Amira Hass is one of Israel's boldest journalists. A proud leftist reporter, Hass spent several years in the 1990s living in Gaza, an experience that led to her book "Drinking the Sea of Gaza".
Last year, she was arrested by Israeli authorities after defying a government ban on entering Gaza by successfully challenging the Israeli blockade when she rode into Gaza City on an activist boat from Cyprus.
(Hass was reluctantly forced to return to Israel after being kicked out of Gaza by Hamas.)
Earlier this year, Hass was arrested a second time by Israeli authorities after becoming the only Israeli reporter to freely enter Gaza after the winter offensive to report for weeks on the controversial military campaign.
CNN's Christiane Amanpour describes Hass as "one of the greatest truth-seekers of them all."
Earlier this month, Hass received a lifetime achievement award from the International Women's Media Foundation.
When she accepted the award, Hass called her work a "failure."
"It is the failure to make the Israeli and international public use and accept correct terms and words - which reflect the reality," Hass said in the speech. "Not the Orwellian New Speech that has flourished since 1993 and has been cleverly dictated and disseminated by those with invested interests."
"The Peace Process terminology, which took reign, blurs the perception of real processes that are going on: a special blend of military occupation, colonialism, apartheid, Palestinian limited self-rule in enclaves and a democracy for Jews," she said. "It is not my role as a journalist to make my fellow Israelis and Jews agree that these processes are immoral and dangerously unwise. It is my role, though, to exercise the right for freedom of the press, in order to supply information and to make people know."
"But, as I have painfully discovered, the right to know does not mean a duty to know," Hass told the crowd. "Thousands of my articles and zillion of words have evaporated. They could not compete with the official language that has been happily adopted by the mass media, and is used in order to dis-portray the reality. Official language that encourages people not to know. Indeed, a remarkable failure for a journalist."
Hass recently appeared on Al Jazeera English to discuss her career. Here's the video:
Part Two:
"Guts" is her middle name. It's pathetic that the MSM here in the US refuse to carry her writing.
How 'bout it, McClatchey?
Posted by: Ariel | October 28, 2009 at 03:52 PM
Amira Hass must be writing what is reality she saw inside Gaza. However, she must also write what is reality she saw throughout all Israel. After all with her renown career she can reside in fopeign countries anytime whatever happens...
Posted by: Guideman | October 28, 2009 at 08:49 PM
In times of great conflict, dealing with a people is totally distinct from dealing with the whole country. One must be steel-cold rational, to put primarily the survival of the nation.
Posted by: Guideman | October 28, 2009 at 08:56 PM
This writer is making a difference. It just takes time someday the US Congress which the Zionists bought fair and square will realize the money they receive is not worth the blood of American soldiers on their hands and will wash their hands of this intolerant religious bigoted state that resembles pre Mandella South Africa instead of the democracy the Zionist propaganda proclaims.
Posted by: mfellion | October 30, 2009 at 11:58 AM