Amira Haas wrote this article a few weeks ago, which aptly expresses the frustration all of us who are writing about the Israel/Palestine conflict feel:
“This is an admission of failure. The written word is a failure at making tangible to Israeli readers the true horror of the occupation in the Gaza Strip. When something is written about the sea being closed off to Palestinians in the north and south of the Strip, the response will be ‘they are terrorists.’ If something is written about neighborhoods in the western part of the Khan Yunis refugee camp and how the buildings are all full of bullet holes from heavy machine guns and cannon shells, the response will be ‘the Palestinians started it.’ Tell the story of how 15-year-old Yusuf Bashir’s family home in Dir al-Balah has been turned into an army fortress, and in Israel they’ll say, ‘there is no choice, the Jewish settlement of Kfar Darom must be protected, like Kfar Dekalim, Atzmona and Morag.’”
