Amira Hass

Amira Hass (Hebrew: עמירה הס‎; born 28 June 1956) is an Israeli journalist and author, mostly known for her columns in the daily newspaper Haaretz. She is particularly recognized for her reporting on Palestinian affairs in the West Bank and Gaza, where she has also lived for a number of years.

Life

The daughter of two Holocaust survivors, Hass is the only child of a Sarajevo-born Sephardic Jewish mother, who survived nine months in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, and a Romanian-born Jewish father. Hass was born in Jerusalem, and was educated at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she studied the history of Nazism and the European Left's relation to the Holocaust. Early in her career, she traveled widely and worked in several different jobs.

For some years during the 1980s, Hass lived in Amsterdam, being married to a Dutch man. She became fluent in Dutch and was involved with various left-wing, feminist and Jewish dissident groups. However, her marriage broke down and she returned to Israel.