Uncut has an interview with palestinian journalist Abeer Ayyoub, who was banned by Hamas from working for Ha’aretz at least partly because they are worried journalists who work for the Israeli media will become spies!
But that’s not even the interesting part.
Ruth Michaelson: When we spoke the other day, you described working for Ha’aretz as “your dream”. Why did you want to work with Israeli media?
Abeer Ayyoub: Because I wanted to be the Palestinian voice in Israeli media, to send a message and cover these events from Palestinian eyes — I didn’t want Israeli journalists to be talking about something they’ve never seen [Israeli citizens are banned from entering Gaza]. So I wanted to be the one talking to Israelis, to communicate exactly what is going on here. Most Israelis are misled about what life is like here — they think that we’re all terrorists, which is not the case: Gaza has many civilians who have nothing to do with resistance. Sure, they have their own affiliations, but people have lives here, and they want to live in peace.
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RM: What will be missing from Israeli media discourse as a result of this decision?
AA: Basically I think the gap between civilians on both sides will be widened. We only know about their government, and they only know about ours. The things that I wanted to write about were what normal, everyday people are doing — people like me or my family and friends: we hate the on-going conflict. We believe in resistance, but things are not like the normal depiction of Palestinians in the media, which is likely to portray us as inherently violent.
Ayyoub claims she wants to dispel the notion that most palestinians are inherently violent – they are, in fact, just normal peace-loving, non-violent people who hate the conflict. Yet she repeatedly refers to palestinian terrorism as “resistance.”
And that, my friends, is the irony. In trying to change the perception that palestinians are violent, her nonchalant references to “resistance” actually show just how deeply ingrained in palestinian society the culture of violence is.
