In a series of interviews on Friday an Israeli Arab journalist called out some of her Palestinian colleagues for failing to see that the suffering of their people starts with Hamas, not Israel.
Lucy Aharish is a reporter and presenter for Israel’s new global news broadcaster, i24news. She is notable for having become the first Arab mainstream news anchor while working for Channel 10 in 2007.
Speaking with Gaza-based journalist Alaa Al Mashehrwi last Friday (see video below), Aharish was told what most would expect to hear from a Palestinian reporter living under Hamas rule: that Israel is to blame for the entire mess and that the Zionists are indiscriminately killing innocent people.
Aharish was having none of it. “I’m not expecting you to go against what Hamas is doing,” she told Mashehrwi, “but we cannot say that what Hamas [and its allies] are doing is to the benefit of the people who are living in Gaza.”
Clearly frustrated by the Palestinian’s failure to acknowledge reality, Aharish insisted that “you know that Hamas is playing…a PR game at the expense of the people who are living in Gaza.”
When Mashehrwi again tried to lay the blame on Israel, Aharish retorted that if the people of Gaza truly want a better life, they need to speak up and demand an end to Hamas aggression.
“Where are you, where are the people, where are the journalists [that need to] tell to Hamas and to [Islamic] Jihad to stop?” she demanded. “You are not doing anything against the people who are hurting you inside the Gaza Strip.”
Hebron-based journalist Al Kasmin similarly told Aharish that Israel is ultimately at fault for the current bloodshed, and that the Jewish state is purposely and unjustly practicing collective punishment against the Palestinians.
In the face of such accusations, Aharish became somewhat animated, asking her guest, “Do you find it normal that terrorists hide under civilian houses and by [doing] that hurt the same people that they are trying to protect? Do you think that this is something that is normal, that these terrorists are actually making the Palestinian people lose their lives?”
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