The Israeli journalist Amira Hass, Vázquez Montalbán international award of the Journalists' Association

BarcelonaNot taking the official version for granted. This is synonymous with doing journalism, and this is what the Journalists' Association of Catalonia recognized this Monday, with the Manuel Vázquez Montalbán International Award presented to the Israeli journalist Amira Hass. The tenacious journalist from the newspaper Haaretz, who has lived for three decades in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, has a difficult mission: to explain to the occupiers what is happening to the occupied.

“Explaining the Palestinian reality from the ground, with rigor, independence, and accepting that her journalism is uncomfortable,” summarized Joan Maria Morros, dean of the Association, in an event that began with a remembrance for the 257 Palestinian media workers killed by the Israeli army in Gaza, most of them for doing their job, according to the latest count by the International Council for the Protection of Journalists.

With an excess of humility, Hass, who speaks openly of genocide in the Gaza Strip, has said that she does not risk her salary or her freedom to do a job, and has admitted that the problem is "that we have the right to information but we cannot force people to want to know." "I went to live in Gaza in 1993 thinking that if I explained it, the Israelis would see it, and then I understood that it would not be like that," she said. And this applies to the Israeli population in the midst of genocide and the Gaza Strip, but also beyond.

After receiving the award from the hands of the Minister of European Union and External Action, Jaume Duch, the Israeli journalist vindicated old-school journalism, the kind that hits the ground and looks for patterns in the facts and the account of witnesses. “I do low-tech journalism, and I am surrounded by young people who do a great job scouring the internet. But I dedicate myself to talking to Palestinians, one after another, to show the pattern of the Israeli mechanism of power and domination,” she says. The mechanism, in her words, of a settler colonialism that, in the face of the so-called Oslo process of the 90s, is not willing to let go of an inch of land.

Beyond the award, the Israeli journalist had the warmth of the profession: among the public was a large representation of former correspondents for Catalan newspapers and televisions in the Middle East who wanted to recognize Hass's work.

The Manuel Vázquez Montalbán International Journalism Award was launched in 2004 following the death of the journalist and writer, and it is now being revived in the cultural and political journalism category after having been interrupted due to the pandemic. It has awarded professionals such as Tomás Alcoverro, Roberto Saviano, Maruja Torres, Teresa Pàmies and Jordi Évole. This year the award jury was chaired by Josep Cuní.