Many Israelis can get to know what's really happening. I mean, you have soldiers who go and see things. It's not like France and Algiers or, I don't know, England and Kenya or Belgium and Kenya. It's in your backyard. It's much more about willingness, indecision, the inability, or exposure. There is a decision not to be exposed. People can live like five minutes away from it all.
Amira HassThings happen in a way that surprises. That's why I'm reluctant to predict. You cannot predict.
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 HassMany people just won't connect the social problems with the history of dispossession of the aboriginals. There is one problem with pro-Palestinian activists in Europe and the U.S. with the way they portray Israel as though it were an island of evil in an ocean of goodwill. Unfortunately we are not. This world is not made of benign, progressive states with Israel as the one exception.
Amira Hass