By Peter Fernandez

Unsubstantiated claims and a skewed sense of national protection suffused the comments made by a Jewish-Israeli journalist at Middlebury College earlier this month. 

On November 7, Jewish-Israeli journalist Amira Hass, known for her expansive coverage of Palestine/ Israel political affairs, spoke before an audience of about 100 students and faculty members at Middlebury College’s Dana Auditorium. Hass, a leading reporter and columnist for Israel’s leading liberal daily periodical, Haaretz (The Land), has reported from Gaza for 30 years. 

In her lecture, she stressed first that 41,000 Palestinians had, since October 7th of last year, been killed in Gaza. It was the first of many unsubstantiated statements impossible to confirm since the Gazan Health Authority, run by Hamas, does not distinguish between militant and civilian deaths. 

“I retain my right to be non-binary,” she noted, “to acknowledge and feel the pain of people, and not only to feel totally disgusted by the Israeli government’s and society’s murderous campaign against the Palestinians but also to question the wisdom of Palestinian leader’s responses.” She was alluding to late Hamas chieftains Yahya Sinwar and Mohammad Deif, architects of the Al-Aqsa Flood of October 7th, where 1400 Israeli civilians were slaughtered, and over 100 were taken hostage for the crime of being Jewish.

She also noted that the predatory expansion of Israeli settlements on “the West Bank” was one of the root causes of Palestinian woes. What she failed to mention was that in 2005, the Israeli government dislodged thousands of Jewish settlers from their homes in Gaza in the hopes of fostering political peace between the dubious neighbors. 

There was no mention by Hass of the more than 250,000 Israelis displaced from their homes since October 7th. Before their relocation, these Jewish and Druze families were regularly victimized by rocket attacks from Lebanon and Gaza. Some were forced for weeks at a time to live in underground bomb shelters. A new generation of PTSD-scarred victims has emerged in Israel, but the media chooses to bombard the public with biased and dramatic accounts of Palestinian suffering.   Displaced Israelis still evacuated, living in hotels with no end near – Israel News – The Jerusalem Post 

Many of today’s news reporters actively advocate for “social justice and resistance.” Their throngs of youthful social media followers rarely question them as this editorial trend continues to be normalized in today’s news reporting. These consumers of misinformation favor hits, likes, and algorithms over factual/objective reporting. Since the advent of social media, this subjective reporting has reared its ugly headlines and photos without context, displacing complex story- lines.  “Objectivity” in journalism is a tricky concept. What could replace it? | Nieman Journalism Lab

Hass also found Israel’s defensive wall, which extends for 708 kilometers or 440 miles, separating Jewish and Palestinian habitats, contemptible.  “The separation wall was built, devoured tens of thousands of agricultural land,” explained Hass, “and made people more impoverished than before, and allowed the settlements to strengthen under the critics of security.”

Construction for this barrier began in June 2002. According to an August 18th article in Israel HaYom (Today), “Between 2000 and 2006, there were over 3,000  attacks from the West Bank, resulting in significant casualties.” In those six years, 1,137 Israelis were murdered by Arab terrorists. Following the construction of the barrier, terror attacks against Israelis reportedly fell to  80. But Palestinians and their supporters see the wall as “a land grab,” an illegal Israeli annexation of Arab territory.  the wall around the West Bank for protection or separation? – www.israelhayom.com List of Palestinian suicide attacks – Wikipedia Civilian casualties in the Second Intifada – Wikipedia

n attendance at the Hass lecture was Cynthia Gao, an Assistant Professor of Gender, Sexual- ity, and Feminist Studies at Middlebury College. “Many colonial powers have fallen,” she noted in an email, “because of the hubristic belief that technological and military superiority will ensure their dominance in perpetuity.

“Hass noted that before October 7th,” continued Gao, “Gazans could, without resorting to armed struggle, live some semblance of a life, albeit in a jail, in a cage. From what I know, people cannot live in cages forever, and rarely are  their attempts to break free ever deemed acceptable to their jailers.”  

Using jail as a political metaphor for defining the Gazans’ situation is a two-edged sword. Who, then, are the jailers? It was Hamas who superseded the Palestinian Authority in a bloody week- long coup in 2007. Mahmoud Abbas’s secular PA was conservative compared to Haniyeh’s vicious Islamist fiefdom. Some Middle East commentators note that October 7th may never have transpired had Abbas been in power.

The headline of the July 28th, 2020 issue of the English-language Iran News read HAMAS REJECTS 15 BILLION AID FOR DISARMING. In the article also picked up by the New York Times, Reuters, the AP, and UP, Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas political bureau head, stated, “Hamas rejected a proposal of carrying out several economic projects, including an airport and a seaport in Gaza for disarming of the movement and changing its strategies towards Israel.” Israeli agents assassinated Haniyeh last July 31. Hamas Rejects $15 Billion Aid for Disarming – % % | Iran News Daily

Still, the nations blame Israel for Gaza’s woes, but it was and is Hamas who rejects peaceful solutions.