"Resist the Normalization of Evil": Israeli Reporter Amira Hass on Palestine & the Role of Journalism

Our guest is the Haaretz correspondent Amira Hass, the only Israeli Jewish journalist to have spent 30 years living in and reporting from Gaza and the West Bank. She is the recipient of the 2024 Columbia Journalism Award, and on Wednesday she addressed the graduating class of the Columbia Journalism School in New York City. Hass discusses the ongoing Israeli war on Gaza, why journalists should “resist the normalization of evil and injustice,” Israel’s recent censorship of Al Jazeera, its maintenance of a strict apartheid system, its complete rejection of the prospect of Palestinian statehood and more. “Israel took Palestinian life, liberty and freedom as hostage for the past 75 years,” says Hass. “You go to Tel Aviv, you think you are in New York or you are in London — and 40, 50 kilometers away, Palestinians live in cages.”

We also play an excerpt from the student and faculty-led “People’s Graduation” held Thursday at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City in response to Columbia University’s crackdown on student protest, which culminated in the administration’s cancellation of university-wide commencement. Centering Palestinian solidarity, the People’s Graduation featured speakers including the Pulitzer Prize-winning data journalist and illustrator Mona Chalabi, who praised the work of student journalists. While “our institutions have failed us these past seven months, … we listened to your radio stations if we wanted the truth,” she said.