Israel is carrying out a campaign to make Gaza uninhabitable. This campaign includes destroying all of Gaza’s hospitals. The message Israel is sending is clear - Nowhere is safe. If you stay you die.
In all past Genocides the world was dependent on many cases what the biased media and the ethnic cleanser would say. This is the first of this magnitude of documented genocide via social media that I am aware of. If people still cannot see the truth then humanity is doomed
Thank you, Chris Hedges, for this impassioned piece. The witnesses provide the facts. As with Shireen Abu Akleh and all to many others, the lies continue to be told.
I think there will be lasting rifts in the U.S. over our government's unconditional support for Israel's ongoing genocide. Despite massive protests against this horrific policy, once again, our elites' make it crystal clear, "stfu, you and your opinion matters naught." I implore my fellow citizens to demonstrate otherwise.
My uncle, later a career military non-com, was an army medic in WWII. Because of that, one of the first Americans into Dachau, the model concentration camp in Bavaria. When right wing Holocaust deniers in the U.S. started to makes the news, I begged him to write down what he witnessed to be submitted to archives. But even 60 years later, the experience was so horrific and his memories so raw he could not bring himself to do it. Exactly why victims of one genocide should know best how "never again" must apply to everyone.
And it should be clear to everyone on all sides as well as to those supporting them by means of comments here that either/or thinking is just one more form of hatred used to justify violence. The same narrow reality tunnels are churning out the same unreflective word litter as has happened for the previous posts by Chris Hedges on the current horror.
The same logic that tragically divides the world, but serves political powers. Either you're with us or you're against us, people are either good or evil, actions are either right or wrong, statements true or false. No subtly, no nuance, no shades in between, no range of values. No thoughts of compromise, diplomacy, tolerance. No room for living with people whose ideas about truth or faith or government are different than yours.
One set of repetitive comments in effect argues that all Israelis good and therefore their opponents must be not only wrong, but inherently inferior. Another set has even gone so far as to condemn all Jews period. (See Hedges' "The Horror, The Horror' for a particularly vicious and reprehensible "joke" in the comments.) Neither consider how many American (and European) Jews have condemned Israeli government behavior nor noticed the large Jewish Israeli demonstrations against their government. Because noticing differences and shades of opinions makes either/or logic impossible.
When you wrote that "The lies used by Israel to absolve itself of responsibility... will corrode its moral, religious, civic, intellectual and political life", I would submit that the same is happening to us here in the U. S. Our support for this genocide will destroy us, in fact, is already doing so. We support fascist regimes from Israel to Saudi Arabia around the world, and when Trump gets elected next year, and we descend irretrievably into fascism, the world will shake its head and note that we had it coming.
I'm sorry, but this is some real Goebbels level stuff. Hamas militants hide in the hospitals, religions buildings and schools.
Let's ask this question. What did all the Palestinians including the Hamas terrorists... and their Western leftist sympathizers... think would happen when they ignored the ceasefire agreement and surprise attacked to murder, rape and kidnap thousands of innocent Israeli Jews? Is the response by Israel really a surprise, or is this part of the game of the antisemites to leverage the chaos to make another go at Jew extermination?
Thank God for your astute, experienced, honest, fearless, frank journalism, Chris. You're a model for all other journalists. If only all citizens would read your articles and ACT on them. If only governments were astute, honest and benign, as you are, and that there was no need for your writing! Thank you so much for your writing and ever best wishes with it!
"Israel is not carrying out a war, its carrying out a genocide". Unlike war, there are no international laws for the conduct of genocide. Course if there were (imagine that: laws for conducting genocide!) any country that would wage genocide would not be apt to comply with such laws as we are now observing.
As Goebbels observed, the bigger the lie, the better. If the lie is gigantic, normal non-sociopath people will accept it as true, because who would say such a thing if it wasn't?
Chris is right. Israel will become an ethnostate, like the "cleansed" parts of the former Yugoslavia...which are now wastelands, economic and culturally, inhabited by people who ultimately defeated themselves, all to become destitute pariahs. Makes sense that Biden, segregationist in chief, would be all for it.
Great reporting Chris. I came across Gregory H Stanton's "Ten Stages of Genocide" which Israel ticks off each step! #1 CLASSIFICATION "Us vs Them" with division and segregation. #2 SYMBOLISM " Names like Terrorists, Muslims or Hamas #3 DISCRIMINATION "uses law, custom and political power to deny the rights of other groups" i.e. Nuremberg Laws of 1935 Germany #4 DEHUMANIZATION "one group treats another group as second class compared with animals parasites or Less Than Human and easier to kill, in print and in hate media. At this stage hate propaganda is used to make the victim seem like villains #5 ORGANIZATION "Genocide is always organized by the state" Death squads are trained and armed #6 POLARIZATION Extremists drive the groups apart. Hate groups broadcast propaganda that reinforces hate and prejudice. Moderates are usually killed first. #7 PREPERATION National or perpetrator group leaders plan the "FINAL SOLUTION". They often use euphemisms to cloak their intentions such as "ethnic cleansing" "purification" or "counter terrorism". Indoctrinating the populace with FEAR." If we don't kill them they will kill us" . #8 PERSECUTION "Victims are identified and separated, death lists are drawn up. Their property is confiscated and segregated into ghettoes, concentration camps or confined to famine-struck regions. GENOCIDAL MASSACRE BEGINS #9 EXTERMINATION "Begins and quickly becomes the mass killing called GENOCIDE It is called "extermination" to the killers because they don't believe their victims to be fully human. Sometimes the Genocide results in revenge killings by groups against each other, creating the downward whirlpool like mutual genocide where the victims actually organize and commit a second genocide on the perpetrators. #10 DENIAL "Is the tenth stage that always follows genocide. It is among the surest indicators of further genocidal massacres. They deny that they committed any crimes and often blame what happened on the victims. They block investigations of the crimes and continue to govern until driven from power by force. We are witnessing step #9 and #10 before our eyes in 2023!
Wasting print and thought arguing with Frank Lee and Craig Verdi is a complete waste of time! Haaretz has a thumbs down option to insane comments like theirs. It would be so much easier Chris to hit the "thumbs down" and walk on bye! They have no redeeming qualities or any ability to make critical analysis, just screeds of weaponized anti Semitism! In Pre Holocaust Germany, those who criticized were accused of "anti Germanism". The US Power Elite and Captains of Industry used "anti Americanism" to attack Unions, Liberals, Socialists, Communists, War resistors and Peace Activists. Frank and Craig are the proverbial "Useful Idiots" needed by ALL fascist states!
While the history of regulations, laws, edicts, social norms, and ethics had sanctioned the humane standards of not imposing “cruel or unusual punishments on American citizens” neither for normal nor unusual crimes against society — I would posit and strongly suggest that in the case of faux-Emperor Trump — the moderate punishment of visiting a mild, and non-physical ‘teaching moment’ of subjecting Trump to the same punishment as was oft employed early in America’s founding, which was to utilize a public ‘Dunking Stool’, where-by the general and normal American citizens could ‘look upon’ Trump — by old fashioned or modern TV today throughout our country — which punishment would likely, thoroughly embarrass, shame, and expose this certified megalomaniac [re. DSA-5] in a way of turning said obnoxious idiot into the laughing stock of the American people’s derision forever.
With the deepest respect I thank you for penning these words.
In all past Genocides the world was dependent on many cases what the biased media and the ethnic cleanser would say. This is the first of this magnitude of documented genocide via social media that I am aware of. If people still cannot see the truth then humanity is doomed
That little Hitler Youth chorus merely said the quiet part out loud.
Thank you, Chris Hedges, for this impassioned piece. The witnesses provide the facts. As with Shireen Abu Akleh and all to many others, the lies continue to be told.
I think there will be lasting rifts in the U.S. over our government's unconditional support for Israel's ongoing genocide. Despite massive protests against this horrific policy, once again, our elites' make it crystal clear, "stfu, you and your opinion matters naught." I implore my fellow citizens to demonstrate otherwise.
Deniers, Victims, and Either/Or Thinking
My uncle, later a career military non-com, was an army medic in WWII. Because of that, one of the first Americans into Dachau, the model concentration camp in Bavaria. When right wing Holocaust deniers in the U.S. started to makes the news, I begged him to write down what he witnessed to be submitted to archives. But even 60 years later, the experience was so horrific and his memories so raw he could not bring himself to do it. Exactly why victims of one genocide should know best how "never again" must apply to everyone.
And it should be clear to everyone on all sides as well as to those supporting them by means of comments here that either/or thinking is just one more form of hatred used to justify violence. The same narrow reality tunnels are churning out the same unreflective word litter as has happened for the previous posts by Chris Hedges on the current horror.
The same logic that tragically divides the world, but serves political powers. Either you're with us or you're against us, people are either good or evil, actions are either right or wrong, statements true or false. No subtly, no nuance, no shades in between, no range of values. No thoughts of compromise, diplomacy, tolerance. No room for living with people whose ideas about truth or faith or government are different than yours.
One set of repetitive comments in effect argues that all Israelis good and therefore their opponents must be not only wrong, but inherently inferior. Another set has even gone so far as to condemn all Jews period. (See Hedges' "The Horror, The Horror' for a particularly vicious and reprehensible "joke" in the comments.) Neither consider how many American (and European) Jews have condemned Israeli government behavior nor noticed the large Jewish Israeli demonstrations against their government. Because noticing differences and shades of opinions makes either/or logic impossible.
Thank you, Mr Hedges.
When you wrote that "The lies used by Israel to absolve itself of responsibility... will corrode its moral, religious, civic, intellectual and political life", I would submit that the same is happening to us here in the U. S. Our support for this genocide will destroy us, in fact, is already doing so. We support fascist regimes from Israel to Saudi Arabia around the world, and when Trump gets elected next year, and we descend irretrievably into fascism, the world will shake its head and note that we had it coming.
I'm sorry, but this is some real Goebbels level stuff. Hamas militants hide in the hospitals, religions buildings and schools.
Let's ask this question. What did all the Palestinians including the Hamas terrorists... and their Western leftist sympathizers... think would happen when they ignored the ceasefire agreement and surprise attacked to murder, rape and kidnap thousands of innocent Israeli Jews? Is the response by Israel really a surprise, or is this part of the game of the antisemites to leverage the chaos to make another go at Jew extermination?
Thank God for your astute, experienced, honest, fearless, frank journalism, Chris. You're a model for all other journalists. If only all citizens would read your articles and ACT on them. If only governments were astute, honest and benign, as you are, and that there was no need for your writing! Thank you so much for your writing and ever best wishes with it!
I love Chris Hedges.
He is conscientious and clean minded.
"Israel is not carrying out a war, its carrying out a genocide". Unlike war, there are no international laws for the conduct of genocide. Course if there were (imagine that: laws for conducting genocide!) any country that would wage genocide would not be apt to comply with such laws as we are now observing.
As Goebbels observed, the bigger the lie, the better. If the lie is gigantic, normal non-sociopath people will accept it as true, because who would say such a thing if it wasn't?
Chris is right. Israel will become an ethnostate, like the "cleansed" parts of the former Yugoslavia...which are now wastelands, economic and culturally, inhabited by people who ultimately defeated themselves, all to become destitute pariahs. Makes sense that Biden, segregationist in chief, would be all for it.
Great reporting Chris. I came across Gregory H Stanton's "Ten Stages of Genocide" which Israel ticks off each step! #1 CLASSIFICATION "Us vs Them" with division and segregation. #2 SYMBOLISM " Names like Terrorists, Muslims or Hamas #3 DISCRIMINATION "uses law, custom and political power to deny the rights of other groups" i.e. Nuremberg Laws of 1935 Germany #4 DEHUMANIZATION "one group treats another group as second class compared with animals parasites or Less Than Human and easier to kill, in print and in hate media. At this stage hate propaganda is used to make the victim seem like villains #5 ORGANIZATION "Genocide is always organized by the state" Death squads are trained and armed #6 POLARIZATION Extremists drive the groups apart. Hate groups broadcast propaganda that reinforces hate and prejudice. Moderates are usually killed first. #7 PREPERATION National or perpetrator group leaders plan the "FINAL SOLUTION". They often use euphemisms to cloak their intentions such as "ethnic cleansing" "purification" or "counter terrorism". Indoctrinating the populace with FEAR." If we don't kill them they will kill us" . #8 PERSECUTION "Victims are identified and separated, death lists are drawn up. Their property is confiscated and segregated into ghettoes, concentration camps or confined to famine-struck regions. GENOCIDAL MASSACRE BEGINS #9 EXTERMINATION "Begins and quickly becomes the mass killing called GENOCIDE It is called "extermination" to the killers because they don't believe their victims to be fully human. Sometimes the Genocide results in revenge killings by groups against each other, creating the downward whirlpool like mutual genocide where the victims actually organize and commit a second genocide on the perpetrators. #10 DENIAL "Is the tenth stage that always follows genocide. It is among the surest indicators of further genocidal massacres. They deny that they committed any crimes and often blame what happened on the victims. They block investigations of the crimes and continue to govern until driven from power by force. We are witnessing step #9 and #10 before our eyes in 2023!
Wasting print and thought arguing with Frank Lee and Craig Verdi is a complete waste of time! Haaretz has a thumbs down option to insane comments like theirs. It would be so much easier Chris to hit the "thumbs down" and walk on bye! They have no redeeming qualities or any ability to make critical analysis, just screeds of weaponized anti Semitism! In Pre Holocaust Germany, those who criticized were accused of "anti Germanism". The US Power Elite and Captains of Industry used "anti Americanism" to attack Unions, Liberals, Socialists, Communists, War resistors and Peace Activists. Frank and Craig are the proverbial "Useful Idiots" needed by ALL fascist states!
Hedges cuts through the BS to write about the truth
Chris, as I commented to your alma mater.
Alan MacDonald
Wells, Maine 33m ago
While the history of regulations, laws, edicts, social norms, and ethics had sanctioned the humane standards of not imposing “cruel or unusual punishments on American citizens” neither for normal nor unusual crimes against society — I would posit and strongly suggest that in the case of faux-Emperor Trump — the moderate punishment of visiting a mild, and non-physical ‘teaching moment’ of subjecting Trump to the same punishment as was oft employed early in America’s founding, which was to utilize a public ‘Dunking Stool’, where-by the general and normal American citizens could ‘look upon’ Trump — by old fashioned or modern TV today throughout our country — which punishment would likely, thoroughly embarrass, shame, and expose this certified megalomaniac [re. DSA-5] in a way of turning said obnoxious idiot into the laughing stock of the American people’s derision forever.