"The Terror Israel Inflicts is the Terror it will Get."
Chris Hedges is the last man standing of the Old Left.
Chris Hedges is the last man standing of the Old Left.
Think about it.
Who are the A-list Leftist thinkers these days?
David Graeber mysteriously died back in 2020.
Noam Chomsky has gone completely senile, and we also now know that he had some very disturbing connections to Epstein.
Naomi Klein has completely sold out.
So who does that leave?
Chris Hedges.
If you don’t know who Chris Hedges is, you should.
If there is one journalist in the world to watch right now, it’s him.
One gets the feeling that he’s been waiting for this moment for a long, long time.
The Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist is uniquely situated to make the most of Substack. For a journalist who doubtless had his hands tied by his editors throughout his career working in the mainstream media, it seems like he intends to take full advantage of his newfound freedom.
Not only is he extremely qualified to weigh on the War in the Holy Land, he has lately been on an absolute tear.
If you are unfamiliar with his work, I would suggest watching the 15-minute documentary AMERICAN PSYCHOSIS, which is available for free on YouTube. It will give you a good idea of what he’s all about.
Cornel West calls Chris Hedges “the greatest radical writer and journalist of our generation”.
Oliver Stone calls him: “a man who, in a climate of obfuscation, confusion, deceit and plain old intimidation, seeks to speak the truth.”
He is one of the best qualified people to interpret the War in the Holy Land to Western audiences.
Not did the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist cover the Middle East as an Arabic speaker for seven years (four of them as The Middle East Bureau Chief for the New York Times), he also has deep knowledge of history, philosophy, theology, classical logic, rhetoric, and propaganda.
He is also a Christian seminarian with a deep knowledge of Scripture, which gives him an advantage in interpreting the religious and eschatological dimensions of the War in the Holy Land.
Like it or not, this war is a religious war, and a deep understanding of religion is important for making sense of it.
Furthermore, he has a lengthy career as a war correspondent behind him, which allows him to speak with authority about the reality of war.
For example, in a recent piece he wrote:
I have been in urban warfare in El Salvador, Iraq, Gaza, Bosnia and Kosovo. Once you fight street by street, apartment block by apartment block, there is only one rule — kill anything that moves. The talk of safe zones, the reassurances of protecting civilians, the promises of “surgical” and “targeted” air strikes, the establishment of “safe” evacuation routes, the fatuous explanation that civilian dead were “caught in the crossfire,” the claim that the homes and apartment buildings bombed into rubble were the abode of terrorists or that errant Hamas rockets were responsible for the destruction of schools and medical clinics, is part of the rhetorical cover to carry out indiscriminate slaughter.
Hedges’s recent articles are chalk full of such blistering reporting. One senses years of anguish, horror, and righteous rage simmering beneath the surface of his succinct prose.
Clearly, he cares about what he writes about, and you can’t report on war for years on ends without carrying some trauma. Journalists often suffer from something that might be likened to survivor’s guilt - if one reports on a story that involves tragedy, one has done one’s job, but that can often feel like an insufficient contribution. Often reporters are haunted by memories of the places they’ve been, wondering about the fates of people they met and tormented by a sense that they are somehow partly to blame. Alcoholism and depression are occupational hazards for journalists, especially war correspondents.
Chris Hedges seems to rely on his faith to keep him going. He repeatedly makes references to “bearing his cross” when speaking about his work. His spirituality is worlds away from the fuzzy feel-good fluff of the New Age. For him, his spiritual calling is to suffer in service of humanity. That seems to be what the imitation of Christ means to him.
Strangely, I find that refreshing. Take that for what you will.
Chris Hedges is a graduate of the Harvard Divinity School, and recently delivered a sermon called The Crucifixion of Julian Assange, which he dedicated to his mentor Bishop Krister Stendhal.
All this is to say that Chris Hedges is a very religious man.
To me, this sermon moved my spirit is a way that it hasn’t been moved in a long time. If anyone has any doubts as the sincerity of Chris Hedges’s moral conviction, I encourage them to listen to it.
Chris Hedges pulls no punches when it comes to the Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people. In an absolutely devastating piece about RFK’s extremely pro-Israeli stance, he writes:
The long nightmare of oppression of Palestinians is not a tangential issue. It is a black and white issue of a settler-colonial state imposing a military occupation, horrific violence and apartheid, backed by billions of U.S. dollars, on the indigenous population of Palestine. It is the all powerful against the all powerless. […]
Zionism’s goal, since before Israel’s inception, has been to displace Palestinians from their land and reduce those who remain to a struggle for basic subsistence, as Israeli historian Professor Ilan Pappe, notes:
“10 March 1948, a group of eleven men, veteran Zionist leaders together with young military Jewish officers, put the final touches on a plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. That same evening, military orders were dispatched to units on the ground to prepare for the systematic expulsion of Palestinians from vast areas of the country.
The orders came with a detailed description of the methods to be used to forcibly evict the people: large-scale intimidation; laying siege to and bombarding villages and population centers; setting fire to homes, properties, and goods; expelling residents; demolishing homes; and, finally, planting mines in the rubble to prevent the expelled inhabitants from returning. Each unit was issued its own list of villages and neighborhoods to target in keeping with the master plan…
Once the plan was finalized, it took six months to complete the mission. When it was over, more than half of Palestine’s native population, over 750,000 people, had been uprooted, 531 villages had been destroyed, and 11 urban neighborhoods had been emptied of their inhabitants.”
These political and historical facts, which I reported on as an Arabic speaker for seven years, four of them as The Middle East Bureau Chief for The New York Times, are hard to ignore. Even from a distance.
I watched Israeli soldiers taunt boys in Arabic over the loudspeakers of their armored jeep in the Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza. The boys, about 10 years old, then threw stones at an Israeli vehicle. The soldiers opened fire, killing some, wounding others. In the Israeli lexicon this becomes children caught in crossfire.
I was in Gaza when F-16 attack jets dropped 1,000-pound iron fragmentation bombs on densely packed neighborhoods. I saw the corpses of the victims, including children, lined up in neat rows. This became a surgical strike on a bomb-making factory.
I watched Israel demolish homes and apartment blocks to create buffer zones between the Palestinians and Israeli troops. I interviewed destitute families camped in the rubble of their homes. The destruction becomes the demolition of the homes of terrorists.
I stood in the bombed remains of schools as well as medical clinics and mosques. I heard Israel claim that errant rockets or mortar fire from the Palestinians caused these and other deaths, or that the attacked spots were being used as arms depots or launching sites.
I, along with every other reporter I know who has worked in Gaza, have never seen any evidence that Hamas uses civilians as “human shields.” […]
There is a perverted logic to Israel’s use of the Big Lie —Große Lüge. The Big Lie feeds the two reactions Israel seeks to elicit — racism among its supporters and terror among its victims.
There is a heavy political price to pay for defying Israel, whose overt interference in the U.S. political process makes the most tepid protests about Israeli policy a political death wish. The Palestinians are poor, forgotten and alone. And this is why the defiance of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians is the central issue facing any politician who claims to speak on behalf of the vulnerable and the marginalized.
To stand up to Israel has a political cost few, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., are willing to pay. But if you do stand up, it singles you out as someone who puts principles before expediency, who is willing to fight for the wretched of the earth and, if necessary, sacrifice your political future to retain your integrity.
Kennedy fails this crucial test of political and moral courage.
Kennedy, instead, regurgitates every lie, every racist trope, every distortion of history and every demeaning comment about the backwardness of the Palestinian people peddled by the most retrograde and far-right elements of Israeli society. He peddles the myth of what Pappe calls “Fantasy Israel.” This alone discredits him as a progressive candidate.
It calls into question his judgment and sincerity.
It makes him another Democratic Party hack who dances to the macabre tune the Israeli government plays.
Kennedy has vowed to make “the moral case for Israel,” which is the equivalent of making the moral case for apartheid South Africa.
When I read that, I knew it was a death blow for Kennedy’s campaign.
Shortly after its publication, RFK ended his bid for the Democrats in disgrace, with even his campaign advisor distancing himself from the erstwhile hero of the truth movement.
In mere months, Kennedy had destroyed the excellent reputation he had built up over the course of decades. You almost feel bad for the guy.
How much of this can be attributed to Chris Hedges’s savage linguistic lashing? That’s anyone’s guess, but it sure didn’t help.
This also goes to show how times have changed - unequivocal support for Israel is now enough to end a politician’s career.
It’s also worth mentioning that Chris Hedges seems to have quite a good track record when it comes to predicting future events.
In December 2022, Chris Hedges published a piece called “The Rise of Jewish Fascism”. In it, he wrote:
Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposed coalition government of Jewish extremists, fanatic Zionists and religious bigots represents a seismic change in Israel, one that will exacerbate Israel’s pariah status, erode external support for Israel, fuel a third Palestinian uprising, or intifada, and create irreconcilable political divides within the Jewish state.
After explaining how radical the new Israeli regime is, Hedges predicts:
Gaza, the world’s largest open-air prison, will continue to be more frequently bombed and shelled. Its infrastructure, including its water, electrical and sewage systems, as well as fuel storage facilities, will be targeted for obliteration…
Netanyahu, who is charged with fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in three corruption cases, is determined to politicize the judiciary. He and his coalition partners will further curtail the rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel who are already second-class citizens. They will continue to push aggressively for a war with Iran.
They will support efforts to seize the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, which Jewish Israelis call the Temple Mount, the supposed site of the Second Temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D.
Jewish extremists have long called for the Al-Aqsa mosque, the third holiest shrine for Muslims, to be torn down and replaced by a “Third” Jewish temple, a move that would set the Muslim world alight.
Chris Hedges wrote this in December 2022. Clearly, he knows what he is talking about. Clearly, he could see the signs of a storm brewing. Clearly, he is a voice worth listening to.
This makes it all the more alarming when, in a more recent piece, he predicts:
The next stage of this struggle will be a massive campaign of industrial slaughter in Gaza by Israel, which has already begun. Israel is convinced greater levels of violence will finally crush Palestinian aspirations. Israel is mistaken.
The terror Israel inflicts is the terror it will get.
Chris Hedges is right about war but completely (and suspiciously) dropped the ball on COVID and the increasing totalitarianism that the "pandemic" enabled.
The fact that they were presented to us as "A-list" in the first place is probably a clue as to why they are now failing to inspire!