Haaretz reporter Amira Hass stands between soldiers, Israeli solidarity activists, and the Palestinian residents of Nabi Samuel during a Land Day event on April 1, 2011.

I had the privilege of hearing veteran Haaretz journalist Amira Hass speak this week in Ramallah—the only Jewish Israeli journalist to live in the West Bank. While on a weekend away in Nazareth (chillin’ at the Fauzi Azar) I finally found the time to read David Remnick’s New Yorker profile of Haaretz. His recent writing, as “arguably the most influential Jewish American journalist,” is one of several signs that the U.S. Jewish community is incrementally (shway shway) moving in a positive direction on Israel-Palestine.  I’ve noted Haaretz‘s shortcomings in other posts, but it remains Israel’s best most honest and reliable source of news and commentary. A  few money quotes from Remnick’s piece:

On Gideon Levy and Nazis:

He has been called “Hitler’s grandson”—sooner or later, nearly everyone on Haaretz gets called a Nazi—and some have wished cancer on his family. He has been threatened in the market, harassed on the street, and shot at by Israeli soldiers. When he writes, for example, that the Qassam rockets fired at Israeli towns by Palestinian militants “have a context,” the denunciations are renewed. He does not care.

Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli invasion of Gaza, “wasn’t a ‘war,’ ” he says. “It was a brutal assault on a helpless, imprisoned population. I suppose you can call a match between Mike Tyson and a five-year-old boxing, but the proportions, the proportions!”

On Israeli isolation from the occupation:

Apart from the settlers, Israelis rarely go to the territories, unless they have the obligations of a soldier or a journalist. When I asked Amos Schocken, Amira Hass’s greatest supporter on the paper, when he had last visited Ramallah, which is a fifteen-minute drive from Jerusalem, he said, “I’ve never been there.”

“Why not?” I asked. Ramallah is, in a sense, the capital of his outrage.

Schocken smiled. “I read about it in Haaretz,” he said.

On Amira Hass’s Holocaust legacy and journalistic credibility:

Levy-Hass used to describe to her daughter the sight of German women standing by the side of the road trying not to notice the sick and the dying as they marched to the gates of the camp. The image was ingrained in Amira, and she says that her work as a reporter is rooted in the “dread of being a bystander.”

…

Amos Harel, the chief military correspondent for Haaretz, told me one day while we visited the occupation headquarters in the West Bank, “The most sophisticated military guys admire Amira for her accuracy.”

On the paper’s editorial diversity:

…dealing not only with the likes of Hass and Levy but with columnists well to his right, like Yisrael Harel, a leader of the settler movement, and Moshe Arens, a hawkish former defense minister. (One staffer called Harel and Arens the paper’s “shabbes goys.”)

On “terrorism”:

In 2008, on the sixtieth anniversary of the state, Sternhell won its highest honor, the Israel Prize, and the announcement infuriated settlers, who claimed that he supported armed insurrection. Sternhell did no such thing, but he had written in Haaretz that Palestinians had no recourse other than armed resistance. “My intention was not to say that they could kill civilians,” Sternhell recalled. “No. The important thing is that I said the settlers’ movement was both illegal and illegitimate, and the Palestinian resistance to settlements was understandable.”

At around 1:30 A.M. on September 25, 2008, Sternhell went to his front door to lock it before going to bed. As he opened the outer door, a pipe bomb exploded. He and his wife had just returned from Paris, and so the hall was filled with luggage, which shielded Sternhell from the worst of the blast. He suffered only minor injuries. “The nasty thing in that story is that this was pure terror…”

On Haaretz‘s reputation:

Nahum Barnea, the popular columnist at Yedioth, spent a long time describing to me how “out of touch” Haaretz was with public opinion, but then admitted that he begins his morning with it, not with his own paper.

On marketing unpopular truths:

In the nineties, when Schocken was trying to conceive a slogan for a marketing campaign, he suggested “Haaretz: Not a Newspaper for Everyone!” The advertising executives looked at Schocken as they might have regarded a deranged intruder.

On the Gospel according to Haaretz:

“The ability to publish a newspaper that does not serve any outside agenda, except what its editors believe, is in the best interests of the country,” he said. “If we weren’t around, it would be . . . sad.”

Finally, he could not resist a local metaphor. Sometimes, he said, shouldering the burden of Haaretz “is like carrying a cross.”

BTW, even though Haaretz remains a venerable institution, reading multiple sources is still essential to getting a halfway accurate sense of what’s going on—whether in Palestine and Israel or anywhere in the world. Hence, I offer this link to my Google Reader feed so you can check out the stories I pick from the many sources I attempt to digest on a regular basis.

On our way to the Sabeel conference titled “Challenging Empire: God, Faithfulness, and Resistance,” this little scene appeared at the main Bethlehem checkpoint. In case anyone wasn’t aware, Palestinian Christians experience the oppression of the Israeli occupation just as much as their Muslim neighbors.

Also interestingly, as we left a lunch for Sabeel supporters on our way to the main conference site a short walk away, youths had gathered to vent their anger at occupation in the form of the separation wall. I was able to linger for a few moments to witness an exchange of stones thrown at the wall and tower with a few Israeli concussion grenades (loud noise with little effect) thrown in response.

A Jerusalem rally in solidarity with Egypt. The sign reads: “Long live Palestinian-Egyptian cooperation against the occupation and American policy.”

I haven’t been inspired to write any commentary on recent events in Egypt and the rest of the Middle East beyond the occasional Facebook post. Maybe I will eventually. Pastor Alex Awad at East Jerusalem Baptist Church has had great sermons touching on these issues the last two weeks, and I hope to post them online soon. But heeding his challenge today to engage the news on these various events and not “change the channel” (I put this in quotes because our satellite TV can’t access any news channels right now anway), I read a few articles about Libya today and came across this in the NY Times:

A group of fifty prominent Libyan Muslim religious leaders issued an appeal to Muslims in the security forces to stop participating in the violence against protesters.

“We appeal to every Muslim, within the regime or assisting it in any way, to recognize that the killing of innocent human beings is forbidden by our Creator and by His beloved Prophet of Compassion (peace be upon him), ” the statement declared, according to Reuters. “Do NOT kill your brothers and sisters. STOP the massacre NOW! ”

This gave me chills because it so clearly echoes the words of Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador the day before he was assassinated by US-sponsored thugs in 1980:

“Brothers, you came from our own people. You are killing your own brothers. Any human order to kill must be subordinate to the law of God, which says, ‘Thou shalt not kill’. No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the law of God. No one has to obey an immoral law. It is high time you obeyed your consciences rather than sinful orders. The church cannot remain silent before such an abomination. …In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cry rises to heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you: stop the repression!”

While the recent US veto of a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlement construction was unsurprising yet still deeply disappointing, I hope and pray that my country finds its way to the right side of history in the midst of these converging freedom movements in the Middle East—not just with words, but with actions and truth!

It’s not fun reading multiple news sources from the Middle East on a daily basis. But one key lesson of media analysis from the likes I.F. Stone and Noam Chomsky is that even by reading enough mainstream media the “truth” can slip out. I’m no Beautiful Mind schizophrenic looking for secret messages in the newspaper. But it is discouraging to read over and over again the prevailing media narratives of Israelis-only-as-victims and Palestinians-only-as-terrorists—and therefore mildly satisfying when a mainstream source like The Jerusalem Post slightly more accurately reflects the reality on the ground.

Today’s headline reads, “Border Police set to bolster IDF presence in West Bank,” and references police drills in which  ”One of the scenarios included a large Jewish demonstration during which Palestinians carry out a terrorist attack.”  So, far, so typical. (More recent drills have included setting up detention camps for Arabs in Israel!) But the following section of the story is honest enough to cite official sources on what kind of violence is currently the most severe:

While the IDF Central Command has noted a lull in terrorism in recent years, there has been an increase in civil disturbances in the West Bank, particularly surrounding the recent olive harvest, described by the defense establishment as possibly the most violent in Israeli history.

Since the beginning of October, the United Nations has recorded a weekly average of eight harvest incidents resulting in injuries and severe damage to property, including the uprooting and burning of thousands of trees.

Strangely, it doesn’t explicitly mention who is creating the current civil disturbances or who is responsible for “possibly the most violent” olive harvest in Israeli history. It doesn’t say who is committing the eight incidents per week of injuries and property damage, or, with the especially obnoxious use of the passive voice, “the uprooting and burning of thousands of trees.” Perhaps they uprooted and burned themselves. Only the final sentence of the article mentions “a spate of anti-Palestinian attacks, including one by settlers…”

Why is The Jerusalem Post so shy about directly naming the perpetrators of the current violence in the West Bank? Why are the very people responsible for the recent violence—Jewish Israeli settlers—not even mentioned until the final sentence of this article? Is it because deeply ingrained media narratives die hard?

The problem with an article like this that ostensibly reports the facts with “balance” and “objectivity” is that those not intimately familiar with the contours of the conflict could miss the main substance of the article—and rely instead on the prevailing narrative to fill in the cracks. On my lazier days, I just scan headlines, and skimming this headline, it would be reasonable to assume that the Israeli Border Police are increasing their presence to clamp down on Palestinians. Even skimming the article itself would only give you a vague sense of “a possible escalation in Israeli and Palestinian violence” with little indication of who the perpetrators of violence are in this case.

This kind of journalism reminds me of standard reports from demonstrations—from just about anywhere in the world—which often include the maddeningly ambiguous phrase “protests turned violent…” without having the courage to investigate or report on who actually began the violence in a given incident. This often leaves the assumption by implication that it was the protesters who became violent—when in fact, as any activist will tell you, it is often the police who land the first blows. Contacts among activists in Palestine routinely report that Israeli police and soldiers often fire tear gas or rubber-coated steel bullets even when a demonstration is completely nonviolent.

An earlier Jerusalem Post article included this nugget:

According to this officer involved with the project, the level of violence at the demonstrations has decreased dramatically in recent months. In the past, the Friday protests near the fence resulted in a number of wounded protesters, and occasionally, IDF soldiers as well. Lately, there have been about 60 demonstrators on a weekly basis, more than half, left-wing Israeli and foreign activists.

The IDF has recently arrested some of the key activists who organize the demonstrations. One of them, Abdullah Abu Rahma, was sentenced last week to a year in jail.

An additional factor which led to the drop in violence was a decision by the IDF Central Command to remove the Border Police units deployed every Friday to protect the fence from vandalism. While effective in protecting the fence, Border Policemen are sometimes said to be more aggressive in riot control operations.

So, while the JPost implies that jailing protest organizers was a factor in reducing violence at the demonstrations (huh?), it at least admits that “an additional factor” in reduced violence was the removal of aggressive Border Police units. (It fails to mention that several activists have been killed by the Border Police, including Bassem Abu Rahma, a relative of Abdullah Abu Rahma. Bassem’s brother was shot at point-blank range with a rubber bullet while bound and held by IDF soldiers.)

Again, it would take a very informed reader to glean what is actually taking place on the ground: The presence of a large number of Israeli and international activists—whom the IDF is less likely to shoot at—combined with the removal of especially aggressive Border Police units, has resulted in a dramatic decrease in the level of violence at protests. I got to experience this firsthand at a recent demonstration against the separation barrier in Al-Walaja—as our organizer friends had assured us, a large nonviolent crowd, including a good number of international and Israeli activists, and the soldiers held their fire.

Of course sometimes protesters do cast the first stone, and sometimes Palestinian commit violence—even terrorist violence. But only a careful reader of either article mentioned above would even realize that historically, consistantly, statistically, quantitatively, and qualitatively: Palestinians are more often the victims of Israeli violence than the other way around. This is not to minimize the massive violence perpetrated against the Jewish people throughout history, culminating in the Holocaust—but merely to state honestly the indisputable fact that the State of Israel consistently exerts overwhelming military violence to perpetuate the occupation. The casualty counts—civilian or otherwise—of their recent conflicts make this abundantly clear.

So with those important acknowledgements, here’s my main point: Now that Palestinian resistance to the occupation has turned largely to nonviolence and political negotiation, old narratives and assumptions need to change because they are based on a distorted picture of reality. Hopefully these cracks in the prevailing narratives will widen to the point that the Israeli, U.S., and international publics have a clearer understanding of the conflict, and can therefore more honestly advocate for a just resolution.

I’m having to radically revise my archive/gallery schema now that I’m living in Jerusalem for the next three years. I used to just organize photos by trip or event: Jordan, Syria, Norway, Immigration Rally, Peace Protest, etc. But now that I’ll be in one place for a while, taking my camera almost everywhere,  it doesn’t make sense to make one big gallery for Palestine/Israel, or to have many tiny galleries for the “events” of every other day. So while I figure that out, here are some recent street shots I’ve taken as I get warmed up….

Jaffa Street, West Jerusalem

Separation barrier, Bethlehem, West Bank.

Ka’ak vendor, Old City of Jerusalem

Bus stop, East Jerusalem

Olive branches and separation barrier, Bethlehem, West Bank.

In most cases in Occupied Palestine at this point, Palestinian refugees live in UN-administered camps that are essentially urban slums—overcrowded apartment blocks with high rates of poverty. But there are still some refugees that live in tents. Case in point—when I posted my favorite images from  my recently posted Israel-Palestine gallery, I included this one of Fawzieh al-Kurd:

She has lived in a tent within sight of her home in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem since November  2008 when Israeli settlers took over her home with the help of Israeli police. Her husband died of a heart attack two weeks later. She’s been encamped here since on a patch of ground owned by a Palestinian who has given her permission to stay there—within sight of the home that had originally been built for her by Jordan and the UN in 1956 for her and other refugees who had been forced from their original homes when the state of Israel was established in 1948. (Read a more detailed account of her struggle, written by an Israeli-American activist, here.)

That is, until a few days ago. On his way to church on Sunday, MCC rep. Ryan Lehman took photos and posted them on Facebook, showing a vacant lot where her tent had been, now full of Israeli police vans. Apparently they have demolished her tent once again—making this the seventh time they’ve done so.

Two other families were removed from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah, a move that has received far more international press coverage and strongly worded statements from the international community. We’ll see if those condemnations are backed up with actions that inspire the Israeli government to change its policy.

During my five-week sabbatical in the Middle East, most of my photos were taken for either Mennonite Central Committee or Questscope, the two organizations that sponsored my trip. Most of those photos were of the people who participate in the projects and partner organizations they support, but I also tried to take a good number for my own use. Now that I’m finally done with all of the captioning, keywording, and retouching of their images, I’ve been able to give some attention to “my” pictures. Here are a few of my favorites from Palestine and Israel. I hope to post more from Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria before too long.

Palestinian grape leaf vendor and Israeli soldiers, Old City of Jerusalem.

Israeli soldiers on patrol, Old City of Jerusalem.

Israeli soldiers on patrol, Old City of Jerusalem.

Road sign for Jerusalem at Kalandia Checkpoint.

Palestinian families fill water jugs from a public tank at Aida Refugee Camp, because the water to their homes is controlled by Israel, and frequenly shut off.

Israeli separation wall in Bethlehem.

Palestinian woman living in a tent after Israeli settlers took over her home.

Church of the Holy Sepulchre, traditional site of the grave of Jesus. (We checked—it’s empty. It is empty indeed.)

+See the rest of the gallery