look at her sister drawing in her notebook; 5-year-old Tayyib with the space between his front teeth that shows when he smiles; or 6-year-old Carmel with the picture books she loves. The world is exploding around these children, again and again, just five or 10 meters away. For 10 days now, every minute is a minute of fear. Every minute of fear is a minute of death. Multiply that by a million and a half.
My parents despised all their everyday activities - stirring sugar into coffee, washing the dishes, standing at a crosswalk - when in their mind's eye they saw, based on their personal experience, the terror in the eyes of children, the desperation of mothers who could not protect their young ones, the moment when a huge explosion dropped a house on top of its inhabitants and a smart bomb struck down entire families. Salmeh's mother says: "When I wake up [from a restless sleep] I am surprised. I know it's only by chance that I am alive."
How would they have been able to stand their daily routine now, when they would hear from me about 70-year-old Umm Khaled. A bomb fell on the closed concrete room on the square in the Shabura refugee camp. Two civilians were killed. Dozens of houses made out of hollow concrete were severely damaged. An asbestos roof fell centimeters from Umm Khaled's head. Only that persuaded her to "be evacuated" to her daughter's house, half a kilometer away, under the illusion that a new house would be safer. "All I hope is that I die before I see something happen to you,"she repeatedly tells her children.
Even before the language laundromat developed to its current sophistication, my parents were nauseated by phrases like the "the war for peace in the Galilee" or "disturbances of public order"when the public order was the occupation and the disturbance was resistance to it. When order is preventing the Palestinians from having what the Jews have a right to and demand. What luck that they are not alive to hear Ehud Barak and Tzipi Livni explaining that we have nothing against the Palestinian people, and the cabinet secretary explaining that there is no humanitarian crisis and this is just Hamas propaganda. To recognize lies, they did not need to know the names of the people who had not had running water for five days or more. Forget the bombardments, forget the electricity, food, even sleep. But no water? Because of the bombardments by sea, land and air, people cannot even go out to get drinking water from the city faucets. And when someone does have running water at home, it's undrinkable.
Because of my parents' history they knew what it meant to close people behind barbed-wire fences in a small area. A year, five years, 10 years. From 1991. How lucky it is that they are not alive to see how how these incarcerated people are bombarded with all the glorious military technology of Israel and the United States. "We urgently invite Mohamed ElBaradei to come here and prove we do not have nuclear weapons," says Iyad - a well-known comic, even under bombardment. But Saturday night he only said "difficult, difficult," and hung up the phone.
My parents' personal history led them to despise the relaxed way the news anchors reported on a curfew. How lucky they are not here and cannot hear the crowd roaring in the colosseum.
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