Israeli journalist visiting Vancouver has tough words for home country

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Israeli journalist Amira Hass.“You have a policy of ethnic cleansing in vast areas of the West Bank....It’s very open,” she said.

Hass is a reporter and columnist for the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz. She says she is the only Israeli Jewish journalist living and working in the Palestinian territories. Now based in the city of Ramallah, she has lived in the West Bank since 1997 and in Gaza for four years before that. She is giving a lecture on Israel-Palestine relations at the University of B.C. Wednesday.

“You just go and count the number of people who are being driven out of their places where they lived for tens of years, if not more. And this goes without notice mostly, on the part of the Israelis,” she said, noting that there are some Israeli groups that are aware and are fighting against this practice.

“But it goes without notice of the general public and of course without the international media noticing. So that’s why I say I don’t need hidden information. I just need to write about what people don’t want to know.

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