When I accepted the Tafik Diab Prize for my writing on the genocide in Gaza in Cairo on June 10 I explained why the cartoonist Joe Sacco and I are planning to do our next book together on Gaza.
Thank you Chris. This is no different than the Holocaust. The fact that the Israelis are perpetrating these crimes is unconscionable. In fact it is surreal. You wouldn’t think that Israel could sink to these atrocities after WWII. IMAGINE (Lennon)🥲
They didn’t sink to these atrocities after WWII. The sunk to these atrocities in the early part of the 20th century, when all of this was planned. The manifestation and realization of their program was enabled by the sympathies engendered by the Holocaust. I share with Norman Finklestein, and many others, the experience of being descended from Holocaust survivors whose destinies were intertwined with Zionism, but who understood that the tenets of that movement were in direct opposition to the philosophy of the Jewish faith, to humanist philosophy, and in the most general way, to justice itself. As more people are understanding every day, nothing is more antisemitic than Zionism. It’s a Mobius strip, which turns in on itself and cannot be resolved by logic.
I recently attended the Munk Debates in Toronto to explore this very issue. The debate was heated and I believe over represented by Zionist Supporters. If you get a chance I would recommend watching the debate
I cannot think of a better person to chronicle this ongoing genocide. You speak so passionately, but too with accuracy for the plight of the Palestinians. I look forward to your book! (I wish its publication was not necessary.)
I was watching footage of two Palestinian boys playing soccer in front of their house. They weren't very old - maybe ten or eleven. Their house was near the Israeli border. A sniper shot one of the boys. All they were doing was playing. I appreciate your sharing this. I shall hold this deep inside my heart.
Good point. Karma is a thing yet the system is at fault. Being "good Jewish citizens" and being brainwashing and killing young without much life experience, they fell nto it. They start them young. The truely evil enjoy murdering innocents. There is no upside to war, and certainly not to genocide. Everyone loses their humanity.
The People of the World are beginning to reject their leaders who act without moral or ethical strength. There is so much work to do. We can no longer afford hate and violence. We simply can’t afford hate and violence! It’s got to stop. The sheer stupidity and waste has become suicidal. We must rebuild our world for the survival of everyone and every living thing. We as a species have the intelligence and compassion to do this. In love, in Sisterhood & Brotherhood! This is not a choice, it is a necessity.
Thank you Chris. Your reporting on the genocide is invaluable as the Jewish run media in the US cannot be relied upon for the truth. In fact, the way the Jews act in Gaza gives credence to the holocaust deniers such as Ursula Haversack. If the Jews were really victims of a "holocaust" they would never do what they are doing in Gaza. The actions of the Jews in Gaza speaks volumes about their hatred for the goyim via the Talmud.
Matt, IMHO, it is not a matter of what you call "actions", but, 'me thinks', simply the New Testament vs. the Old Testament --- just as SCJ's Thomas is an 'effin', textualist, rather than a contemporary, modern, and even visionary thinking Judge.
I'm not a Biblical Scholar [although, I went to the "Mount Hermon" prep school for three years with required minor in Religion] --- but, IMHO2, I don't think Jesus ever showed any violent temper other than "overturning the money changer's table's"!
HELL!, what we have now is a supposedly "Free Speech" TV American Country, which is clearly being run only by about 1000 Billionaire Bastard effin LOOTERS & LIARS!
My highest rated, ad-hoc, focus-group tested, double-sided, and Bernie Sanders shouted approval sign simply says:
Matt, my childhood friends had two "Great Aunties" who were holocaust survivors. As a child, I saw the prison camp tattoo on one of their forearms. At dinner that night, the other started happily recounting a story about her childhood in Vienna, then suddenly paused and began weeping, saying "They're both dead of course, but they were such nice boys." The reason that I put "Great Aunties" in quotes is because they weren't blood relations. My friend's grandmother was a gentile, and best friends with these Jewish women. When she died, these women took in her orphaned daughter (my friend's mother) and raised her as a gentile. So much for all the absurd Holocaust denier puke.
Which is why it is so shocking that Jews in Israel (and Zionist Jews in US) are unwilling to admit their role in the Palestinian genocide. I grew up with Jews always saying "never forget" and yet here we are...they have forgotten already?
Matt, you deny the Jewish holocaust out of one side of your mouth, and then cite it as a basis for this accusation out of the other side of your mouth. You should make up your mind if you want your arguments to have integrity.
This said, I am shocked and horrified by the Jewish state committing genocide against the Palestinians for the very reasons you state. How many Palestinians who survive the Israeli-inflicted holocaust will say the same things and weep about the deaths and injuries done to their childhood friends in days to come?
Very moving. You, Chris, are one of the true heroes of common humanity. I left the United States during the Nixon-Vietnam years. Already I could not stand to be somehow part of a nation that would stand for the kinds of actions in which the U.S. was so deeply involved—indeed, were the motivators of the events. But still, although I closely followed the situation in Palestine with horror and disgust, I never dreamed that that the United States would actually perpetrate a genocide, much less that such actions would be cheered on by the governments of supposedly civilized countries, like France. (I never supposed that the actions and attitudes of any government of Britain would be any better). But now I realize, at a very advanced age, that the United States has been perpetrating genocides all along, and its political leadership simply view that as "business as usual". What else can you call what they did in places like Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam? Pushing aside the term "genocide", which is a term of American political rhetoric designed to make less legal than it already is what others do, I would say that the sin of it is no different than the sin of mass murder and mayhem. Mass murder and mayhem are the calling cards of the United States of America and of all of the imperial nations of the world—or wannabes, like Hitler's Germany. Among those, France, Britain, Japan, Belgium and the Netherlands loom large. In these activities, their governments have most often been supported by their general populations. But the current Israeli project is evidently too much for the American public to swallow—as they swallowed Vietnam, for example. And it's too much for many populations—most, I think, other than the Israelis and pockets of lunatic Zionists in parts of the Western world. In short, all this has woken me up to that fact that "genocide"—systematic murder and mayhem, if you're hesitant about the word—is nothing new, has been ongoing all during my lifetime unrecognized for what it was, namely the cruelist and most inhumane and destructive expression of the racism that lies so deeply in the American soul.
Here we are, 24 years later, and the horrific violence that you witnessed in 2000 has been multiplied over 15,000 times.
The West knew this all along. Every day of those 24+ years that every penny of support for the racist regime in Tel Aviv would be used for more death + destruction in Palestine. More that the scale of this evil, it is the duration of it all that truly shocks me.
Thank you for being CH. Years ago, I heard a report from Amy Goodman about a Palestinian mother of two-teenage boys, a university professor, who was preparing to become a suicide bomber. It blew my mind. It was beyond my understanding - until now. There comes a time when enough is enough and we are way past that time. Norman Finkelstein spoke of his then elderly mother saying (with regard to the treatment of Jews around the holocaust) - ' if we're going to die, if they are going to kill us, why not take a few of them with us.' How it took as long for Palestinians to get to Oct.7th is rather amazing. I now have this image in my head of me as a suicide bomber, hand on the switch, in a room full of the perpetrators (hopefully the higher ups calling the shots) pushing the detonate button with clarity of purpose.
Support BDS if implemented? Is BDS even legal in this Land of the Casi Libre? No ! Our duopoly political system isn't keen on BDS or standing up to Zionist Israel because - THEY own US. Our political system makes the genocide in Gaza possible. We are told our resistance is futile - on college campuses and every day on MSM - we are told Israel has a right to defend themselves - and to kill every last Palestinian alive right now to prove it. Those dying on the ground can't wait for BDS and some of them fight back with their sticks and stone and bottle rockets, aimed at their captors. How long would you watch it happen to you? I hope we never get to that point just like I hoped we'd never get to THIS point. Be well Julio.
Israel can never erase them from existence or from history or from our hearts. Not any more. Your promise, implicit already in all your work for the Gazans/Palestinians, and the growing chorus of voices, of witnesses, all around the world has made that impossible. They live in us, each and every Gazan/Palestinian - those whose stories we know and those we may never know. Thank you so much for this heartbreaking story, today, of these boys and their family and for the important work you and Joe Sacco are about to begin. Know that you will both be surrounded with love and the deepest respect and gratitude by all of us in the present and in the future that that work will touch.
I was raised around family friends of diverse ethnic backgrounds, yet in high school I realized that I had absorbed a common American discomfort with Muslims, Middle Easterners, and North Africans. I choose to acquire cultural exposure through traditional music and its beauty immediately opened my heart. Prejudice is a product of ignorance, as many wise and understanding PoC say. Chris, by making the political personal, your stories can create deeper understanding and open hearts.
I was so impressed by Clint Smith's book, "How the Word is Passed", that I sent him a quick post:
Dear, Clint,
Your deep research and your wonderful exposure of truths about racist treatment of enslaved Blacks, as well as the treatment of all of, "we the American people", inspires me to ask you if you might have any interest in taking up the banner of another offensive attack to all American's regarding political crimes against humanity --- causes me to ask:
What might you think of a next revealing book which might be titled something like this: "The Republican Assassination of JFK"??
Love, and best to you for all that you have already done to reveal why Texan, LBJ, was reported to be crying in the rest-room of the now titled Jet, Air Force One, that he took back to DC, while he said, "their going to get us all"?
There is an acknowledgement one receives when they've gone out into the wilderness for 4 days and 4 nights with water, a tarp, sleeping bag, perhaps writing and art materials, in a contemporary version of the ancient indigenous practice of the vision quest. The quester returns. Relates hir experiences. The witnesses listen and respond in ways that deepen the quester's experience. The acknowledgement is given: You are a man who knows what it is for a boy to be shot dead by a man for throwing a stone. It is this heart deep consciousness that we today we shall know you as carrying and being. Where this soul searing experience demands of you to become a keeper of this experience in its writing for the good of the people, in honor of this boy's sacrifice that it be made meaningful as part of the collective guidance and wisdom of life, of the living waters of life, of the Palestinian people and therein of and for all of us. So shall we know you Chris Hedges. So shall we know you. So shall we know you from herein out. Ho! So it is!
Thank you Chris. This is no different than the Holocaust. The fact that the Israelis are perpetrating these crimes is unconscionable. In fact it is surreal. You wouldn’t think that Israel could sink to these atrocities after WWII. IMAGINE (Lennon)🥲
They didn’t sink to these atrocities after WWII. The sunk to these atrocities in the early part of the 20th century, when all of this was planned. The manifestation and realization of their program was enabled by the sympathies engendered by the Holocaust. I share with Norman Finklestein, and many others, the experience of being descended from Holocaust survivors whose destinies were intertwined with Zionism, but who understood that the tenets of that movement were in direct opposition to the philosophy of the Jewish faith, to humanist philosophy, and in the most general way, to justice itself. As more people are understanding every day, nothing is more antisemitic than Zionism. It’s a Mobius strip, which turns in on itself and cannot be resolved by logic.
I recently attended the Munk Debates in Toronto to explore this very issue. The debate was heated and I believe over represented by Zionist Supporters. If you get a chance I would recommend watching the debate
I cannot think of a better person to chronicle this ongoing genocide. You speak so passionately, but too with accuracy for the plight of the Palestinians. I look forward to your book! (I wish its publication was not necessary.)
I was watching footage of two Palestinian boys playing soccer in front of their house. They weren't very old - maybe ten or eleven. Their house was near the Israeli border. A sniper shot one of the boys. All they were doing was playing. I appreciate your sharing this. I shall hold this deep inside my heart.
Blood won't wash off. After leaving the IDC soldiers have breakdowns. They can't live with themselves.
My great hope, Every one of the them sits in a dark room, drooling, and mumbling in a corner.
Good point. Karma is a thing yet the system is at fault. Being "good Jewish citizens" and being brainwashing and killing young without much life experience, they fell nto it. They start them young. The truely evil enjoy murdering innocents. There is no upside to war, and certainly not to genocide. Everyone loses their humanity.
It’s a vicious circle. Only love will conquer hate. Hate will always bring more hate onto this world until we all are merely a pile of dust.
„Is Real“ computer art 3 min video: https://youtu.be/dP808Qc9lgM
We should NEVER underestimate the power of Telling the Story. You go, Chris!
The People of the World are beginning to reject their leaders who act without moral or ethical strength. There is so much work to do. We can no longer afford hate and violence. We simply can’t afford hate and violence! It’s got to stop. The sheer stupidity and waste has become suicidal. We must rebuild our world for the survival of everyone and every living thing. We as a species have the intelligence and compassion to do this. In love, in Sisterhood & Brotherhood! This is not a choice, it is a necessity.
Thank you Chris. Your reporting on the genocide is invaluable as the Jewish run media in the US cannot be relied upon for the truth. In fact, the way the Jews act in Gaza gives credence to the holocaust deniers such as Ursula Haversack. If the Jews were really victims of a "holocaust" they would never do what they are doing in Gaza. The actions of the Jews in Gaza speaks volumes about their hatred for the goyim via the Talmud.
Matt, IMHO, it is not a matter of what you call "actions", but, 'me thinks', simply the New Testament vs. the Old Testament --- just as SCJ's Thomas is an 'effin', textualist, rather than a contemporary, modern, and even visionary thinking Judge.
I'm not a Biblical Scholar [although, I went to the "Mount Hermon" prep school for three years with required minor in Religion] --- but, IMHO2, I don't think Jesus ever showed any violent temper other than "overturning the money changer's table's"!
HELL!, what we have now is a supposedly "Free Speech" TV American Country, which is clearly being run only by about 1000 Billionaire Bastard effin LOOTERS & LIARS!
My highest rated, ad-hoc, focus-group tested, double-sided, and Bernie Sanders shouted approval sign simply says:
INEQUALITY
CAUSED BY
BILLIONAIRE
BASTARDS
(and on the other side)
LOVE
OVER
VIOLENT
EMPIRE
Matt, my childhood friends had two "Great Aunties" who were holocaust survivors. As a child, I saw the prison camp tattoo on one of their forearms. At dinner that night, the other started happily recounting a story about her childhood in Vienna, then suddenly paused and began weeping, saying "They're both dead of course, but they were such nice boys." The reason that I put "Great Aunties" in quotes is because they weren't blood relations. My friend's grandmother was a gentile, and best friends with these Jewish women. When she died, these women took in her orphaned daughter (my friend's mother) and raised her as a gentile. So much for all the absurd Holocaust denier puke.
Which is why it is so shocking that Jews in Israel (and Zionist Jews in US) are unwilling to admit their role in the Palestinian genocide. I grew up with Jews always saying "never forget" and yet here we are...they have forgotten already?
Matt, you deny the Jewish holocaust out of one side of your mouth, and then cite it as a basis for this accusation out of the other side of your mouth. You should make up your mind if you want your arguments to have integrity.
This said, I am shocked and horrified by the Jewish state committing genocide against the Palestinians for the very reasons you state. How many Palestinians who survive the Israeli-inflicted holocaust will say the same things and weep about the deaths and injuries done to their childhood friends in days to come?
Read my posting again. I never denied the holocaust happened. I pointed out that the way the Jews are acting gives credibility to the deniers.
Very moving. You, Chris, are one of the true heroes of common humanity. I left the United States during the Nixon-Vietnam years. Already I could not stand to be somehow part of a nation that would stand for the kinds of actions in which the U.S. was so deeply involved—indeed, were the motivators of the events. But still, although I closely followed the situation in Palestine with horror and disgust, I never dreamed that that the United States would actually perpetrate a genocide, much less that such actions would be cheered on by the governments of supposedly civilized countries, like France. (I never supposed that the actions and attitudes of any government of Britain would be any better). But now I realize, at a very advanced age, that the United States has been perpetrating genocides all along, and its political leadership simply view that as "business as usual". What else can you call what they did in places like Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam? Pushing aside the term "genocide", which is a term of American political rhetoric designed to make less legal than it already is what others do, I would say that the sin of it is no different than the sin of mass murder and mayhem. Mass murder and mayhem are the calling cards of the United States of America and of all of the imperial nations of the world—or wannabes, like Hitler's Germany. Among those, France, Britain, Japan, Belgium and the Netherlands loom large. In these activities, their governments have most often been supported by their general populations. But the current Israeli project is evidently too much for the American public to swallow—as they swallowed Vietnam, for example. And it's too much for many populations—most, I think, other than the Israelis and pockets of lunatic Zionists in parts of the Western world. In short, all this has woken me up to that fact that "genocide"—systematic murder and mayhem, if you're hesitant about the word—is nothing new, has been ongoing all during my lifetime unrecognized for what it was, namely the cruelist and most inhumane and destructive expression of the racism that lies so deeply in the American soul.
Here we are, 24 years later, and the horrific violence that you witnessed in 2000 has been multiplied over 15,000 times.
The West knew this all along. Every day of those 24+ years that every penny of support for the racist regime in Tel Aviv would be used for more death + destruction in Palestine. More that the scale of this evil, it is the duration of it all that truly shocks me.
While you and Joe are working on this very worthy project, please do your best to stay safe. You are needed now more than ever by so many. Godspeed.
Thank you for being CH. Years ago, I heard a report from Amy Goodman about a Palestinian mother of two-teenage boys, a university professor, who was preparing to become a suicide bomber. It blew my mind. It was beyond my understanding - until now. There comes a time when enough is enough and we are way past that time. Norman Finkelstein spoke of his then elderly mother saying (with regard to the treatment of Jews around the holocaust) - ' if we're going to die, if they are going to kill us, why not take a few of them with us.' How it took as long for Palestinians to get to Oct.7th is rather amazing. I now have this image in my head of me as a suicide bomber, hand on the switch, in a room full of the perpetrators (hopefully the higher ups calling the shots) pushing the detonate button with clarity of purpose.
Support BDS if implemented? Is BDS even legal in this Land of the Casi Libre? No ! Our duopoly political system isn't keen on BDS or standing up to Zionist Israel because - THEY own US. Our political system makes the genocide in Gaza possible. We are told our resistance is futile - on college campuses and every day on MSM - we are told Israel has a right to defend themselves - and to kill every last Palestinian alive right now to prove it. Those dying on the ground can't wait for BDS and some of them fight back with their sticks and stone and bottle rockets, aimed at their captors. How long would you watch it happen to you? I hope we never get to that point just like I hoped we'd never get to THIS point. Be well Julio.
Israel can never erase them from existence or from history or from our hearts. Not any more. Your promise, implicit already in all your work for the Gazans/Palestinians, and the growing chorus of voices, of witnesses, all around the world has made that impossible. They live in us, each and every Gazan/Palestinian - those whose stories we know and those we may never know. Thank you so much for this heartbreaking story, today, of these boys and their family and for the important work you and Joe Sacco are about to begin. Know that you will both be surrounded with love and the deepest respect and gratitude by all of us in the present and in the future that that work will touch.
I was raised around family friends of diverse ethnic backgrounds, yet in high school I realized that I had absorbed a common American discomfort with Muslims, Middle Easterners, and North Africans. I choose to acquire cultural exposure through traditional music and its beauty immediately opened my heart. Prejudice is a product of ignorance, as many wise and understanding PoC say. Chris, by making the political personal, your stories can create deeper understanding and open hearts.
We love you Chris❤ I bought
Joe Sacco's The Footnotes in Gaza. Hope to be able to buy the one co- authoured by you.
Dear Chris,
I was so impressed by Clint Smith's book, "How the Word is Passed", that I sent him a quick post:
Dear, Clint,
Your deep research and your wonderful exposure of truths about racist treatment of enslaved Blacks, as well as the treatment of all of, "we the American people", inspires me to ask you if you might have any interest in taking up the banner of another offensive attack to all American's regarding political crimes against humanity --- causes me to ask:
What might you think of a next revealing book which might be titled something like this: "The Republican Assassination of JFK"??
Love, and best to you for all that you have already done to reveal why Texan, LBJ, was reported to be crying in the rest-room of the now titled Jet, Air Force One, that he took back to DC, while he said, "their going to get us all"?
"THEY'RE GOING TO KILL ALL OF US"
INEQUALITY
CAUSED BY
BILLIONAIRE
BASTARDS
(and on the other side)
LOVE
OVER
VIOLENT
TRUMP
There is an acknowledgement one receives when they've gone out into the wilderness for 4 days and 4 nights with water, a tarp, sleeping bag, perhaps writing and art materials, in a contemporary version of the ancient indigenous practice of the vision quest. The quester returns. Relates hir experiences. The witnesses listen and respond in ways that deepen the quester's experience. The acknowledgement is given: You are a man who knows what it is for a boy to be shot dead by a man for throwing a stone. It is this heart deep consciousness that we today we shall know you as carrying and being. Where this soul searing experience demands of you to become a keeper of this experience in its writing for the good of the people, in honor of this boy's sacrifice that it be made meaningful as part of the collective guidance and wisdom of life, of the living waters of life, of the Palestinian people and therein of and for all of us. So shall we know you Chris Hedges. So shall we know you. So shall we know you from herein out. Ho! So it is!