According to Israeli journalist Amira Hass, Palestinians are like frogs. If you drop a frog into boiling water, Hass said, the frog will instinctively jump out.
But if you put a frog into a pot of comfortably warm water and slowly heat the water to a boil, the frog will meet its death before it becomes aware of the imminent danger.
Hass spoke on the subject “The Frog and the Goat: Why Israeli Colonialism is so Successful” at the Pyle Center in Madison on Thursday, April 3, to an audience of almost 150 people. A mix of University of Wisconsin-Madison students and middle-aged adults attended the event.
“Israeli policies are usually incremental — one by one, piece by piece,” said Hass, who writes for the Israeli daily Ha’aretz. “They are very often portrayed as a temporary reaction to something not as a proactive policy but as a reaction.”
Hass gave the example of the Israeli policy, implemented in 1991, of requiring permits of the Palestinians to travel between Gaza and the West Bank and entering into the rest of Israel.
“[It was] not portrayed as a longstanding policy,” Hass said, “but a temporary step because of the war … it was never changed since then.”
She also cited Israel’s control over Palestinian changes of address and entry into the country as another example.
Hass said the Israeli government often refuses to officially register address changes for Palestinians who move from Gaza to the West Bank.
“They could have lived there longer than they ever lived in the Gaza strip, but they are considered illegal in the West Bank,” said Hass, who is known to be the only Israeli journalist who lives full-time among the Palestinians.
Hass said policies such as these are exemplary of “Israeli gradual acceptance of events and attitudes and policies that maybe 20 years ago would not have been acceptable,” she said.
“It’s not just the frog but it’s also the person who heats the water, who gets used to heating the more and more and more without seeing the frog inside.”
She traced her examples of Israel’s “froglike” policies to, according to Hass, Israel’s ultimate goal of colonization, which she said is evident in the Oslo Accords.
“[Oslo’s] aims were to guarantee that as much empty land as possible is [under] Israeli control,” she said. “It is meant … to disconnect Palestinian communities from each other and disconnect and dismember Palestinian territories.”
Hass said the reason no one questioned Oslo’s ultimate goals was because of Israel’s deceptive “froglike” policies.
“We on the ground felt it happen,” she said of the consequences of Oslo for Palestinians. “But somehow it was very difficult to do something about it. It was very difficult to convince the world that there is some kind of crazy contradiction between how the Oslo process was portrayed and what is really happening on the ground.”
Result of the Holocaust
During her talk, Hass questioned the legitimacy of the Zionist movement as a whole.
“I very much doubt if the Zionist ideology would’ve succeeded so much if not for the Holocaust. The Zionist solution was adopted only by a minority of Jews prior to the Holocaust. The majority of Jews opted for other solutions or other remedies to anti-Semitism, to racism that they themselves faced.”
Hass concluded with a hopeful statement regarding the future of the Palestinians.
“There are about 5 million Palestinians living now in the country between the sea and the river,” she said. “I live among them. I’ve learned from them how to be able to love and to live in spite of all these hardships around.”
Not only is the Palestinian population continuing to grow, she said, but she is witness to people’s resilience.
“So maybe … there is more to be done against this colonialism,” she concluded.
The audience reaction was mixed, but most enthusiastically agreed with her opinions regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
One audience member asked how most Israelis perceive the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“Most of the Israelis believe that the Palestinians live, not on the moon, they live in Australia,” she said.
“It is amazing how they … allow themselves not to know the details of the Israeli military … or people who live just five kilometers or one kilometer away.”
Another member asked Hass if she thinks Israel will ever successfully quell Palestinian resistance, to which she responded there is no Palestinian resistance but only resilience against a “totalitarian regime,” she said.
One woman questioned Hass’s colonialist theory, pointing out that Israel only acquired land when it was invaded by surrounding countries. She also said Israel originally offered the Palestinians a strip of land, which they rejected.
“I really would like to understand, is all the evil mastermind by the Israelis, or is there a real problem with the Palestinians not willing to accept international borders that are safe?” the audience member asked.
The event was sponsored by the UW Middle East Studies Program and co-sponsored by the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project and Playgrounds for Palestine — Madison.
Hillel Foundation University of Wisconsin considered co-sponsoring the event but chose not to after communicating with Hass about her speaking topic, said Shlomi Nahumson, Israel Program Coordinator and Madison’s Israel emissary.
“It’s interesting that, in the over-an-hour talk that Amira gave, Palestinian terrorism wasn’t mentioned at all. It’s true that Israel places obstacles for Palestinians but those obstacles are a direct reaction to Palestinian terrorism,” Nahumson said.
“Unfortunately, this is a war and war is not pleasant. But in comparison to other wars and other regimes in the world, Israel is not even close to the colonialist regime that Amira tried to describe.”
Still her opinion is part of the “wide spectrum of opinions” in Israel, Nahumson said. “Israel is a democracy.
“It’s important that every voice will be heard and I can assure you that different voices than Amira’s will be heard on campus as well.”
Former Chronicle intern Kiera Wiatrak is a junior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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