With the children of Holocaust survivors, there is always a very close relationship. You grow with the sense that you are parenting your parents and - with this kind of responsibility to protect them. That's what makes the children of Holocaust survivors strange.
Amira HassAs a child, I remember asking my parents when I was five years old, "How come if you are not Zionists, you came to the country?" I was surprised at myself that I asked this question. It means that it was always in the air. Then years later I understood it was because of the Holocaust, because they were refugees. They did not come as immigrants and, because of the illusions of the '50s and the late '40s, my mother said, "The world must be better." She could not imagine that it wouldn't be different.
Amira HassIn the end there is a choice. And my choice is to be against the occupation, and not only the occupation but the whole system of discrimination and dispossession.
Amira HassAn ideology that divides the world into those who are worth more and those who are worth less, into superior and inferior beings, does not have to reach the dimensions of the German genocide to be wrong.
Amira HassThe thing people forget when they are looking for solutions is there is nothing final in history.
Amira HassIf a baby is born in Gaza and is not registered with the Israeli Ministry of the Interior, that baby does not exist, it does not count. I get very annoyed when my Palestinian friends complain, 'Why didn't they give me a permit, I am not a terrorist,' because it is not about the person, it is about a policy that people can't articulate because there is no discourse to explain the political intention behind it.
Amira Hass