"A remarkable failure for a journalist"-2009 Courage in Journalism Award Acceptance Speech by Amira Hass
Allow me to start with a correction. How impolite, you'd rightly think, but anyway, we Israelis are being forgiven for much worse than impoliteness.
What is so generously termed today by the International Women's Media Foundation as my lifetime achievement needs to be corrected. Because it is Failure. Nothing more than a failure. A lifetime failure.
Come to think of it, the lifetime part is just as questionable: after all, it is about a third of my life, not more ...
, that I have been engaged in Journalism.
Also, if the 'lifetime' part gives you the impression that I am soon going to retire – then this impression has to be corrected as well. I am not planning to end soon what I am doing.
What am I doing? I am generally defined as a reporter on Palestinian issues. But, in fact, my reports are about the Israeli society and policies, about Domination and its intoxications. My sources are not secret documents and leaked out minutes which were taken at meetings of people with Power and in Power. My sources are the open ways by which the subjugated are being dispossessed of their equal rights as human beings.
There is still so much more to learn about Israel, about my society, and about Israeli decision makers who invent restrictions such as: Gazan students are not to study in a Palestinian university in the West Bank, some 70 kms away from their home. Another ban: Children (above the age of 18) are not to visit their parents in Gaza, if the parents are well and healthy. If they were dying, Israeli order-abiding officials would have allowed the visit. If the children are younger than 18 – the visit would have been allowed. But, on the other hand, second degree relatives are not allowed to visit dying or healthy siblings in Gaza.
It is an intriguing philosophical question, not only journalistic. Think of it: what, for the Israeli System, is so disturbing, about reasonably healthy fathers or mothers? What is so disturbing about a kid choosing and getting a better education? And these are but two in a long, long list of Israeli prohibitions.
Or when I write about the progressively decimated and fragmented Palestinian territory of the West Bank. It's not just about people losing their family property and livelihood; it's not only about the shrinking opportunities of people in disconnected, crowded enclaves. It is in fact a story about the skills of Israeli architects. It is a way to learn about how Israeli on the-ground planning contradicts official proclamations, a phenomenon which characterizes the acts of all Israeli governments, in the past as in the present. In short, there is so much to keep me busy for another lifetime, or at least for the rest of my lifetime.
But, as I said, the real correction is elsewhere. It's not about achievement that we should be talking here, but about a failure.
It is the failure to make the Israeli and international public use and accept correct terms and words – which reflect the reality. Not the Orwellian Newspeak that has flourished since 1993 and has been cleverly dictated and disseminated by those with invested interests.
Source: http://www.tlaxcala.es/pp.asp?reference=9176&lg=en
To see other entries of this First Word War please click here
The First Word War is an initiative by Palestine Think Tank
and Tlaxcala.
The authors who wish to participate in this First Word War can send their texts to contact@palestinethinktank.com and to tlaxcala@tlaxcala.es.
Source: http://www.iwmf.org/article.aspx?id=1072&c=carticles
Original article published in October 2009
About the author
Tlaxcala
is the network of translators for linguistic diversity. This article may be reprinted as long as the content remains unaltered, and the source and author are cited.
URL of this article on Tlaxcala: http://www.tlaxcala.es/pp.asp?reference=9176&lg=en
Hide
