By way of introduction, here’s the start of a blog post by David Collier:
Yesterday, 28/01/2016, I was at the University of Kent to hear a talk by Amira Hass titled ‘Israel and the Palestinians: Colonialism and Prospects for Justice. The event itself was a collaboration between The Centre for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies at Kent University and the Palestine Centre at SOAS, University of London. One of these universities, SOAS, is already a notorious hotbed for extremism, the other, Kent, seems to be desperately trying to catch-up.
So right off the bat they kick off with the inversion of the truth: Arabs are the colonial invaders and Jews are the indigenous people and it’s clear that when they talk of “postcolonial studies” they’re not thinking that way.
And this is the money quote from the notorious Ha’aretz propagandist, Amira Hass:
Hass had stepped back in time to explain the perpetual occupation, to present a reason why after 49 years, no movement had been made towards peace. Without Palestinian violence, Israeli actions become irrational, with Israeli democracy, they become inexplicable, and someway, somehow, this illogical unreasonable position needed to be explained away. All that is left is conspiracy. This is what she said:
“And I ask myself did the Elders of Zion really sit together at the beginning of the Seventies and then during the nineties, and plan, and have all these military orders, all these changes? I believe that they knew for sure that they don’t want to give back the land and in the Nineties, my conclusion is that they wanted to do everything possible to stop(?) the two state solution.”
David Collier’s post has a great discussion and then Yisrael Medad asked the owner of Ha’aretz this about Amira:
https://twitter.com/amosschocken1/status/693500189672349697
So I couldn’t resist asking if Ha’aretz would print Amira’s deranged rantings about “Elders of Zion”
https://twitter.com/amosschocken1/status/693513352136499200
Which, to my mind, doesn’t constitute any kind of answer at all and he seems to be hinting that Sheldon Adelson today runs the Elders of Zion!. He still hasn’t confirmed what he would do should Amira Hass submit a piece that says exactly what she was willing to say in public in the UK.
Update: He’s pointed out on twitter that he isn’t the editor, this is fair. The question remains to him, as the owner and one who is clearly proud of Amira Hass (referring to her as a “most important, reliable journalist.”) if his editor printed this, would he stand by that kind of language in his Israeli newspaper – end update.
Let’s just remember that when Ryan Bellerose visited Israel and Hebron for the first time he just happened to be at the same Lag Ba’omer bonfire party that Amira Hass decided to write about:
I just read this Ha’aretz story and it is complete fiction. I think that’s a huge part of the problem in the Middle East, because some uninformed person will read that story and will believe it because it’s in “the news.” Frankly, the entire story is fabricated and untruthful. I am just glad I was there to see first hand the demonization of these people by a media with an agenda.
Just this weekend Ryan was back in exactly the same spot where Amira Hass had alleged that “extremist Jewish settlers” had deliberately burnt olive trees of Arabs and he filmed this:
https://www.facebook.com/100006450284214/videos/1669291693295824/
This is Israel’s third column of enemedia within.
Update 14:20 31 Jan 2016: David Collier now has video of the exact remarks Amira Hass made in Kent. David has also written a pretty strong letter to the Chancellor of the University that hosted this.
